Competitors continued to stream through Famoso’s gates on Saturday morning, filling the pits (and the race classes) as the day began. A short test and tune session started off the festivities, which kept things going until 9pm when the last cars went down the track for the day.

Garrett Pro Street

As the third round of qualifying drew to a close, it looked like six-oh was going to be the number to beat in Pro Street, until Scott Oksas stepped up to the plate for his last at-bat. With cool air and a still-decent track surface, he managed to knock of a 5.947 pass with a monster 259.26 MPH trap speed. That put him at the top of the order for the ten-car class, with Randy Walker and Greg Seth-Hunter dipping into the 6.0-range just behind him. The rest of the field clustered in the low sixes, promising some interesting matchups for tomorrow’s elimination rounds.

A top-end nitrous explosion took the scoop clean off of Joe Lepone’s ’70 Plymouth Duster in the first round of qualifying, but he had things back together in time to make another hit in Q3.

Mickey Thompson Tire True 10.5

Al Jimenez put on a dominating display in TT5, running an astonishing 6.841 at 211.59 to take first place in qualifying. Rodger Holder sits a distant second at 7.989 and the rest of the seven-car field scattered through the eights and beyond.

ProCharger 275 Drag Radial

We can say with some certainty that we know who will be in the 275 final tomorrow, since there are only two cars in the class. We are also fairly certain that our own Project BlownZ is going to have a tough hill to climb against Artis Houston – while the Nova was running deep in the sevens, Dragzine boss-man James Lawrence had a close-but-no-cigar 8.058 best pass, lifting at the thousand-foot mark.

A snafu with the warmup procedure left our Project BlownZ DOA in the staging lanes and unable to make a third hit in search of the car’s first seven second timeslip.

Lucas Oil NA 10.5

Six cars comprise the NA 10.5 field for tomorrow’s elimination rounds, and top honors in qualifying went to Tony Aneian and his gorgeous ’68 Camaro with an 8.096 pass at 167 and change. Vic Brum is right behind with an 8.170, though, and the field is tightly clustered within 0.7 seconds from first to worst.

Don Bevers had a run-in with the wall during the third round of qualifying – his Probe drifted towards the center line, and the correction took him hard into the right-hand wall, then back across to hit the left side, then back again to the right before coming to rest. We are pleased to report that as scary as the crash was, Bevers wasn’t seriously injured (though the car is toast…)

ARP Outlaw 8.5

Yesterday, we gave you a peek under the hood of Jason Ayers’ unmistakable LS-powered Cobra, and today, that very same car (love it or hate it) sits atop the Outlaw 8.5 ladder, with a best eighth-mile pass of 4.990 seconds at 150.06 MPH. George Raygoza and Ryan “Toaster” Jones round out the top third of the nine-car class – if conditions tomorrow are anything like today, it’s going to take at least a five-flat to make it to the winner’s circle in eliminations.