{"id":104550,"date":"2026-08-12T20:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T20:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/marcus-butner-grabs-first-pro-nitrous-win-of-2026-at-pdra-thunder-valley-throwdown-set-to-defend-points-title\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T20:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T20:44:07","slug":"marcus-butner-grabs-first-pro-nitrous-win-of-2026-at-pdra-thunder-valley-throwdown-set-to-defend-points-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/marcus-butner-grabs-first-pro-nitrous-win-of-2026-at-pdra-thunder-valley-throwdown-set-to-defend-points-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcus Butner Grabs First Pro Nitrous Win of 2026 at PDRA Thunder Valley Throwdown, Set to Defend Points Title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reigning PDRA Switzer Dynamics Pro Nitrous presented by Jerry Bickel Race Cars world champion Marcus Butner hasn\u2019t had the 2026 season he\u2019d envisioned entering the Thunder Valley Throwdown, sitting fifth in points. He made a massive push to defend his title Saturday night in Bristol, however, pacing the field nearly the entire weekend en route to his first event win of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Butner used a .025 to .061 holeshot in the final round to take the win over points leader and reigning event champion Tommy Franklin. Butner went 3.688 at 204.32 mph in his Pat Musi-powered, Jay Cox-tuned \u201cHeartbreaker\u201d \u201969 Camaro, which was just enough to hold off Franklin\u2019s 3.655 at 205.98 in his Musi-powered \u201cJungle Rat 3.0\u201d \u201969 Camaro.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The win not only shot Butner up the points standings, but earning the victory on the starting line was especially meaningful after the team had to thrash after fire erupted from the hood scoop in his semifinal-round win against Tim Paap and his \u201916 Corvette.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the semifinals, we got up on the wheelie bars really hard. It ended up in high gear and it wasn\u2019t supposed to be, and it just struck the motor down, hurt it a little bit,\u201d said Butner. \u201cWe ended up swinging the motor back in it that we had in it all weekend.\u00a0That was a challenge, you know, \u2018cause we were in a time crunch in the semifinals, didn\u2019t even get to clean our tools up. Here we are, \u2018Where is everything?\u2019 We just did everything we could.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy team\u2019s worked so hard; they work hard all the time,\u201d Butner added. \u201cWe do a lot of testing, and they\u2019re always willing to put in the extra step and double check things. They\u2019ll stay up late at night working on it. They got my back 100%, so it\u2019s very rewarding to be able to give it back to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Tara Bowker photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Butner qualified No. 1 with a 3.659 e.t., earning him a bye run in the first round where he ran 3.696 at 204.76 mph. In the quarterfinals, he ran 3.695 at 204.91 to defeat Amber Denton in the \u201cOG Jungle rat,\u201d as Denton went -.060 red. Butner\u2019s backfire slowed him down to 3.833 in the semifinals, but it was still enough to stay ahead of Paap, who suffered his own issues in a 4.702-second pass, setting up the titanic matchup in the finals against Franklin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Franklin, meanwhile, qualified No. 2 with a 3.665, less than a hundredth of a second behind Butner. He defeated Jimmy Cowan in the opening round, earning himself a bye in the quarterfinals. Franklin then outran Chesapeake, Virginia\u2019s Dane Wood and his Ryan McCain-tuned, \u201912 Mustang in the semifinals, running 3.646 to Wood\u2019s 3.708 to earn lane choice in the final-round pairing with Butner.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, with just two races remaining in the 2026 season, Butner has suddenly found himself in prime position to defend his points title \u2013 something that may have seemed out of reach earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just God\u2019s blessings, I think,\u201d Butner said. \u201cWe were pretty far out (in points). We\u2019ve had a bunch of bad luck. We\u2019ve had a fast car pretty much all year other than Maryland. We put in the work to come here to try and accomplish this. We\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next race on the Red Line Oil PDRA Drag Racing Series tour will be Drag Wars presented by Big Stuff Total Power Management on August 27-29. It will be the PDRA\u2019s second stop of the season at Galot Motorsports Park in Benson, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

The post Marcus Butner Grabs First Pro Nitrous Win of 2026 at PDRA Thunder Valley Throwdown, Set to Defend Points Title<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reigning PDRA Switzer Dynamics Pro Nitrous presented by Jerry Bickel Race Cars world champion Marcus Butner hasn\u2019t had the 2026 season he\u2019d envisioned entering the Thunder Valley Throwdown, sitting fifth in points. He made a massive push to defend his title Saturday night in Bristol, however, pacing the field nearly the entire weekend en route […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}