British Columbia’s Tim Nemeth, who has emerged as arguably Canada’s premier Nitro Nostalgia Funny Car racer, once again proved a point by winning at the IHRA Mopar Rocky Mountain Nationals.

The Chilliwack-based racer took the event’s Funny Car title for the second year in a row; beating hometown favourite and previous 3X event winner, Tim Boychuk in the final.

After first trading the top spot in Nitro Funny Car qualifying with Boychuk throughout the weekend, Tim Nemeth capped off a wild weekend with a thrilling come from behind win.

For the championship, Boychuk had a significant starting line advantage before something mechanical slowed his progress to a 6.190 secs at 205.19 mph which was in the end no match for Nemeth’s triumphant 5.929 secs at 238.05 mph. Nemeth had beaten Alberta’s Jordon Pawlick and Californian Devery Howard while advancing to the final.

“We were really excited about this event. We got here early, got setup and really focused on the possibility of back-to-back wins at one of our favorite tracks,” Nemeth said. “We started the weekend off rough. We had a good first round of qualifying, but after that we started to struggle and we thought this might not be a back-to-back weekend after all. But last night, I got everyone together, we had a nice dinner and I told them to suck it up, put the bad behind us and go to work. We got up this morning and everything just came together.”

Tim Boychuk set low ET of the race at 5.867 secs during qualifying

The IHRA Funny Car class at Edmonton was classified as a non-points affair and that did have an effect as only 5 cars were entered for the eliminator this year — which was for sure disappointing for the fans. Hopefully that blatant shortfall can and will be addressed by IHRA for the 2015 Edmonton event.

Alberta’s Jordon Pawlick entered his new Mustang at Edmonton

Posted by: Bruce Biegler – Photos by: Bruce Biegler & Don Meleshko