Smith Takes Pro Street Power Adder Crown at Drag Week With Holley EFI-Powered '67 Nova

10/15/2018
10 min read

Smith Takes Pro Street Power Adder Crown at Drag Week With Holley EFI-Powered '67 Nova

10/15/2018
10 min read

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."

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