Monday, March 30, 2009:

Jim Blair brings home the win. The NMCA season opener (3/28 - 3/29) at Bradenton Motorsports Park was a great return for Jim Blair's Automatic Transmission Factory backed "Silver Bullet" Mustang. Blair owns and drives the 2,500+ horsepower Super Street 10.5 Mustang down the quarter mile in the 6 second zone in excess of 200 MPH. The ATF team has worked hard to overcome the parts breakage issues that had been plaguing them for the past few races. This time out we were battling a 20-30 MPH head wind. Jim Blair qualified third in a field of 14 competitors on Saturday with a 6.98 @ 198 MPH.

With ATF's new design stator tube and a new Neal Chance billet aluminum converter, the ATF team came prepared to battle the big dogs in the NMCA Super Street Outlaw 10.5 division. Through racing and further track testing the upgrades to Jim's Mustang will be sorted out and the Silver Bullet will continue to get faster. The new billet converter is a great benefit to the program but it will prove even better once it's dialed in. We found that Jim's Mustang is over powering the new converter and "driving through it". At the race we switched back to the PTC converter and broke the pump. The ATF crew put the billet aluminum Neal Chance converter back in for the remainder of the race. A few adjustments and some fine tuning and the new converter will be just right.

In Sunday's final, Jim Blair lined up against Spiro Pappas. Blair cut the tree down and left hard against Pappas. Pappas lost traction, broke loose and lifted the throttle then he got back in it and lost control of his twin turbo charged 1969 Camaro. Pappas crossed the center line, crashed into the wall and exploded into a massive fireball. We are all relieved and glad to know that Spiro Pappas was not hurt in the crash and walked away from it. Be sure to view the jaw dropping video (scroll down) of the final round where Blair took the win while Pappas unfortunately crashed and burned.