Inside the world of drag racing.

As most visitors to this website know we run two cars that are currently being raced in Nostalgia Eliminator II which is an 8.60 second index or break-out class. Here’s how we did.

At the 49th March Meet there were 37 cars trying to qualify for a 16 car field in NE-2 and I managed to qualify the dragster No. 1 in Friday’s qualifying session with an 8.61.1 but got moved down to No. 2 in Saturday’s qualifying session when George Chatterton moved up with an 8.60.2.

Jason was driving the Fiat at this race and in Friday’s qualifying session the Fiat decided to act like an Altered and made a hard left into the left lane just after the start. Jason peddled a couple of times and got it back into the right lane before the 330 mark and finished the run in his own lane with an ET of 11.608. We checked the roll-out of the slicks to see if that might have caused the car to hook left at the launch, but both tires measured 102.5 so that wasn’t the problem. We knew the air pressure of the tires were equal so we couldn’t think of anything else to do before the Saturday qualifying session. For Saturday’s session Alex Mikkelsen (American Roadster) who is our chassis expert suggested Jason do a longer burnout to lay down more rubber and hopefully give the Fiat a better track to run in. That seemed to work because the car lifted the front wheels off the ground and carried them straight past the 60 foot mark. Jason stayed in it and “legged” it to an 8.41 which was a great run, but a little too quick for the class.

Jason then moved over to help his brothers Scott and Mark who were crewing this weekend for both cars. I managed to make it through 3 rounds of eliminations and found myself in the final against a car driven by Dan See out of Fresno, California. He had been running consistent 8.60’s in eliminations whereas my times were ranging from 8.61 to 8.65. I figured that the only chance I had against his consistency was to try to get him on the line. I tried to cut the light, but only managed to “bulb” by .016 seconds. On top of that when I launched the car uncharacteristically got out of shape and since there was no way of catching See I lifted and motored through with an 11.641 ET.

Even though I didn’t win, Scott, Jason, Maria, Mark, Justine and I all agreed that this was one of the best weekends we’ve ever had! It wasn’t just the racing either. It was being with the old friends we’ve made at the track and the new people we met at this race. That’s what I love about Nostalgia racing. The atmosphere and the friendliness of the racers harkens back to the era I grew up in where we would rather beat an opponent on the track than in the pits, so we’d help him get his car running so we could do just that, beat him on the track.

Labels: 49th March Meet, Famoso Raceway, March Meet