6th Annual Vw Nationals 2020 Presented by GELAIR
Unfortunately mother nature put an official early ending to the VW Nationals. To every person that attended, towed their car, entered the car show, set up a swap area or walked through the gate, THANK YOU! You don't need to be told how difficult 2020 is but we still managed 82 VW racers, 45 show cars and 10 vendor spots. That is unbelievable under pandemic status and the ever-changing forecast.
Friday night went pretty smooth we had Corbitt Marshburn win $1500 in the High Roller class, Mystery Massachusetts win in the 55+ class and Stephen Hawes taking the Quick 4 race win and low E.T with a 5.36 blast.
Saturday we all woke up to a surprise, rain. Where did that come from. That wasn't the plan, but this is the year of groin kicks. We would race for 20 minutes, drizzle, dry the track, race for 20 minutes, drizzle...and so on until 6pm when a real storm came. The only finals that finished were Anthony Frassetto winning all motor and Scott Sain winning ASA. All of the other classes split between the remaining racers.
Big congratulations to Corbitt Marshburn for robbing the North of all the money as his win Friday night was paired with another final round appearance Saturday that unfortunately didn't happen.
Another pat on the back to Stephen Hawes who's become my traveling buddy for these races and is starting to make consistent laps in his car. It’s starting to come together. We also cannot forget Ryan McBride for making the LONG haul from Colorado and nabbing a semifinal appearance in A/Gas. Some dedication there.
The car show guys, especially the bus gang showed up in force it seemed like. Some very, very nice cars were parked in the grass which made award choices a very hard one. Thank you to all of them coming out and hopefully you guys enjoyed the drive down the staging lanes into victory lane for photo ops.
Personal thank you to Art Neary, Cecil Affleck, wife and young monkey for helping organize the parking. My mom, brother and dad for holding down the t shirt tent and upper half of the pits. Track staff for making the starting line good enough to eat a few transmissions and all of the sponsors. As long as I have financial support for pay outs and people show up...we are rolling forward.
Special thanks to my wife for putting up with all of this. How many times she has yelled "put your phone down " because I'm reaching out to racers or participants, answering questions or trying to promote this event. Thank you.
One reason this event and Heritage Series exist is for reasons like this…. I get home and someone I don't know messages me. Says he was at the race and it set off a fire inside him. He rolled his racecar which hasn't been out in a long time...out of the trailer and is getting back into it. If we don't bring people BACK or new people IN....this small hobby that anyone reading this enjoys, is going to go away. Something we don't want.
There are already plans to make 2021 better and improve. Let's enjoy whatever events are left for 2020 and keep going
Scott Pocaro
5th Annual Vw Nationals 2019 Presented by GELAIR
Vw Nationals #5 was by far the largest and best turnout to date. With a total of 103 Tech Cards sold and both sides of the track packed this is the MUST ATTEND event of the year. Promoter Scott Pocaro puts his heart and soul into this once a year event nestled just outside Hagerstown Maryland at one of the coolest tracks in the country titled Mason Dixon Dragway. With a beautiful weather forecast for the weekend festivities kicked off on Friday night with 2 very special classes.
The first was the 55 and older class for the old timers in our community to come back out and show case how it all started. Some of the east coasts biggest names in drag racing made the call on Friday night. Racers such as Pete Peek, Virgil Prehn, Buddy Chicklo and Gene Cook Sr were part of the 55 and older class. In the end it was Virginia’s own Virgil Prehn taking the win over a red lighting Gene Cook Sr.
Another special class on Friday night was the High Rollers Class. It featured a $100 buy in, and with additional sponsor money chipping in the pot was almost $3,000. Racers from as far south as the Carolina’s and as far north as Massachusetts made the drive for this special event. In the finals it was New Jerseys own Scott Pocaro facing off against North Carolinas Trey Sikes. It was over as soon as it started as Scott Pocaro turned on the red light.
On Saturday the main event featured 7 drag racing classes. The Jaycee Enterprises Heritage Series brought it’s 2 classes featuring the fastest Outlaw Pro Mods on the east coast and the best bracket racers from the North and South. Also, a special Thanks to Kathy Jacobs from the SEVWA for jumping on board and making this an SEVWA points race as well. Here is a quick breakdown of what we had in attendance.