To help fight cancer, Mendy Fry boils the Lucas Oil Special's hides (photo by Darr Hawthorne)

To help support the Marian Cancer Center while benefiting the American Cancer Society, this weekend the Lucas Oil Special team towed its  AA/Funny Car down the coast from Atascadero, California to downtown Santa Maria and entered the “Cruizin’ For Life” fund raiser, an annual charity event featuring a car show and burnout exhibition. Moreover, driver Mendy “Nitro Kitty” Fry was graced with the honor of serving as the event’s Grand Marshall.

The exhibition and car show generated a lot of local buzz and netted a respectable amount of cash for the cause. Fry’s curtain closing burnout  brought down the house, however. Scenes from that spectacle were captured on video and posted online by an eager, nitro-addled drag race fan (see below). Suffice it to say, applying race car time-warming procedures to city streets is somewhat of a challenge and requires a little finesse. As the video shows, Mendy and the team put on a professional display and absolutely wowed ‘em with smoke, noise and nitro.

As noted in The Lompoc Record, last year this same event “raised $105,000, with the Cancer Care Center receiving $70,000 and the other $35,000 going to the American Cancer Society.”

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