June 17, 2013
As much hard work and frustration that this TAFC racing can be our last outing reinforced why NHRA racing in the Sportsman classes is the place to be. Every week I read about soccer brawls amongst parents at their kids game, hockey parents beating each other up over referee calls and the list just goes on. No big prizes at stake here, just bragging rights on who‘s kid could possibly be better 10 years from now.
It’s no secret the last two races we have been struggling, blowing up the car, not going rounds and working all hours of the day just to do it all over again. When we broke the chassis at the last race the competitors did not leave us high and dry, laugh at our bad luck but instead came to our aid with equipment, parts and people to repair our car and get us back into the race. If other sports practiced NHRA style sportsmanship the world would have a whole lot less problems.
Enough of my social comment, here is how our weekend went. We qualified #6 after our first pass down the track with the Meritor hot rod, nothing fancy 5.85 seconds at 255 mph. nothing broke and the engine showed no adverse signs of wear. This looked like a great building block to make tuning adjustments for round two and get us deeper into the field. The idea was sound but the wear and tear that this level of racing and our last outing explosions had put on the car showed up with a chassis failure that looked like our weekend was over. As mentioned above the Eaton sponsored TAFC team of Todd Robertson along with the TAD team of Brandon Booher (eventual Wally winner at this event) came to our aid and after an hour of welding we were whole again. We just made the final qualifying session and only improved to a 5.81 et remaining #6.
Race day saw the whole team worn out from the last three weeks of trashing trying the get the Euclid Meritor entry ready for battle, but Paul did his job like the great driver he is leaving first but our opponent Andy Bohl had his car tuned to the track and out ran us with a 5.623 to our 5.781. That was the end of our weekend.
With almost a month before our next race with the Meritor hot rod we plan on catching up on some sleep and getting the car back into early season form. See you in Norwalk for the July 4th race.
Jay