Semi-Finals in Rockingham!

Our DNQ in San Antonio seems miles away after a good showing at "The Rock" this weekend. The weekend got off to a great start when I made the first 4 second pass of my short nitro career on Friday night when we went 4.995 at 299.5mph. The track temp was 80, the air temp was in the 60's and we had the car set up pretty average. It launched hard and straight and our .902 60-foot time was amongst our best ever. At the thousand foot mark the car made a hard move to the right, and I needed to steer hard left to stay off the wall.

Saturday we only made one pass, as there were showers off and on during the day. On Friday night we cranked up the blower boost by changing pulley's, and put more timing in the motor, especially after the 60 foot mark, to try to run in the low 4.90's or high 4.80's. The car launched hard, but we dropped the #6 cylinder almost immediately. A couple hundred feet later we pushed the head gasket out, torched the head and put a small hole in the block behind the #8 cylinder. Oh well.

We ended up qualifying third and faced Steven Macklyn in the first round. We set up the car to go about 5.05 and didn't want to be too aggressive because track temps were in the mid-90s and we wanted to make a clean pass. Macklyn smoked the tires at the hit and we ran a clean 5.08 at 291 to take the win!! The team was ecstatic and I was happy. Steve Macklyn exemplified the class of all the guys we race with when he came by our trailer to congratulate me. Despite the disappointment he must have been feeling, he had a genuine smile on his face and offered to help if we needed anything.

In round 2 we had to face Paul Lee who has been driving a Paul Smith tuned car to some great times this weekend. His 4.77 on Saturday night was a great lap. Anyway, we just tried to come out and make a clean pass rather than try to chase the #'s he's been putting up. He got a couple hundreths of a sec jump on me at the line and was pulling away down track, so I clicked it off at around 1000 feet rather than risk blowing something up and eating parts. I still ended up with a 5.25, but it was no match for his 4.88.

The thing we're happiest about so far, is that we've made 9 passes this year. Two in testing. three in SA, and four here in Rockingham, and haven't smoked the tires once. That was our biggest problem last year and it seems, at least for now, that we have it figured out. But we've not had the 120 degree track temps that we'll see during the summer. Those hot greasy tracks get real tricky.