GIANT KILLER!

Stratford’s Spencer Hyde stuns drag racing world with $100,000 US World Series of Pro Mod event win in Florida

By Andrew Stirk and Greg MacPherson

On Sunday, March 4, Stratford, Ontario’s Spencer Hyde rocked the drag racing world when he and his ‘never say die’ team of crew members and supporters took the $100,000 US first-place prize for winning the World Series of Pro Mod (WSOPM) event at Bradenton Motorsport Park, on Florida’s west coast.

Invited to the event just weeks prior to it taking place, Hyde’s ’69 Camaro dubbed ‘Jack and the Green Stock’ barely qualified for eliminations, squeaking into the 32nd spot of the 32-car field. In all, 61 Pro Mods attempted to qualify.

Powered by great driving and relentless perseverance by his thrashing team, Hyde knocked off higher-qualified rivals throughout the first four rounds, before coming up against PDRA Pro Boost powerhouse Kurt Steding, in the Final.

In that race, Steding got the better start – by 4/1000ths of a second – but Spencer powered past him, at the end, with a 3.643 at 205.51 mph run, to Steding’s 3.652 at 207.15 mph. The .005-second victory was worth a cool $100Gs US and some serious bragging rights in the popular and fiercely competitive Pro Mod ranks.

Just days after the incredible win, BracketLife Broadcast co-host Andrew Stirk interviewed Hyde, on the Racing Zone stage at the Toronto Motorama show. The two of them discussed Hyde’s incredible WSOPM win and the chain of events that led to it.

Asked about his invitation to participate, coming from Drag Illustrated Wes Buck – the promoter of the event – Hyde said, “I was fortunate enough to be included in the ‘30 Under 30’ feature in Drag Illustrated, so I got to meet a bunch of those guys during that deal, in 2021. I had their contact information, and when they announced this race, I reached out to them and said, ‘hey guys, I know I’m not a very big name but if there’s an opening, I’d love to be there.’”

Following that overture, Hyde sent a few more texts and actually went back to PRI to stay front of mind with Buck, in hopes of securing an invite. He made some other influential acquaintances at the PDRA banquet, but Christmas came and went without Hyde getting an invite.

But in mid-February, Hyde received a coveted invitation from Buck. Immediately, the Canadian team started thrashing to get ready.

“I told them (WSOPM) I was ready, but I wasn’t even close. I started calling Noonan (Noonan Race Engineering, in North Carolina) and all my parts people, and had everything shipped to Justin Bond’s place, in Georgia. I drove my rig down there on the Saturday, two weeks before the race. Mark Savage was working there, and we rolled the car out of the trailer and into the shop. Pulled the engine out. Put a rack in it. Put all new cylinder heads together. We basically made the whole race car and got it back on the trailer.

Top Fuel Licence

From there, it was down to Gainesville (FL) where Hyde ran a Paton Top Fuel car to get his Top Fuel licence, which was signed by Clay Millican. After that, Spencer’s attention turned back to the WSOPM event. At Bradenton, Hyde knew right away that the field would be very stout.

“In final qualifying, there was 55 cars all within a tenth of a second, so everybody had their stuff together and anybody could have won this deal. When we got there on the Monday, the weather was nothing like we expected, which made all my data basically useless.

“Thankfully, Mark (Savage) races full-time and he’s very good at it. He said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll get this figured out. It’s just going to take some work.’ He made the decision to make a lap with how it was setup, and see how it worked.

“We went out, let go of the button… slow. Changed the stator (in the torque converter)… changed the stator… changed the stator. We put five different stators in, in nine test runs. We finally went back to one that we kind of ran somewhere in the middle that we thought would be a good starting point.”

But changing weather conditions continued to play havoc with the Hyde crew’s efforts to get the car dialed in.

“Friday was windy, and we didn’t get to run until after it cooled down, at 6 o’clock at night. And we’d setup the car to run in the heat. But we made a decent lap on Friday night – 3.69 seconds – and though we were in the field, that we were safe. We were all relieved.

“But then, everybody else started to click off mid- to low60s, and it quickly became clear that it we weren’t safe at all. This isn’t good. We ended up 21st by the end of Friday night, with a 68 (3:68). On Saturday, it was back in the heat again, at 3 o’clock, thinking we needed to be good in these conditions. We changed engines after Q2 when the throttle hung open on me, Friday night, and it was ‘on the chip’ for like two seconds. And we’d had 11 runs on it.”

But unfortunately, there were even more issues with the new engine, in Q3, and the call was made to change back to the original.

“We started putting the other one back in 45 minutes before our last qualifying run. The spare didn’t even have the camshaft in it, and that was giving Wes (Goddard) fits. They were running the first pair of Pro Mods and we didn’t even have an engine in the car.

Thankfully, we were in the 23rd pair and Justin Bond was over, helping us put it together. We were all stressed out. Anyway, we got it done.

“We got it on the ground and quick fired it up. We didn’t even lash the valves… nothing. We got up there to run and realized we were on the bump spot. I didn’t think the bump would get anywhere close to 68 (3:68), but it did. By the time we ran, we were 35th. And as you’ve seen, we bumped in by ‘one thou’ (1/1000th of a second).”

The troubles with the car were playing havoc with the team’s mindset.

“In that last qualifying run, we didn’t really have the confidence we usually have. We’ve gone much faster, consistently, before. But the car was fighting us all weekend. Under those circumstances, I’m not going to lie to you, my brake leg was shaking like crazy. But we got in by a thou, bumping Brandon Snider, who’s like World #2 in NHRA, certainly not a slouch. And there were so many cars that weren’t in, like Melania Salemi, who could have easily won that race. We were ecstatic that we got in.”

But there was no time to celebrate.

“At that point, we found a broken frame rail. When I first looked at it, I thought there was no way we were fixing that. It was bad. Anyway, Wes started looking at it thought we could fix it.

“Right after that Khalid alBalooshi comes over, and offered me his car, saying he had lots of them. I told him I’ve never driven his car. I thanked him but said I’d really like to drive my car. But they opened up their trailer and offered us anything we needed.

“And you know, that’s a pretty cool story, in itself. Just racers helping other racers. We don’t really know these guys that well – there is a connection through Mark Savage – but they treated us like family and thrashed with us and they had chromoly and we used a bunch of pipe and some welding rod and stuff. Wes Goddard and Greg Patterson, my other crew guy, they stayed up ‘til 2:30 in the morning and got the thing back together.”

Dodged A Bullet In Round 1

In the first round, Hyde went up against two-time PDRA Pro Nitrous World Champion Tommy Gray and his powerful Undertaker Camaro. Fortunately for the Canadian, Gray lit the red light and was done, in spite of making an otherwise fantastic pass.

In Round Two, Hyde scored a holeshot win over fellow Canadian

Eric Latino, besting him with a .035 reaction time (RT) and a run of 3.719 at 205.10 versus Latino’s 3.699.

Spencer repeated the feat, in Round Three, taking out Marcus Birt, going 3.675 at 205.07 to ‘The Axeman’s’ 3.667 at 205.79.

In the middle of all this, the team figured out that the torque converter was likely the cause of many of the issues they were having, and they swapped it out. Once removed, they confirmed there was a broken part in the stator. With that fixed, the car ran 3:71, which was exactly Mark Savage’s goal, which inspired confidence that they were on the right track as the event progressed.

“I’d been nervous about Marus Birt, but he ‘missed it’ and I had a good start,” continued Hyde. “At that point, I started to have a good feeling. I had my hot rod back running like it was supposed to be running, and my lights were coming around. In Round 4, Hyde posted his third holeshot edge in a row, taking out No. 3 qualifier Jason Harris (3.655 at 205.07 to 3.646 at 205.47).

“In the Final, every time you race a Tutterow car, you know it’s going to be fast, especially at night,” recalled Hyde. “I told Mark, ‘We’re going to have to do something special here. I don’t think 65 (3:65) is going to cut it. We have to go into uncharted territory.’

“We talked about trying to go 63 or 64, and settled on 64. And he did it again… he called it. He said, ‘it’s going to go 3:64-something.’ And it did. I was telling him, ‘if you can just get me within striking distance, we’re going to be all right.’ And we were. Until the Final… and he saved my ass.”

Asked what the WSOPM win meant to him, Hyde replied, “Racing is a hobby for me. The last week, it’s felt a bit more like a job. My phone has gone crazy, not just with fans and friends and sponsors, but from parts manufacturers, all of a sudden wanting to if we were running their stuff.

It’s all changing so fast, and it hasn’t really sunk in yet, but I guess I’m going to have to look at it a little bit more seriously than we did before. It’s definitely changed the game. It’s been a whirlwind, but it’s been awesome.”

Talking about his volunteer crew, Hyde says he was grateful and lucky enough to have surrounded himself with good people who all work hard and love racing as much as he does. IT