The Boise Nightfire Nationals came to a dramatic conclusion on Sunday night. For all in attendance, it was a drag racing experience that will go down as one of the best in the thirty-three year history of Firebird's "Signature Event".

Temperatures finally simmered a bit from triple digit highs on Friday and Saturday, as the day time temps climbed to just over 90-degrees under partly cloudy-hazy skies during the opening round.

The AA/Fuel Dragster final saw Jack Harris earn his fourth Nationals title. Charging to low e.t. and top speed of the weekend in the final, the "Sheriff" posted a 5.90 at 252.80 mph to defeat a 6.27-203.57 by the Plaza Hotel Dragster of Sean Bellemeur.

2004 may well go down as "The Year of the Sheriff" as Jack Harris, the Utah Posse and extended crew celebrate in the Winners Circle for the 5th time in seven races this season.

The crew arrived at Firebird Raceway Thursday morning to unload and get the car ready.

By Friday things got busy and the crowd was SRO. The Nitro Thunder pit is always surrounded by fan - day or night.

This event always packs in the fans and the racers as a whole will tell you its a really fun deal.

The first qualifying session was held on Friday evening.

Crew warms up Big Red prior to the second session.

Session two of qualifying was held Saturday afternoon and the track was still too hot to yield any great times.

Harris backs up from his burnout - in "driver mode" his mind is only on the business at hand.

The clutch was set on the soft side to compensate for the track temperature.

The final session Saturday night allowed everyone to get more aggressive with their tune-up and several cars that were on the outside looking in qualified in the night air. Howard Haight (pictured here against Jack) wasn't one of them. The car got out of the groove at the 300 foot mark and Haight tagged the guardrail hard enough to put the car out of commission for the event. Harris clocked a nice 5.985 @ 247.86 which would be good for the # 2 spot and was one of only two five second runs made the first two days.

In the first round of eliminations on Sunday afternoon Harris drew Mendy Fry in the MasterCam - Plaza Hotel fueler. Both cars left together but Fry started to drift toward the centerline and had to abort the run. Jack took the win a 6.00 @ 248.07.

Firebird Raceway owner, Bill New celebrated his 70th Birthday on Sunday and was honored with a fire-up in Nitro Thunder in the afternoon.

The Nitro Thunder crew celebrated Cindy’s, Jack’s oldest, birthday Saturday Night. Brett cuts the cake and Cindy passes out the pieces.

In round two of Top Fuel Harris was paired with one of two drivers that have beat him this season - Bill Dunlap. Great side by side racing. Harris takes took the win with a 5.92 @ 243.30 against Dunlap's 6.16 @ 228.65.

The final round of eliminations paired Harris and Sean Bellemeur in the Plaza Hotel car. To this point the Plaza car had not lost one round of racing in its first three events - that ended here. In another great side by side race, Harris grabs the low ET and the top speed for the weekend, and takes the win
with a 5.90 @ 252.80 against Sean's 6.27 @ 203.57.

Once again the Utah Posse celebrates a win to the delight of the crowd.