Good Vibrations March Meet, Auto Club Famoso Raceway, Bakersfield, CA, March 6, 2016—In an emotional final round, Rick Williamson guided the “Team Craig” dragster into the Winner’s Circle at the expense of sentimental favorite Adam Sorokin. Williamson expertly laid down a sweet but ferocious 1/4-mile elapsed time of 5.57 seconds at 242 mph to defeat Sorokin’s off-and-on the throttle 6.71.
But just qualifying for the March Meet, much less winning it, was a struggle for Team Craig.
“The first round was our first full pass of the weekend and it still wasn’t right,” Williamson explained, about his team’s incremental improvements in performance that culminated into his first March Meet victory. “In the final, I legged it as far as the car would take me and it started laying down around 1000′. I am going ‘Oh crap, he is going to go around me,’ not realizing we ran a .57.”
Indeed, Williamson’s path towards conquest was an exercise in the snowball effect. After qualifying 6th with a 5.79 at a mere 203 mph, Williamson stepped up in the first round of eliminations and dispatched #3 qualifier Jim Young with a 5.61 at 244 mph to Young’s 5.74. After Young, “Team Craig” encountered 2014 and 2015 March Meet winner Tony Bartone. In that heat, Bartone got out of shape almost off the line and despite fighting his ill-handling nitro-burning beast of a dragster, couldn’t keep his Steve Boggs-tuned machine from crossing into Williamson’s lane. Rick clocked a 5.63 ET at a speed of 234 mph, with a disqualified Bartone right behind the “Team Craig” entry.
This set up Williamson’s final round showdown with Sorokin and his “Champion Speed Shop” entry, who also had a treacherous path to the March Meet’s closing heat. In the first round of eliminations, #8 Qualifier Sorokin strapped a holeshot on #1 Qualifier Rick White and Adam’s 5.63 at 242 mph held off White’s fearsome but futile 5.54 at 243. (Ironically, in defeat Rick White set Low ET of the Meet.)
In Sorokin’s semi-final heat, due to a towering wheelstand, he was oblivious to opponent Jim Murphy’s red-light foul start. Once the wheels sat down, a stunned but determined Sorokin whomped on the loud pedal five times in hopes of making the final. And for good reason…
This event had a family connection for Adam. This was the 50th Anniversary of Adam’s father, Mike Sorokin, winning the 1966 March Meet with his team, “the Surfers”—a contest that many consider the purest drag race in the history of the sport. To honor that occasion, “Surfers Nation,” an online Surfer’s Appreciation Society, created the Mike Sorokin Award for the Top Fuel winner of this year’s March Meet. Adam was one round win from claiming the trophy named after his late father.
Rick Williamson also had designs on this coveted trophy, however. At the green-light in the final round, both drivers left together but Sorokin’s dragster climbed into a wheelstand again and although he hammered the throttle another four times trying to catch traction, Williamson was gone, not to be caught.
“We just earned it,” Williamson concluded, while exhaling in exhaustion. Not even “the Surfers” would argue that point. In point of fact, as they presented their award to “Team Craig,” “Surfers Nation” acknowledged that their plaque had found a worthy beneficiary. -30-
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