2016 NMRA World Finals Highlights: All-New Outlaw True Street Class

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Night-time racing always adds a dramatic element to the event; and we think that having a whole year next year to promote this style of racing again. – Mike Galimi, Race Pages

One of the main highlights from this year’s NMRA World Finals event was the introduction of the Outlaw True Street class (OTS); a Grudge Racing event series which spawned from the ‘No Prep’ crowd. The Outlaw True Street class is an idiosyncrasy of late-night, high-intensity Grudge racing which is nearly identical to its No Prep roots. The purpose of the class is to appeal of Grudge racing enthusiasts, but to also prove some of the fastest street cars have the endurance to handle the challenge.

As an inaugural event for this year’s NMRA season, the OTS class presented by Ididit Inc. has the least amount of rules out of all the classes this event had to offer. Some of the fastest street cars that attended this year’s World Finals event (around ten cars total, with eight cars competing) entered the OTS class. Keeping up with the no-time shootout format was the aim of the game – with plenty of cash and bragging rights for the winner at the end of Saturday night.

We had the chance to speak with Mike Galimi, editor of Race Pages for the NMRA and get the download on just what exactly the OTS class is.

One car that stood out at the NMRA World Finals that was competing in the OTS, was Troy Messamore's gold painted four eye'd Fox body.

One car that stood out at the NMRA World Finals that was competing in the OTS was Troy Messamore’s gold painted ’91 Fox body.

The list of rules in the NMRA Outlaw True Street class is about as long as an ingredients list in a Vegan’s supper. In a nutshell, the rules are fairly simple. It’s an eighth-mile race with no-time on a .400 pro tree, with a 25 to 30-mile cruise beforehand. Drivers are randomly paired up, and each car must be registered, insured, and have a license plate. Any car that enters must be a Ford-bodied vehicle with working headlights and taillights, albeit any power plant is available to use.

You don’t need an NMRA membership to compete in the class, and the amount of power adders is unlimited (as well as the use of a side-exit exhaust). In the form of the traditional Grudge racing theme, the only decree is that you must use a 28-inch tall tire (or a 275 radial/bias ply equivalent, see full list of rules here).

Taking full advantage of the OTS class rules, Mockstangboyz showed up this year in their LS-powered Fox body to compete against the true Mustangs.

Taking full advantage of the OTS class rules, Mockstangboyz showed up this year in their LS-powered Fox body to compete against the Ford-powered Mustangs. One can only imagine the strange looks on people’s faces that these southern Indiana boys received.

“The Outlaw True Street class started from the Outlaw No Prep races,” Mike Galimi, editor of Race Pages said. “It’s derived from our true street class, and includes a 30-mile cruise. Just like any other no-time race, it’s an eighth-mile format grudge racing style event.

“The idea was brought to us around several months ago, and it kind of laid dormant for awhile, until we started to approach the World Finals event. Since the event is so unique, we decided to add it this year to the Grudge Night event. It’s a neat class, and we added some additional structure to the class, and it’s just grown from there.”

Galimi explained that just like the Grudge Night event, the NMRA is really trying to get to the market in different ways than before. “Our goal with the NMRA is always to get as many enthusiasts racing as possible, and to give them unlimited opportunities,” Galimi entailed. “This was a pretty wide-open concept. The rules are pretty minimal, and Grudge racing is extremely popular. We had about eight-to-nine days to put the entire event together, once we finally received a sponsor for it. We thought this was a pretty great start.”

Messamore purchased his Fox body from Chris Gish a little more than a year ago, which had originally started life as a '91 convertible. Gish owns a body shop, and after blowing the windows out, and the top always flying off down the strip, he converted the car into a hardtop version with an '86 four eye front-end. The car is powered by a 347 cubic-inch SBF paired with a set of twin hairdryers. It also utilizes two different types of fuel – 93 grade octane on the street, and methanol on the strip – thanks to a Quillen Motorsports Engineering dual-fuel setup.

“There are tons of True Street enthusiasts with some very powerful cars that are always looking for something different, other than the usual back-to-back passes on the tree,” he continued. “We had eight cars compete – but two cars had broke before – so we essentially had ten from the get-go. We were happy with the double-digit outcome, especially with such a short promotion time.

“One of the points of this class is to capture a new audience for the NMRA racing series, and bring in new racers and expose them to drag racing. It went so well, that we’re actually planning on doing this class again next year, and possibly adding a second race somewhere in the season, or at the World Finals.”

As we mentioned earlier in our Same Day Coverage article, Tim Oswald was the winner of the first annual Outlaw True Street event.

As we mentioned earlier in our Same Day Coverage article, Tim Oswald was the winner of the first annual Outlaw True Street event.

“We love this type of racing, and those two cars in the finals [referring to Oswald and Torres] would have been an excellent race had it fallen clean,” Galimi said. “It’s very exciting – night-time racing always adds a dramatic element to the event; and we think that having a whole year to promote this style of racing again for the World Finals will triple that number of cars that showed up easily.

“We think it can grow two-to-three times larger with the right promotion. It’s such a wide-open fit for cars, and the 30-mile cruise adds an element of real, true street cars.”

OTS runner-up Raul Torres and his beautiful white Terminator, dubbed 'China WhiTTe', fought for for traction just past the 60 foot mark, costing him the win on Saturday night. As Galimi put it, we would love to see another match between these two heavy weights in the future. We have a feeling it would be a close Grudge race for sure.

OTS runner-up Raul Torres and his beautiful white Terminator, dubbed ‘China WhiTTe’, fought for traction just past the 60 foot mark, costing him the win on Saturday night. As Galimi put it, we would love to see another match between these two heavy weights in the future. We have a feeling it would be a close Grudge race for sure.

About the author

Harrison Noble

Living in San Diego for most of his life, Harrison was exposed to a variety of cars at an early age. His passion for anything that is fast, or has a V8, brought him to Power Automedia.
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