NMCA Street Race Class

Before this season started, there was plenty of talk about how quick the Car Craft Street Race cars would run at Bradenton, Florida, at the first race of the NMCA season. This class was originally considered an entry-level effort (back when it was called Cheap Street), with 10s sufficient to be competitive. By midseason last year, mid-9s were the reality, and there were predictions that Bradenton's sticky starting line would launch the fast cars into the low-9s. While record-setting e.t.'s didn't transpire, it wasn't from a lack of enthusiasm. A total of nine racers qualified for the Street Race field, and if you weren't watching closely, it might have been easy to miss the only Chevrolet in the field despite its Bow Tie bright orange hue. The rest of the class consisted of Fox-bodied Mustangs, and there were rumors that several NMRA heavy-hitters would populate the field, but they didn't show.

Almost as conspicuous were several of last year's luminaries, including Jay Canella and Tim Hendricks, who didn't make the call. But this didn't diminish the quality of the field for the first round, with several racers looking over their shoulders, waiting for last year's champ Mike Dezotell to arrive. Almost as if stolen from a Hollywood script, the "Dez" rolled in on Saturday afternoon and pulled off a quick charge only to be judged too light to be legal. A final effort on Saturday evening put him in the show with a 9.73 in the Fourth position. It only took until the first round for Dezotell to uncork a 9.33/147 after bolting on a new set of tires. Eliminations eventually pared the field down to Dezotell and Stephen Carroll and his nitrous'd 357ci Windsor. Carroll planted a respectable 9.666/143.93, but it was no match for the quicker and faster Dezotell with a 9.474/146.48 blast from his Procharger-urged 306ci small-block Ford.

This first race of the season has already experienced a major increase in participation, and even with Dezotell's firm grip on the class, expect to see him face an increasingly more competitive field as Car Craft Street Race hits the seven-race series, concluding with the NMCA World Street Finals in Memphis in October. By that time, these guys may be in the 8s and pushing 150 mph-all on 9-inch-wide, DOT-legal tires.

Mike DezotellThe Dez is in full stride. The 33-year-old Seekonk, Massachusetts, driver owns Mike Dez Racing, which specializes in turbo- and supercharging, parts sales, and thrashing on the shop's in-house chassis dyno. This certainly gives him an advantage over the competition, in addition to his many years of drag-racing experience, including two years in NMRA's Real Street in this same Mustang. Of course, owning the same Mustang for 14 years has its advantages because he knows the car intimately, both on and off the race track. "This car actually has more street races on it than quarter-mile track passes," Dez says with a grin. The motor is a 356ci stroker using a set of Trick Flow Twisted Wedge heads fueled and sparked by a Programmable Engine Management System (PMS) add-on controller from EFI systems that fine-tunes the larger injectors. Those bigger injectors are necessary with a complete D1 ATI ProCharger blowing through a water-to-air intercooler. With roughly 850 hp on this package, you better have a stout drivetrain to back it up. Dez employs a Frank Lupo C4 with a Dynamic converter splined to an 8.8 Ford rear axle with a ratio that he'd rather not talk about. With this first win tied to his consistent performance last year, the Dez is the man with the bull's eye on his chest.