I saw one of the oddest finals ever this weekend, with Stuckey Racing facing off against the J&H Ramcharger in the finals of Pro Street.

 Now, the race was running way late due to numerous oil-downs, and the J&H Ramcharger had to be hotlapped in order to make the cuttoff time for the track.  The shortbed Dodge driven by Phillip Palmer had sat all day in the staging lanes, while other people's stuff broke, and finally would now be up for a race.  Unfortunatley, the Ramcharger was hot, and overheated a puked coolant out the surge tank during the burnout.

So there was Stuckey at the line waiting, and they agreed to give the J&H truck some time to cool down....

After about a minute or so, they lined up, and Phillip Palmer double-bulbed Harvey Grant, the driver of the Ramcharger.  Knowing that Harvey needed to leave off a transbrake, Phillip started to back out of the beams in order to light only the pre-stage light, unaware that Harvey's 'Charger spooled quick enough to stage still.  Now Harvey had both bulbs lit, and Phil was behind the 8 ball.  It is unclear whether the green truck pushed through the beams, or whether he got timed out, but the light went green and Phillip went red, giving the win to Harvey.....

The Ramcharger launched, and then lifted shortly after.  " I knew it was a couple grand in prize money if I put it in Reverse, but I didn't want to win like that..." recounted Harvey later.

He backed up, back to the line, and the decision was made after all the waiting and jockeying, to just re-race. 

The second time around, everything went as planned, and both trucks hit off the line hard, to the tune of some low 1.5-second 60ft times.  Unbeknownst to most, Harvey knew the Ramcharger was still too hot to race, but decided to run anyways.  At about half track, the J&H rig started spilling coolant on the slicks and got loose.  "LIFT HARV, LIFT, IT'S OVER!" is what Harvey had to tell himself, thinking in capital letters to make a point, as he was about a truck length behind Stuckey Racing, and knew that even if he ran better than his best of 9.79, he probably wasn't going to catch Team Green.  So the throttle was chopped, and Team Green ran on to a mid 9, like they always do.

It was a much deserved win on both sides, but the Sportsmanship of both teams was what really made the finals unique.  There was a lot of "should haves" in the finals.  The J&H truck should have been given time to cool down between rounds, Stuckey should haven't been so polite, and not tried to back out of the beams, (double-bulbing is legal, after all). 

In the end, both teams got a real race, which is all they wanted in the first place.

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