ROCKINGHAM — Chris Rini slammed the door on his closest rivals Saturday, winning the feature event at the Original Super Chevy Show at Rockingham Dragway and, with it, the championship of the 2019 Carolina Xtreme Pro Mod Series.
Rini, who moved from in Carmel, N.Y. to Hickory, drove his 1969 Chevy Camaro to the No. 1 qualifying position at 3.810 seconds with North Carolina Drag Racing Hall of Fame member Tommy Mauney of Shelby close behind.
After an easy 4.179 second victory over Salisbury’s Tony Wilson in round one, Rini stopped the timers in 3.788 seconds to turn back another Hall of Famer, Harrisburg’s Charles Carpenter, in semifinals before going even lower in the final round to take out Mooresville’s Chris Cline and his unique 1957 Plymouth replica.
The biggest all-Chevrolet event in the Carolinas also crowned champions in several bracket racing categories and awarded “best of” trophies to standout General Motors cars and trucks in a host of show classes.
In a special exhibition, Rockingham’s Terry Rosberg drove the “American Thunder” jet dragster to consecutive victories over the Black Pearl jet-powered Chevy Nova Pro Mod driven by veteran David Douthit.
Driving the 1965 Corvette owned by the late Randy Prince, Tommy Hilburn of Hope Mills took one of the two Top Eliminator titles, beating the newly-married Paul Warwick of Lumberton in the Sunday final after Timothy Thomas hoisted the hardware on Saturday.
In Footbrake, two-time former Rockingham Dragway track champion and Rockingham native Staten Nichols, who won the track’s Street class in 1992 and 1993, got the Sunday victory after Maysville’s Lauren Edwards prevailed on Saturday.
Efland’s Ray Dupont won the D.O.T. class and Rowland’s Ronnie Locklear picked up the victory in the Trophy class.