Post by W333 on Aug 3, 2010 20:36:37 GMT -6
On Saturday 7-31-2010 Gateway raced for king of the track. The 4 winners from each class faced off against one another. Dave Schuette, Steve Pearson, Nick Brem and Denny Slusser. As the racers, teams and fans made their way to the starting line all I could think about was the combined round wins, class wins and championships won by these 4 competitors. Truly astonishing. As the track official stepped up to announce the pairings my thoughts were that there will be no easy rounds. Personally I did not want to see Denny race against Steve Pearson's Chevy Vega. I have watched him and his car for years go round after round running dead on and printing time slips like a Xerox machine. I knew he would stay cool as a cucumber under pressure and not make any mistakes. Truthfully, I wasn't that afraid of the dragster(that was a mistake). I thought the mph would be close enough that Denny could "fender race" if he had to. Earlier in the night Ron Hunt made a comment to me in the pits saying "Nick is on tonight, you watch, he is going to win this whole thing". When Big Al announced Slusser vs Brem, that earlier conversation with Ron blasted through my head like a lightning bolt. Nervously I assured Denny that the bike will do it's job if you stay cool. I was mentally prepared for defeat. I was shocked to see Denny's win light, Nick is VERY hard to beat on any given night at the track. Then the Race between Dave's dragster and Steve's Vega was a nail biter indeed. When these 2 launched from the staring line it seemed as if the dragster would never catch the Vega. Win light dragster. My jaw dropped. The mighty Vega had been defeated. Steve I must admit, I had a momentary sigh of relief. I didn't want any part of that Vega. Ultimately Dave Schuette won the NHRA Wally due to Denny's red light. Pearson, Brem, Slusser and Schuette all deserve the utmost respect in the staging lanes for being straight up, hard core racers and being some of the nicest people to walk the grounds at Gateway.