Canada’s premier Nitro Nostalgia Funny Car team earns a nice early season score down in Arizona.

The extremely formidable Hodgson/Papirnick Pacemaker Racing team, who were the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series champions for 2017, won the season opening race for the Good Vibrations UNFC Championship Series, held during Tuscon Dragway’s Reunion event on April 13th. 

With driver Ryan Hodgson at the wheel and with wily Bob Papirnick (from Vancouver) tuning, the Edmonton-based camp were dominating while winning that.  

After they qualified #1 with a 5.776 @ 251.00 mph (low ET and high MPH  of the event), they advanced to the championship round to face off in a marquee pairing — versus no other then 2018 defending NHRA Heritage Series World Champion Bobby Cottrell.

Ryan Hodgson

In that race Ryan carded a winning 5.844 secs at 242.54 mph to defeat Cottrell’s slowing 6.380 secs @ 172.87 mph in the Austin & O’Brien Bardahl-sponsored Camaro.

“The day was cold the tires hot, my mind was full, we raced a lot,” said Ryan rather poetically.  “The motor ran strong — and in the end — our win light was on.”

“Seriously — the track was very hard to get down,” he added.  “In the final our car broke loose three times around a thousand feet. I really wanted to beat Bobby and I was able to edge by him when his car broke loose.”

“Driving these cars is very difficult especially when they loose traction that far down.  But our team was able to keep positive energy throughout all the trials and tribulations that were thrown at us.  We ran down the track 5 times in one day — which is no easy feat.  My team works hard and always gets the job done and for me nothing is more satisfying then seeing their excitement — they deserve it.”

Posted by Bruce Biegler

Photos by Resul Kurbedin (www.resulkurtbedin.com) & Bruce Biegler