DINWIDDIE, Va. — Reigning PDRA Pro Boost world champion Ty Tutterow has taken home three consecutive No. 1 qualifying spots in WS Construction Pro Boost presented by P2 Contracting and Ty-Drive, and he put himself in prime position to earn his fourth in a row on Friday night at the Pro Line Racing Brian Olson Memorial World Finals presented by ProCharger.
With the weather cooling off considerably as the evening progressed and teams making drastic improvements over their runs from earlier in the day, it was Tutterow who grabbed the provisional No. 1 position with a 3.560-second pass at 209.69 mph at the 2026 Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series season finale.
Fresh off a PDRA ProStars win on Thursday night, reigning PDRA Pro Boost world champion Ty Tutterow continues to be an unstoppable force in qualifying, taking the top spot on Friday night in what could potentially be his fourth consecutive No. 1 qualifier. Driving Justin Smith’s screw-blown Quik Fuel ’68 Camaro, Tutterow uncorked a 3.560 at 209.69 mph, nearly two hundredths quicker than his closest competitor.
Tutterow admitted that running in the final pair of the session, following an unfortunate incident involving John Doc suffering parts failure and hitting the wall multiple times in his ’69 “Cow-Maro,” actually benefitted him, as it allowed his team to make adjustments as conditions improved. John Doc, meanwhile, appeared to be okay following the crash, but was transported to a nearby medical facility as a cautionary measure.
“After that unfortunate incident with those guys, the track did get better,” said Tutterow. “They prepped the track. We ended up making a weight swing right before that run and it helped. That’s probably the best run this car’s ever made as far as an A-to-B smooth pass. I mean, it was a flawless run.”
With just one more qualifying session remaining on Saturday morning, and conditions not likely to be better than Friday night, Tutterow is also close to earning the qualifying bonus points in his quest to catch Johnny Camp and Jason Harris and repeat as series champion.
“I hope the weather’s bad, or at least warm enough where nobody can better it,” Tutterow said. I mean, if the weather’s there and we can better it, we’re gonna try to better our run. I know it’s forecasted to be cooler tomorrow than it has been all weekend, so we’ll just see how the cards fall.”
Randy Weatherford claimed the No. 2 spot on Friday night, running 3.577 seconds at 209.46 mph in his Harts Charger-equipped WS Construction ’69 Camaro. Jason Harris, seeking to become the very first five-time PDRA world champion, qualified third with a 3.593 at 210.80 in his Harts Charger-boosted “Party Time” ’69 Camaro.
2024 Elite Top Sportsman championship runner-up Tim Paap came out swinging in the cool evening qualifying session of Pro Nitrous on Friday night. After struggling in Q1, Paap ran in the second pair of Q2, laying down an impressive 3.621 at 207.46 mph in his Killin’ Time Racing Paap Auto Body ’16 Corvette. Unlike Tutterow, Paap did not make any changes to his car during the downtime following John Doc’s unfortunate crash.
“No, not at all,” said Paap. “It was the same tune-up that was in it when we rolled up. Barker (tuner Jeffrey Barker) didn’t make any changes at all. He’s the man.”
Despite the stellar run that put him No. 1 by five hundredths at the time, with a plethora of heavy hitters behind him, Paap wasn’t confident the run would hold until the final pair of Tommy Franklin and Amber Denton went down the track.
“I didn’t really know, because in Pro Nitrous, there’s some tough competition in there,” Paap said. “Usually there’s always a whole bunch of groupings of about four of us that are always together real close. You just never know until the whole field runs.”
With no championship hopes for the weekend, Paap is looking forward to playing the spoiler role and making things awkward for the contenders.
“Oh, I’d love to do that, most definitely. Spoilers always make things more exciting.”
After winning the PDRA ProStars all-star race on Thursday night, Amber Denton carried her momentum into qualifying, taking the No. 2 spot with a 3.630 at 208.26 mph in her Pat Musi-assisted “OG Jungle Rat” ‘69 Camaro.
Longtime 10.5 racer Jerry Morgano shot from the bottom of the Pro Street qualifying sheet all the way to the top on Friday, unloading a 3.907 at 202.67 mph in the very first pass of Friday night’s second session in his twin-turbo “Copperhead” ’02 Mustang. After a rough first pass earlier in the day, Friday night’s run exceeded even Morgano’s expectations.
“I thought it would be a good run, but I didn’t think it would run a .90,” said Morgano. “Coming up under the tower, my crew guy came and said that they were gonna prep, which they normally do for us – but they don’t typically spray. When they brought the sprayer out, he said to me, ‘Well, they’re gonna spray, so the track should be pretty damn good.’ I went 3.95 against Blake [Denton] last night, so I basically put that tune-up in it. I pulled a little timing out early on, and we picked up two numbers in the 60-foot, From there, the track was killer.”
Being the first pair out, going No. 1 was just the first part of the equation. From there, Morgano had to wait out the entire session to see if one of the many top contenders would outrun him. To his surprise, no one did.
“No, I didn’t think it would hold number one,” Morgano admitted. “I was the first pair down. It gives all the guys behind me the data that the track will take a .90. There were a lot of killer cars that were in the rest of the field. I thought for sure more than one person would go faster than I ran, so I was happy it held.”
Championship hopeful Richard Reagan drove his screw-blown ’91 Mustang to the No. 2 qualifying position, running a 3.920 at 196.19 mph. Driving the Pat Musi-powered, nitrous-assisted “Bonnie” ‘69 Camaro,
Points leader J.C. Beattie Jr. continued his march towards a seemingly inevitable Pro 632 world championship on Friday, running a 4.108 at 174.14 mph in the heat of the day to take the provisional No. 1 spot in his nitrous-fed ATI Performance Products ’18 Camaro. Sitting in the back of the line for Q2 Friday evening, Beattie Jr. watched as nobody could come within four hundredths of him, and elected to push his car off and not make another pass.
Jeff Pittman, sitting second in points, is also second on the qualifying chart, posting a 4.141 at 171.14 mph in his Hickory Enclosed Trailer Sales ’68 Chevelle.
Reigning Super Street world champion Connor McGee kept his hopes of a championship repeat alive on Friday night, taking the provisional No. 1 qualifier and inching closer to the bonus points awarded with it. McGee fired off a 4.504 at 161.00 mph in Friday’s evening session in his Fulton-powered Brian’s Heating & Cooling ’90 Mustang.
McGee will still need help, however, as current points leader and winner of the two most recent events Austin Vincent sits right behind him in the No. 2 position by just one hundredth of a second, running a 4.514 at 161.48 mph in his Vincent Performance ’88 Mustang.
Bruce Thrift secured the provisional No. 1 spot in Elite Top Sportsman on Friday night, piloting his nitrous-assisted “Color Me Gone” ’06 GTO to a 3.798 elapsed time at 196.90 mph. Jamie Fowler is second with a 3.809 at 198.44 in his nitrous-assisted, Fulton-powered Pee Dee Fleet ’69 Camaro.
Tony Careccia continued his string of impressive performances in his brand-new screw-blown ’26 NexGen dragster, claiming the provisional No. 1 spot in Elite Top Dragster with a 3.663-second run at 204.35 mph. 2025 world champion Alan O’Brien laid down a 3.687 at 208.62 in his unique quad-turbocharged, AMC-powered Greenbrier Excavating & Paving ’23 Racetech dragster to qualify second.
