The Reaper SS Camaro vs The Godfather at Bristol’s 100k No Prep Race

Monday night, the stars of the hit Discovery Channel street racing show Street Outlaws put a whole new spin on the show when they loaded up and headed east to historic Thunder Valley Raceway in Bristol Tennessee for a huge no prep race. Joining the stars of the original show in competing for the $100,000 total purse were several stars of Street Outlaws New Orleans along with some of the biggest names in the world of no prep track racing.

In the short clip below from National No Prep Racing Association’s YouTube channel, we see two pretty similar cars lined up to do battle. In the near lane, James Goad’s Reaper Camaro lays down a nice long burnout to lay down some fresh rubber on the unprepped Bristol tracks surface. In the other lane, Barry Nicholson follow suit in his Camaro known as The Godfather. Both of these first gen Camaros are powered by big-inch nitrous engines and should be a great, close heads-up race if they both make the trip from start to finish.

They back slowly into the tracks of sticky rubber they just laid down, then pull toward the staging beams. They carefully stage up and drop the hammer, leaving hard when the green lights come on. The Godfather pulled out to a car length or so lead and continued to pull away from Reaper as the cars travelled down the tricky track. It looked as though Reaper might have grabbed an extra kit of nitrous in a last-ditch attempt to reel Barry in on the top end, resulting in a bright flash of flame as the engine backfired through the intake, but it was likely too little too late at that point anyway.

Backfires like this, while often spectacular to watch, usually don’t result in engine damage, though they certainly can if the stars align. Hopefully Reaper’s engine wasn’t damaged though. Barry would move on to the next round while James would have to leave Bristol empty handed.