Reigning PDRA Switzer Dynamics Pro Nitrous world champion Marcus Butner hasn’t had the 2026 season he’d envisioned entering the Thunder Valley Throwdown, sitting fifth in points. He made a massive push to defend his title Saturday night in Bristol, however, pacing the field nearly the entire weekend en route to his first event win of the year.
Butner used a .025 to .061 holeshot in the final round to take the win over points leader and reigning event champion Tommy Franklin. Butner went 3.688 at 204.32 mph in his Pat Musi-powered, Jay Cox-tuned “Heartbreaker” ’69 Camaro, which was just enough to hold off Franklin’s 3.655 at 205.98 in his Musi-powered “Jungle Rat 3.0” ’69 Camaro.
“In the semifinals, we got up on the wheelie bars really hard. It ended up in high gear and it wasn’t supposed to be, and it just struck the motor down, hurt it a little bit,” said Butner. “We ended up swinging the motor back in it that we had in it all weekend. That was a challenge, you know, ‘cause we were in a time crunch in the semifinals, didn’t even get to clean our tools up. Here we are, ‘Where is everything?’ We just did everything we could.
Butner qualified No. 1 with a 3.659 e.t., earning him a bye run in the first round where he ran 3.696 at 204.76 mph. In the quarterfinals, he ran 3.695 at 204.91 to defeat Amber Denton in the “OG Jungle rat,” as Denton went -.060 red. Butner’s backfire slowed him down to 3.833 in the semifinals, but it was still enough to stay ahead of Paap, who suffered his own issues in a 4.702-second pass, setting up the titanic matchup in the finals against Franklin.
Franklin, meanwhile, qualified No. 2 with a 3.665, less than a hundredth of a second behind Butner. He defeated Jimmy Cowan in the opening round, earning himself a bye in the quarterfinals. Franklin then outran Chesapeake, Virginia’s Dane Wood and his Ryan McCain-tuned, ’12 Mustang in the semifinals, running 3.646 to Wood’s 3.708 to earn lane choice in the final-round pairing with Butner.
The next race on the Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series tour will be Drag Wars presented by Big Stuff Total Power Management on August 27-29. It will be the PDRA’s second stop of the season at Galot Motorsports Park in Benson, North Carolina.
The Fuel injection, Ignition and Nitrous systems are all controlled by the EFI Technology R8 ECU.
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