PORT McNEILL—No driver was hotter than Chris Sharpe, who reached the bracket finals in both the pro and super pro classes in Sunday’s Rumble on the Runway drag-racing series event.
Well, perhaps his car was hotter.
Sharpe outdueled Bill Jamieson of Victoria for the Pro-class victory, then waited in queue through a round of Sportsman heats while his Chevy cooled enough to run the Super-Pro final against Nanaimo’s Glenn Kennedy.
“Man, it’s so hot,” Sharpe said while monitoring the temperature of his engine and transmission back in the pits. “You can run double heats if they’re spread out, but when you get down to the finals it’s like you’re running hot laps.
“But I have no complaints.”
Sharpe fell short in his bid for double titles in the third round of the six-race Rumble series, but it had nothing to do with overheating. His slow jump off the green light provided Kennedy the gap he needed to slip through for the win, his second in two seasons of competing on the eighth-mile strip at the local airport.
“Chris gave me that race,” said Kennedy, driving a Plymouth Barracuda that won in its debut here a year ago. “He was right on his dial-in (time); it was all on the tree.
“I had some luck, but that’s the way it is in this sport. It’s a matter of who makes the fewest mistakes.”
The third series event was actually rained out Saturday after the first three passes by Sportsman and Pro-class drivers. The North Island Timing Association attempted to squeeze both race 3 and race 4 into Sunday afternoon, but ran out of time midway through the final session. Race 4 will be made up when drivers return for the fifth and sixth Rumble on the Runway sessions Aug. 23-24.
Sunday’s event provided a solid showing for hometown drivers. In addition to Sharpe’s appearance in both the Pro and Super-Pro finals, Port McNeill driver Jordan Mackay advanced to the Sportsman final before settling for second place behind Port Alberni veteran Ron Clark.