Ken Quartuccio, Lyle Barnett and Brett LaSala Lead the Champions List from Lights Out 16 at South Georgia Motorsports Park
After five days of racing action on the second stop of the Radial Outlaws Racing Series at South Georgia Motorsports Park, champions were crowned at the Duck X Productions’ Lights Out 17 event.
After Saturday’s action was cut short with rain, Sunday would dawn with much cooler temperatures. This made for an interesting final eliminations day, with multiple records set in route to crowning winners in fourteen different classes.
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The Radial Versus the World (RVW) class always brings some stellar performances, and incoming record holder Ken Quartuccio, who set the mark in 2025 at this event with a 3.473 pass, was ready to defending his title.
Quartuccio advanced to the semifinals, where his Proline-powered ’69 Camaro clocked the quickest run on radials in drag racing history, a 3.436 at 214.76 mph, in dismissing Lyle Barnett. Quartuccio was due to face Huston Dial in the final, but problems for Dial gave Quartuccio a single for the event win.
As he’s done before, Barnett was driving more than one ride in competition at Lights Out 17, and made the most of his chances behind the wheel of Tommy Youmans’ Mustang known as ‘Salvage’ in the Pro 275 class. Barnett secured the final round victory with 3.60 at 209 mph run, the quickest ever in the class, over Eddie Harrison’s game 3.64 at 207 mph.
X275 would boil down to an import versus domestic final round match-up, as Dave Hull staged up versus Eric Laferriere. The Mustang of Hull moved first with an eleven thousandths better reaction time, but the 2JZ-urged Nissan 240 of Laferriere would clip him at the finish line with a 4.069 at 180.43 mph to Hull’s 4.132 at 178.14 mph.
Tommy Youmans became the first driver in the Limited Drag Radial class to clock a 3.7-second pass, with a 3.79 at 202 mph in qualifying. But Youmans would get dismissed in eliminations by Jimmy Dale, who advanced to the semifinal round to face fellow drag and drive competitor Brett LaSala.
An insane semifinal matchup between LaSala’s turbocharged Mustang and the supercharged Camaro with Jimmy Dale at the wheel went to LaSala, who clocked a personal best 3.807 at 201 mph to dispatch Jimmy Dale’s game 3.83 at 191 mph! LaSala captured the win a short time later over former champ Shane Stack, marking LaSala’s second victory as he embarks on a chase for the class championship.
The largest class of the event, ‘Gangster X’, the Duck X Productions version of the popular 5.30 index class with scoreboards off and no time slips, drew over 100 rides. The top 32 competitors that ran the closest to the 5.30 index made up the ‘Wicked Gangster X’ class for a $10,000 purse, while the next 64 qualifiers slotted into the ‘Gangster X B’ field for a cool five grand to the winner.
In a field full of nitrous-fed rides, Sick Week vet Houston McClain would roll his street-legal turbocharged Mustang all the way to the semifinal round of Wicked Gangster X, where he came up short to fellow Floridian Troy Pirez Jr. Pirez would then dispatch the clean Camaro of Joe Muro in the final round to put his Fox Mustang in the winner’s circle.
On the Gangster X B side of things, it would be an all-Chevrolet semifinal round, with multi-time Sick The Mag event participant Alex Skrzypek hoping to put his 2002 S-10 street truck in the finals. But Joshua Padovano would stop him one round short, advancing to the sixth and final round opposite Maddie Ma Lone.
Ma Lone would stage up a clean ’69 Camaro, while Padovano would take the opposite lane in an ex-bracket racer Monza turned Gangster X runner. At the green Padovano would go wheels-up, while Ma Lone would end up sawing at the steering wheel after a broken transmission line put fluid under the car. She managed to save the Camaro without touching either wall, while Padovano would turn on the final win light in the Gangster X B class.
Lights Out has traditionally hosted a couple index-based classes over the years, and for this year, the index racers got a chance to race in either the Open Comp or 6.0 Index classes.
The 6.0 Index is based on a heads-up pro tree start with competitors running against a 6-second eighth-mile standard. The competition featured a wide variety of rides, but the final was an all-General Motors battle.
Michael Miller’s fourth-gen Camaro would stage opposite the clean Pontiac Trans Am of Cameron Kardules in the 6.0 Index final, and the winner would be decided before the pair hit the 60 foot timers. Miller left five thousandths of-a-second too soon and red lighted, turning on the win light in Kardules’ lane.
The Open Comp class, which operates on a handicapped start based on a competitor’s personal set index, would stage up an all-classic Chevrolet final with Frankie Radake opposite Ken Grant. Grant took control with a .003 reaction time at the start, and the Georgia racer would turn on the win light to earn his seventh Duck X Production event victory.
Written by Derek Putnam. Photos courtesy of Sick the Magazine, Motion Raceworks, RLR Photography, Lyle Barnett Racing, and Troy Pirez Jr.
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