Sunday at LS Fest was a hot-rodders dream day. The weather was perfect, the sun was shining, it was warm and there was Autocross, Speed Stop Challenge, Top Speed Challenge and drag racing!
The booth was busy all day with spectators and customers. Brandy turned the driving duties over to Mike so she could talk filters and take photos.
There was a lot of action to photograph. There was a drift exhibition and tons of cool drag cars. Participants in the Speed Stop Challenge and Top Speed Challenge were starting to get pretty serious too. On Saturday, a lot of people stopped short; not knowing where the stop box started and when they needed to brake. The few that had competed in this event before started going the other way, getting a little too confident! Brian Finch proved that in his second gen yellow Camaro as he came up too quick on the stop box, went sideways and continued through the box only to complete a 180 deg spin and drive the remainder of the drag strip backwards.
By Sunday it was a whole different story. Everyone had caught up to speed and competition was fierce. Although Jeff Schwartz was unable to attend the event, he sent some of his guys out with two of their cars. Mike was really pushing Schwartz’s 1965 Pontiac Tempest on the Brake Stop Challenge. Even Holley had their truck on the course competing.
A lot of the participants were running Spectre components. Bret Voelkel of RideTech and Greg Schneider used a couple of Spectre tubes, a Spectre shield and a Spectre filter to create a custom true cold air intake on their ’66 Chevelle after completing an LS swap in the car. The filter shield was added to the filter to help block the mud and debris that was getting kicked up from the tire since the filter sits right in front of the passenger front tire.
Another Spectre customer had come to our booth and wanted to see if one of us could come to his car and see what he had done with our product. He was not racing, but had come for the car show portion of LS Fest. Unfortunately, we did not get his name, hopefully we’ll see him at another show. His custom intake was pretty innovative!
Awards came at the end of the day. Mark Stielow won the Spectre Top Speed Award with a top speed of 87 MPH. Brian Finch came in second. Mark Steilow also walked away as the overall winner. Since Mark had to leave early, Yancy Johns accepted both his awards. We can’t wait to see what the competition is like next year!
Major props to Holley and FM3 Marketing for organizing and promoting the event. We were all really impressed with the magazine and television coverage. Next year will probably be bigger with ten times more participants. We are really looking forward to next year, hopefully we’ll be featuring our rebuilt LS powered 2nd gen “Carbon Camaro”.
