Heading
into the final stretch of the 2017 racing season, Rocky
Mountain Superchargers (RMS) drivers will have
a lot of Kansas – and a bit of Montana and Missouri
– on their minds.
Although
RMS, founded and shepherded by Ed Arcuri, III, and run
under the watchful eye of Competition Director Ron Burge,
has always been based in Colorado, its racers also come
from 10 other states. Other than the Centennial State,
they hail mostly from Kansas, North Dakota, Nebraska and
Texas as well.
As
they approach the last group of races, the RMS competitors
will find themselves at two Sunflower State tracks in
coming weeks, then will top off the season way up north
in the Big Country before a hiatus leading right into
a late date in the Show Me State.
Next
up, on July 22, the RMS comes back to Kansas International
Dragway at Maize, KS., just north of Wichita, for the
second consecutive year in the Summer Nationals, with
a special Melling Race Night event. “Our people
had a good racing experience there last summer, and were
impressed with the overall setup,” said Arcuri,
whose racers are vying in their eighth season. “This
is a big, eight-car event for our Pro Supercharged/All
Star racers and a match race opportunity for Top Supercharged
Thunder. Wichita is the largest city in Kansas and a great
place for us to show what we can do.”
Aug.
5 marks a return to the legendary SRCA (Sunflower Rod
and Custom Association) Dragstrip in Great Bend, Kan.,
site of the first National Hot Rod Association Nationals
in 1955 and of subsequent major American Hot Rod Association
events. The venerable strip was selected by RMS drivers
as Track of the Year in 2016. There will be special awards
from Richmond Gear. Both the Melling and Richmond special
awards were arranged by Contingency Connection.
“We’re
always excited to get back to Great Bend and SRCA,”
Arcuri said. “The site is a little off the beaten
path, but folks are happy to be up-close and personal
at a track that has quite a storied history. Those of
us who have raced there continue to be impressed with
the track's management team and the welcome we get in
that great community.”
At
Great Bend, Top Supercharged and Pro Supercharged racers
will earn points for what the Boss termed “our ever-richer
championship.
“We’re working with Sunflower Broadcasting,
out of Hays, Kan., on some interesting and exciting promotional
tie-ins that the public will enjoy,” he added. That
effort is bolstered by the presence of AMP Graphics, co-founded
by Tony Arcuri, Ed’s son and one of the headline
RMS drivers in his blazing-red “Firefighter”
machine. AMP handles the group’s advertising.
Added
late to the 2017 racing calendar will be The Hot Rod Reunion,
presented by O'Reilly Auto Parts, and headlined by Dragtime
News, in the Oct. 15 Dragtime News Top Supercharged Funny
Car Invitational at MoKan Dragway in Asbury, Mo., just
north of where Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma intersect.
Racers
from California and Nevada competed on June 24 in the
last race of the year on the RMS “home” track,
Pueblo (Colo.) Motorsports Park. While Arcuri thought
“it would be unlikely that a California racer will
travel to Great Bend … but the distance from the
West Coast to Pueblo shows that our program is attracting
interest beyond the 11 states from which our competitors
have already come,” he said.
Before
MoKan was added to the agenda, the 2017 season would have
concluded on Aug. 18 on the Yellowstone Dragstrip at Acton,
Mont., outside of Billings. The Funny Car 500 will feature
eight funny cars in a Chicago Eliminator supported by
what an excited Ed Arcuri described as “our fattest
payout ever, and we will rock that place!
“I
know our drivers from North Dakota will relish the idea
of competing under the RMS banner at a track closer to
home but, you know, the guys from farther south –
Colorado, Kansas and Texas – also look forward to
the opportunity. That’s what good competition will
do for you, regardless of where you are or where you come
from,” he said.
RMS
contestants fired off their 2017 season at Pueblo Motorsports
Park on May 6 in Thunder in the Rockies, presented by
Competition Products, which is a prime sponsor all summer
long. “It brought out top-flight racing in the sportsman
bracket eliminators as well as a full field for the Superchargers,”
the elder Arcuri enthused. Tom “Fireball”
Furches, 2016 Top Supercharged Thunder Champion, won his
final with a 6.75-second elapsed time blast at 201.8 miles
per hour. The Pro Supercharged/All Star winner was Josh
Herman, a local Pueblo racer, who has been victorious
in many past contests. Herman made it to the final via
the break rule when Low Qualifier Steve Stracener encountered
engine problems in his “Last Starfighter”
Dodge Challenger.
On
May 28, it was more of an annual fun outing than dog-eat-dog
competition in the far northeastern corner of Colorado
on the old runway of a former rural airfield at Julesburg
for another of the Lanier's Speed Shop Invitational competition
presented by Clear Vue Concepts. The Colorado Fuel and
Gas Championships were presented by Howard's Cams at Pueblo
on June 3, with RMS Top Supercharged and Pro Supercharged
eliminators in the spotlight. Texan Rodney Ferguson and
Colorado’s Furches were the No. 1 drivers that day
in each category.
“Pueblo
Motorsports Park put in some exciting changes to their
format for this race that gave it that ‘nostalgia’
feel evoked by the Fuel and Gas Championships title,”
Arcuri explained. The historic High Altitude Nationals
returned to Pueblo on June 24. There were several below-index
ETs after Furches, with another 6.75, including Doug Schneider
at 6.749; Tony Arcuri, 6.875; Trey Newkirk, 7.286; Johnnie
O’Connell of Reminiscin Racing, 7.377; Ferguson,
7.441; and Nissen, 7.447.
“We
brought this event back to its home in Colorado a few
years ago and are proud to keep the tradition alive,”
the RMS founder/leader said. “We got some good racer
support that we had hoped for, so the fans got the racing
they expected.”
For
more information about The Rocky Mountain Superchargers,
visit www.rockymountainsuperchargers.com.
Article
by Phil Ross, photo by David Liddle.
