I decided to leave for the track on Friday evening, thinking I would be able to set up and get several things out of the way. When I leave on Saturdays I typically don’t have a lot of extra time. It was a great choice. Except for the strong winds, it was a beautiful evening. Leaving on Fridays also gives me an opportunity to sleep in a little bit on Saturday. I arrived at the track around 7:30 pm. Much to my surprise, there were quite a few racers that apparently had the same idea as me. It appeared that there would be a full house this Labor Day weekend.
Several racers gathered together, had a few adult beverages, and just enjoyed the evening. The sun was plentiful on Saturday morning. It was somewhat windy, but still a gorgeous day. It was going to be a fast track. The air was good, relative humidity very low, and the track was in great shape. By the time our time runs started there were approximately 185 race cars on the grounds.
Our first time run took place at 10:17 and the INS dragster ran a 7.854, which I was sure would be a lot better as soon as the track got a little warmer. We returned to the staging lanes for our second time run at 12:37 p.m., ran our quickest time ever - 7.773, and our 60′ time was the best ever - 1.132. Hopefully we were finally starting to figure out what the car actually liked. We have been adjusting the rear tire pressure, launch rpm, shift rpm, trying to find the optimum numbers the car liked. There were so many cars, and not enough time, so we were told at the beginning of the day that we would only receive two time runs as opposed to the usual three.
To give you an idea of how long it takes to time run, this many cars we were called to the staging lanes for the 1st round of eliminations at 3:24. That is three hours for the car to cool completely down and the weather to change dramatically. We dialed a 7.78 time for our first round and headed for the staging lanes. I drew a very fast car for the first round (actually they’re all fast) as my opponent was dialing a 7:00, so I would be leaving first. I felt fairly good about my light, did not think I was going too fast, crossed the finish line running a 7.808. My opponent ran a 7:059 on his 7:00 dial, crossed the finish line 0.0105 seconds before me and won the round. Why? He had a 0.035 reaction time and my reaction time was a very poor 0.076. I am still struggling in the reaction time area with this new car and it just cost me the win for this round. End result is my opponent won and went on to the finals.
