2007 NMRA Keystone Ford Nationals - Worlds Collide

In football, the Super Bowl pits the top team in the NFC against the top team in the AFC to duke it out for the title rights and the NFL season championship. The hoopla drummed up prior to the big match each year is unrivaled by few, if any, sporting events. Wanting to achieve that same level of excitement and drama, the gang at ProMedia, promoters of the NMRA Keystone Ford Nationals and NMCA Edelbrock racing associations, had its own rendition of the Super Bowl that set the two premier street-legal sanc-tioning bodies against each other in a quarter-mile slugfest.

It's called the Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing, and each year the two series converge on Route 66 Raceway just outside of Chicago for a wild weekend of drag racing, car showing, and to see the huge manufacturer's midway. Even the True Street class is a mix of machines to see not only who, but which brand of vehicle, is the baddest on the street.

This year the MM&FF staff saw a slathering of old-school musclecars and modern machines. The weekend climaxed with a showdown between the winners of the NMRA classes taking on the winners of the NMCA categories for bragging rights, bonus money, and a coveted Nitto Tire Diamond Tree ring.

The game at Route 66 was simple. Both series run concurrently in regular fashion, with qualifying and eliminations over a three-day period. After all NMRA and NMCA class winners are decided, they're thrown into the Super Bowl bonus round. ProMedia officials pitted Pro 5.0 vs. Pro Street, Super Street Outlaw vs. Super Street 10.5, Drag Radial vs. Xtreme Street, and right on down to the Open Comp and Index-style classes for both sanctions. Since the classes are different-even the heads-up ones-each category was run off an index, albeit with no breakout. The index was determined by the racer's quickest pass of the weekend. For example, John Urist squared off against Billy Glidden. Urist had run a best of 7.51, while Glidden knocked down a 7.06. Their Super Bowl meeting had Urist getting a 0.45-second head start.

Last year, Team NMRA prevailed as it came down to the final round, pairing Tony Bischoff and Pro Street racer Brian Robbins. Bischoff took the victory and sealed the fate for the NMCA crowd. The final tally was NMRA 6 and NMCA 5. This year, Team NMRA took a commanding victory over the NMCA racers as they clinched the title rather easily. The final count showed NMRA with seven wins while NMCA mustered only four.

Both sanctioning bodies attracted a lot of entries, and there was a spectacular display of cars on and off the racetrack. One of the coolest things about attending this extravaganza was getting a glimpse of a wide variety of cars while still watching Mustang drag racing. The Super Bowl truly combined the best of both worlds, and hosting it at Route 66 in Joliet, Illinois, makes it that much better. The facility is large enough to handle the 450-plus heads-up racers and hundreds of True Street and show cars that also attended the weekend's festivities. It's a top-notch facility with one of the best racing surfaces around. Combine that with favorable weather conditions, and it was the perfect setting to watch record performances and side-by-side drag racing.