29th Annual Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race

For 29 years, the Pure Stock Muscle Car Drag Race (PSMCDR) has been continuing the tradition started by the Supercar Showdown and Musclecar Nationals in the 1980s: classic drag racing with stock (or nearly stock) muscle cars. Held every September at Mid-Michigan Raceway in Stanton, the PSMCDR has been attracting the curious and the hard-core.

At this point, it’s a reunion of sorts because so many people are “converts” who feel the pull, attend, and then show up for every subsequent race. The best part is that every racer emerges from the weekend with something learned about himself/herself. No, the PSMCDR is not a meditation/mindfulness retreat — it’s an event where you learn how to improve your times because not only are you competing with a guy or gal in another car, but also because you’re competing with yourself.

Not everyone can own a Hemi, so the match-ups are paired by ETs. From there, the winner is the best of three. While the initial impression may seem somewhat boring because you have two cars pulling similar ETs, the truth is that each driver is working on the art of tuning so that it’s more than just reaction time that determines the winner.

This year, 109 racers (some from as far away as Connecticut, Georgia, and Ontario) brought their muscle cars to see what they were capable of doing. A few dropped out along the way as gremlins reared their ugly heads, but that’s still a substantial amount of eye and ear candy.

Yours truly is the long-time announcer of the PSMCDR so it’s a bit difficult to obtain proper footage of the pairings themselves, but here’s a hint of what the participants were doing.