Herbold Racing!

Well, race #5 has come and gone and unfortunately I was not able to go rounds this time. The three step worked perfectly – I was able to nail the process of getting the motor up to 2500 RPM before launching. My problem this time around was that I was anticipating the third yellow too much and ended up red lighting most of the night. Andy has an idea on how to fix this…

But here is a bit of excellent news: My car is 60 footing like there is no tomorrow. Both of the first two runs had a 60 foot time of 1.73 second, then after I pulled 4 pounds of air from the front tires (in an effort to stop my red lighting), the next two runs had a 60 foot time of 1.74 second. That is a massive difference than all the other runs I’ve done in the past where the 60 foot times were all over the map. It also goes to show that my slicks have a bit more life in them yet. (Sorry, Keven!)

I dropped from 14th place into 15th place. Not too bad. I’m definitely going to hit the practice tree hard and use Andy’s trick to try to catapult myself back into the top 10.

I’ve updated the Time Slips page (the link is right below this web site’s banner) with all the latest stuff. Oh, and the PerformAIRE Eclipse weather station and predictor that I got – it was worth every penny. It predicted every run that I made after the first one, absolutely dead on. I’m not kidding. To prove it, check it out… I won the one shot. What does that mean? I beat everybody else during the 3rd qualifying run by coming closer to my dial in than anybody else did to theirs. How did I do it? I simply asked the PerformAIRE what I would run the next pass – so it crunched the numbers, and then told me 12.55. I wrote that on my window and ended up running a 12.562.

I changed the timing on my motor before this race – It was at 39 degrees and Andy recommended that I dial it back to 36 degrees for this race. He was right, my car ran so much better. If you take my best run from this race and convert the ET & MPH to sea level standard using the NHRA conversion tables you’ll see that my car is almost into the 11’s. Sweet!

And the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the videos (there is a surprise video at the bottom).

Pass #1 – PerformAIRE said I’d run a 12.60 based on my Speedworld runs, and I ran a 12.571. Remember, I changed the timing on my motor.

Pass #2 – PerformAIRE said I’d run a 12.56 based on the last run, and I ran a 12.562.

Pass #3 – PerformAIRE said I’d run a 12.55, and I ran a 12.562. Yes, you read that right. My ET for runs 2 and 3 are exactly the same to the thousandths place. Not only that, the 330 FT & 660 FT were also exactly identical to the thousandths place too. The 1000 FT ET was different by 0.001 second. Isn’t that creepy, or what?!

Pass #4 – PerformAIRE said I’d run a 12.55 and I ran a 12.538… however after the end of the pass I quickly went back to PerformAIRE and had it estimate again – and it spat out 12.53.

And here is the surprise video – since I got eliminated in the first round and it was still early in the day, Shelley let me stay a while and I ended up recording just about every body else’s passes! Check them out, and enjoy a little rock and roll music too: