Leading up to the NMRA All-Star Nationals this weekend, repair and preparation have to be wrapped up by this point. There’s no more time to test, and either you’re car is ready to go, or you aren’t going to make it. In these last days, there are at least a couple guys that can’t wait for the race to start, albeit for different reasons.

Joe Cram’s buddy Factory Stock racer Gary Parker, here helping Cram into the beams, hopes to go rounds as well at the All-Star Nationals this weekend.

Coming off the Spring Break Shootout, where he hurt his Holbrook Racing Engines combination, Coyote Modified racer Joe Cram shipped the engine up to Holbrook, and then drove up to Livonia, Michigan to pick it up, 1,350 miles away. The result of stratospheric inlet temperatures, Cram torched a few pistons and hurt the heads at the Spring Break Shootout opener last month. “Chris (Holbrook) had to get new heads ported, flowed and assembled in 48 hours,” Cram says. The short block was ready to go, but when the heads were supposed to go back on, that’s when it was discovered the heads were glorified paperweights, as well. “The engine just fired up an hour ago,” Cram says. Cram’s first test hit will be at Atlanta.

One racer’s first test hit that won’t take place at Atlanta is Shiftin’ Shane Stymiest. The Coyote Stock racer has been testing almost every weekend since the Spring Break Shootout. He doesn’t want a repeat of what happened at Bradenton, and he wants to shut up HiPo Joe Charles, which won’t happen, but we appreciate the effort Shane.

HiPo Joe likes to stir things up. Sometimes that works to a person’s advantage, and sometimes it makes your competitors work even harder to beat you. The latter applies to Stymiest. Charles likes to get Stymiest “riled up,” and that has made him test non-stop. Stymiest tested 2 weekends in a row at Mason Dixon, and Stymiest says multiple 10.20s were the result, much to the disbelief of Charles.

Shiftin’ Shane Stymiest hopes to row the gears to consistent 10.20s this weekend in Coyote Stock.

Stymiest would only tell us he swapped a few lighter weight parts on the car, and it responded accordingly. Charles and the rest of the Coyote Stock class is about to find out if in-testing improvements translate over to in-competition.

For Cram, he’s just looking to have a damage-free weekend, and go some rounds. For Stymiest, he’s looking to put to bed (See what I did there, Joe Charles?) a few things in Coyote Stock. For one, that he’s back to defend his championship once again. Second, to prove once and for all, his car can run 10.20s in competition, not just in testing.