Holley EFI-powered drivers ruled Hot Rod Drag Week 2018, taking the top three classes – Unlimited, Unlimited Iron, and Pro Street Power Adder – and racking up five wins overall, including Super Street Small Block Power Adder and Super Street Small Block Naturally Aspirated.

Driving a '69 Camaro, Tom Bailey, one of the biggest stars in Drag Week history, won Unlimited by running flawlessly at four of five tracks – Atlanta Dragway, Darlington Dragway, zMax Dragway (Charlotte), Bristol Dragway, and back at Atlanta. He averaged a 6.85 at 202.04 mph; throw out a problem-plagued 7.46 at only 145 mph at Bristol, and the numbers are even more staggering: an average of 6.71 at 214.62 mph. David Schroeder, who won the event last year with his amazing Holley EFI-equipped '66 Vette, finished a strong second and just missed being the only other driver with an average in the sixes. He averaged 7.017 with a best of 6.79 at 210.50 mph at zMax, where most teams seemed to run the best.

For Bailey, who won Drag Week 2013 in this Camaro and Drag Week 2015 in another of his amazing machines, it was the first time he put the Camaro through its paces on the full quarter-mile in four years. "It's been in the garage," he said. "It's my daily driver." Power comes from a 3500-horse Steve Morris Engines 615-cubic-inch big block with Holley Dominator EFI. "I've run other stuff, and this is the easiest system to use – that's why I went to it in 2012. It's smooth, it always works, and there's just never any glitches or anything. With the updates that came out, you can always update it and it gets more and more robust all the time."

Bailey opened with a 6.73 at 210.83 mph at Atlanta and followed with an even better 6.67 at 219.83 mph at Darlington. His best run of the week, a 6.65 at 219.61 mph, followed by the shutoff 7.46 at just 145.30 mph at Bristol. "The air shifter didn't work," he explained. "We'd just driven all night, and I didn't know it at the time what the problem was. We already had a big enough lead, so I clicked it off to make I didn't hurt anything in case there was something bigger wrong with the car." There wasn't, and he locked up another Drag Week title in Atlanta with a strong 6.76 at 214.62 mph.

Bryant Goldstone was top dog in Unlimited Iron, averaging a 7.04 at 204.59 mph – the fastest speed for any driver in any class – to in his popular '73 Javelin to win by a comfortable margin. Deadly consistency through the middle of the week carried him to the title, as he ran between 6.92 and 6.95 at 212-213 mph three days in a row at Darlington, Charlotte, and Bristol.

15 miles from the hotel on the last day, a valve spring broke and dropped a valve, but Goldstone improvised and ran amazingly quick – a 7.41 at 192 mph – on just seven cylinders. "I heard a sound and thought, 'Boy, I hope that was an EGT coming loose or something simple like that' but when we pulled the valve cover we saw what it was. We figured a 8.0 would be enough to clinch it, but it sure sounded terrible on the left side. I was afraid of doing catastrophic damage, but it held together enough to win."

Goldstone runs a Ultra Tech Racing Engines-built 572 cubic-inch big block with conventional cylinder heads and recently made the switch to a complete Holley Dominator EFI system. "It works perfectly," he said. "There are no electrical problems. I love the tenability, especially the streetability of it. It's easy to use and it's to get everything just the way you want it."

Competing at Drag Week for the fourth time, Les Smith won a hard-fought battle for the Pro Street Power Adder crown, averaging a 7.65 at 189.65 mph with his immaculate '67 Nova. The title essentially was won in the first three races, where he made unerringly consistent runs of 7.47 at 189.82 mph, 7.45 at 190.68 mph, and 7.484 at 190.51 mph at Atlanta, Darlington, and Charlotte, respectively.

Track prep at Bristol that was vastly different than Smith had encountered up until that point sidetracked him at the historic Tennessee facility, but he had a big enough lead to hold off all challengers down the stretch. "You could see concrete through holes in the rubber in a lot of places in the first 60 feet, and most of the fast cars didn't really make good passes there," said Smith, who clocked a 7.909 at 188.55. "I was in the 7.90s again when we got back to Atlanta, but that wasn't the track – that was on me. The track was hot and I was tuned for it, but I went the wrong way." Despite having to backpedal to keep the car under control, he still managed a 7.93 at 188 mph to cover Troy LaCrone's '68 Camaro by more than a tenth of a second.

Smith has run a complete Holley Dominator EFI system on his Morris-built 540 cubic-inch big block with conventional heads for four years. "I'm still running version 2, but it still works fine," he said. "I've had no issues with it at all, and I'm not a computer person. I wasn't brought up in the Computer Age. I knew nothing about EFI when I started – I just wasn't going to cut a hole in the hood for the carburetor when I put a big block in there, and with this EFI, I didn't have to. It's easy to use and it just works."

Also scoring with Holley EFI under the hood were Clark Rosenstengel and Curt Johnson in the Super Street Small Block categories – Rosenstengel in SSSB Power Adder and Johnson in SSSB Naturally Aspriated. Both won by a wide margin. Rosenstengel not only put up the only average in the seven-second zone but ran in the sevens at four of five stops aboard his '10 Camaro, falling short only at Darlington and barely so there. His times: 7.98 at 176.19 mph, 8.03 at 173.28 mph, 7.95 at 174.98 mph, 7.99 at 174.59 mph, and week's best of 7.94 at 176.63 mph. Johnson was just as unstoppable with his '91 Fox body Mustang, outrunning the competition by three-quarters of a second with an average of 9.11 at nearly 150 mph. His times: 9.066 at 149.05 mph, 9.044 at 150.15 mph, 9.118 at 149.14 mph, 9.24 at 147.34 mph, and 9.082 at 149.73 mph.