Today was race day!  I had the day off work.

First thing I did was check the ignition timing at a higher RPM.  It looks like the motor comes in at around 39 degrees at 4500 RPM.  I had most of my tools and stuff already packed into the truck from the last time I took the car out for some test & tune.  I picked up the trailer from my uncle’s house and loaded the car up, then headed out to the track at around 5:30.

Keven Kullberg and Jerad Flemming and my wife Shelley were all there to help me out.  I had Andy’s cell phone number and was texting him all night relaying pertinent information like weather data and track conditions and run data, and he was responding back with the latest ET estimates.

After the time trials, we had a driver’s meeting where we were told who we would be racing against for the first round of eliminations and which lanes we would be in.  They called name after name and pretty soon I was the only guy left still standing there… I was wondering if they had forgotten about me!  Nope, it turns out I had the best qualifying time with a reaction time of 0.0102 and I got the automatic bye run.  Woohoo!

So obviously I won the first round of eliminations since I had the bye run.  I made the run without any problems.

Then for the second round I was going up against a truck driven by Ms. Napoleon.  She dialed in a 18.15 and I dialed in a 12.38.  She launched with a reaction time of 0.2279 and I launched with a reaction time of 0.0317.  At the top end I let off big time because I was going to really blow by her, and it was a good thing I did!  I my ET on that pass was a 12.3897!  This pass was so good that I won the "best package" award for this race.

Then for the third round I went up against Henry Leyba.  Henry is the guy who works on my rear end at Arizona Differential Specialists!  He drives a Dodge Dart Swinger.  Then disaster strikes… We both had staged and I took my eyes off the tree to look down at my tachometer so I could bring the RPM up to 2500.  But by the time I looked back up at the tree my light was already green!  Argh!  I took off but I had no chance… Henry had handed my ass to me big time.

Time Trials Pass 1 (David Hrbal in other lane):

Time Trials Pass 2 (Jack Dyer in other lane):

Time Trials Pass 3 (Mr. Oxford in other lane):

Eliminations Round 1 (bye run):

Eliminations Round 2 (vs Ms. Napoleon):

Eliminations Round 3 (vs Henry Leyba):