TOP PRIZE TO SPENCER AT 23rd ATI PERFORMANCE ‘BIG JOHN’ Smith, Ward, Caulder Claim Trophies in NHRA.TV ‘Run for the Wally’ Challenge ROCKINGHAM, N.C. – Raeford’s Michael Spencer used a .024 package to force four-time former Rockingham Dragway track champion and IHRA national event winner Chip Johnson into a final round breakout foul and earn the biggest share of the purse in the 23rd annual ATI Performance Products Memorial Bracket Championships honoring the late “Big John” Leviner. Spencer and Johnson waded through a field of 166 Top ET drivers that included Churchville, N.Y.’s Dan Fletcher, one of NHRA drag racing’s biggest all-time winners, to battle for Sunday’s $7,500 top prize which went to Spencer on the strength of a 4.244 second run against a 4.240 target coupled to a reaction time of .020. Johnson, whose reaction times were .008, .020 and .023 leading up to the final, had an uncharacteristic .076 against Spencer and, in trying to make up the deficit, pushed his 1982 Chevy Camaro under its 6.100 target by .011 of a second. It was Spencer’s second win in three years in the Memorial Weekend classic. Even though he got the weekend’s biggest paycheck, Spencer again was denied one of the iconic NHRA trophies awarded to the winner of each day’s NHRA.TV “Run for the Wally” Challenge, losing out to Sunday Footbrake winner Matt Ward of Anderson, S.C., whose .016 reaction time was just too much to overcome. Other champions included 2019 Jr. Dragster track champion Connor Caulder of St. Pauls, who used a .002 reaction time and a .008 package to best an equally impressive Eric Thomas (.011 and .019) in Monday’s Top ET final, and Ashley Smith of Winterville, who upset Fletcher in the semifinals en route to a Top ET title on Saturday. Although he didn’t hoist a trophy, Fletcher made an impressive debut in the “Big John,” following up his Saturday trip to the semifinals by reaching the round of seven on Monday before bowing to the 19-year-old Caulder by .006 of a second in a double breakout classic. His son Tim also got to the seventh round before falling to multiple-time Carolina Coalition champion Tommy Plott of Winston-Salem. Fletcher is one of only a handful of drivers along with John Force, Frank Manzo and David Rampy to have won more than 100 events in the NHRA national series in a variety of classes including Competition Eliminator, Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp and Super Street, Aaron “Hot Rod” Brock of Pageland, S.C., won Monday’s Footbrake title, joining Ward and Clinton’s Eric Aman on the podium. It was Aman’s fifth win in the “Big John,” his fourth in Footbrake. He won Top Eliminator a year ago. Jacksonville’s Jayden Lawler, Fayetteville’s Nolan Callahan and Kamryn Majors of Evans, Ga., were the daily winners in Jr. Dragster. Majors won the one available “Wally” in a Monday tournament in which Lawler was guilty of a final round foul start by a razor thin .004 of a second.