Drag Illustrated Issue 149, October 2019 | Page 98

WORLD SERIES OF PRO MOD 2019
DOUG WINTERS
■
Pro Modified veteran
Doug Winters and his Kern-
ersville, North Carolina-based team
had two goals when they started
their 1,600-mile journey to Bandi-
mere Speedway for the World Series
of Pro Mod: take in some mile-high
scenery on their Harley-Davidsons
and win the $100,000 winner-take-
all prize.
The group accomplished the
first goal early in the week, and
three days later came within just
over a tenth of a second away from
accomplishing the second goal in
the final round.
Winters and his family-based
team, including his wife, Erin, and
his brother, Allen, made a last-min-
ute call to head to Denver for the
race, deciding just a couple weeks
before the event to load up their
supercharged Bandit Big Rig Se-
ries ’69 Chevelle along with a few
motorcycles.
“We made a dual purpose for the
trip: vacation-slash-racing trip,”
98 | D r a g
Winters says. “We loaded our Har-
leys in the back of the transporter
and decided to take Wednesday off
to see the scenery and do a day of
nothing but riding. We went to Mt.
Evans, which is over 14,000 feet of
altitude, and rode our Harleys up
to the top of the mountain. It was
39 degrees and snow on the ground
when we got there, so a dramatic
change from being down by the
racetrack.
“The actual road is pretty hairy
when you’re riding a motorcycle,”
Winters admits. “It’s only a little
two-lane road with no guardrails
and switchback turns – and it start-
ed raining on us. When I threw the
kickstand down on the top, I said,
‘Well, I’ve done some crazy things,
but that’s definitely one of ‘em
right there.’”
Winters and company then re-
turned to the track to set up and
prepare for Thursday testing, where
Winters made a series of eighth-mile
passes to get re-acclimated with the
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
conditions on Thunder Mountain.
He raced Nitro Coupes in Super
Chevy Show races at Bandimere in
the early 2000s, but that experience
offered limited help when it came
to tuning his methanol-burning
Chevelle.
“The final pass on Thursday, we
finally did a thousand-foot pass and
shut it off,” Winters says. “That was
to check the EGTs and how hot the
cylinders were and to see where we
were. At the end of Thursday, we
were pretty happy with our per-
formance up to the thousand-foot
mark and we kind of projected what
it would run to the quarter mile.”
The Bandit Big Rig Series Chev-
elle looked strong in Friday’s shake-
down passes, making three clean
runs in preparation for Saturday’s
eliminations. The clocks were off
for the shakedown runs, though
Winters knew what kind of perfor-
mance he was working with going
into race day.
“Hats off to the guys doing the
track out there because it was per-
fect,” Winters says. “It would take
whatever you laid to it. We had .950
60-foot times the whole time we
were out there and good 330s so we
could pretty much power it as much
as we could through the shake zone
and it would take it. We knew we
were a 5.90 player. We didn’t think
we could go much more than that,
but at least we thought we would be
competitive at that rate.”
Winters’ bizarre path to the
WSOPM final round started Sat-
urday afternoon when first-round
opponent Terry Haddock left the
starting line before the tree ac-
tivated. Winters was ready for a
race, though, as he posted the sec-
ond-quickest pass of the round, a
6.012 at 231.56.
“I did see him go red,” Winters
says, “but I still wanted to see what
it would run so we could get a sec-
ond baseline for the second round
because we would probably need it.”
Defending event champion Carl
Issue 149