No Mercy 9 – Radial Vs The World Semi Final Round – Laughlin Vs Hancock & Naiser Vs Guist

The semifinal round in Radial vs the World at this weekend’s No Mercy 9 featured two very similar matchups as the blown hotrods of Paolo Guist (pronounced “Joost” and our very own Alex Laughlin lined up against the nitrous-assisted F-Bodies of Jeff Naiser and Jamie Hancock.

Laughlin and Hancock lined up first and threw down one hell of a great side-by-side race that saw the cars put up nearly identical numbers at every interval. When the tree flashed green, Alex and Jamie left within .005 of a second of one another with Laughlin getting the slight advantage off the line with a .031 light to Hancock’s .036. at the finish line, Laughlin’s blue Speed Society-sponsored Vette crossed the finish line 3.802 seconds later, just ahead of Hancock’s Firebird that tripped the timers with a 3.812 second elapsed time. Doing the math on that, Alex got to the stripe first by just .015 of a second, or about a bumper or so.

The race between Guist and Naiser wasn’t quite so dramatic, although both drivers did have solid reaction times. Naiser, who’s known for being a headhunter on the tree, slapped a .010 light on Guist, who wasn’t too far behind with a .021 light of his own, but that’s as close as the two cars would be. As soon as Guist’s car left the line, it blew the rear tires off, giving him the best view of Nasier’s solid 3.854 elapsed time.

Naiser would go on to face Laughlin in the finals, where they went toe to toe and brought the event to and end in fitting fashion. Check out the full breakdown of that race here. We’ll be back at SGMP for Lights Out 10 in February, where the same cars, plus quite a few more, will reconvene to do this all again at the biggest small tire race on the planet. Look for even more action in just a few months! Thanks go out to Ellen Eschenbacher for getting us up close and personal with her live feed from right on the starting line.