1st Summit race a bust for Flying Pig, 2nd yields 3 quickest ETs ever!

Well, April 2nd and 3rd marked the start of the Summit Racing season at Famoso Raceway and Flying Pig Racing was stymied!  Wow!  All I can say is WOW!  We were so pumped going in.  The best prepared in years.  The car is looking great.  The mechanicals are perfect.  The driver has been beating up the practice tree...

But as is often the case in drag racing, some little thing that you just didn't anticipate sneaks up and bites you in the butt.  This time it was 2 psi of air pressure.  Yep.  That's it- 2 psi. 

Here's the deal.  Before the race we installed a new set of rear slicks.  Up til now we had been running a Hoosier slick. We found the optimal tire pressure for the Hoosiers to be about 10.5 psi.  Then... this year I found a M&H slick on the market that has about 4/10 of an inch more contact patch.  That's just what you want- more rubber on the track...better traction...quicker ETs.  Yahoo.  We mounted the M&Hs and hit the track. 

On the first pass on Saturday morning, the car launched really hard.  Felt great.  But then it started going right, and THEN started shaking like a wet dog!  By half track I had gone right, left, then right again, and shook so hard I could hardly hold the steering wheel.  So, I wisely aborted the run.  Went back to the pits and reported to "the twins" and the "wrench", who went over the car with a magnifying glass and made a slight adjustment to the toe in on the front wheels, and proclaimed the Pig mechanically fit.

Back out for the second time run, and the same sashay and shake down the track led to the second aborted run of the day.  Back in the pits again, we decided we were missing something, and it likely had to do with the new tires.  So off we went to find the guy we lean on alot- Ric Fauset- engine builder extraordinaire and all around racing guru from Fauset Racing . As soon as I mentioned the new M&H slicks, he pointed out that the M&H tires always seem to require more air pressure than the Hoosiers.  Bingo!  We ran the pressures up to 12.5 psi.  Unfortunately, it was now time for the start of eliminations, and we had NO IDEA what the car would do.  So we dialed a conservative 10.90 and figured IF the car was on a good pass, I would just have to hit the brakes and slow it down so as not to break out.

We were paired with perennial contender and National Champ Mark Simonian in the first round.  I approached it just like any other round and nailed the tree with a .010 light, against his respectable .028.  What happened next was crazy.  The car launched perfectly, and ran flawlessly! No shake, no drifting around.  Just as straight as a string!  So at about half track Simonian was nowhere near me and I realized I had better slow this thing down.  So I hit the brakes... and started to celebrate the fact that the problem was solved!  About that time Simonian flew past me.  I jumped back on the gas, but too little and too late!  What a way to lose! At least we were able to walk away feeling good that the car was back on track.



Sunday, April 3rd.
Started the day knowing the car would run well.  The weather was perfect and we were comfortable with the air pressure.  Actually we bumped the pressure up a quarter to 12.75 psi.  The first time run was a blast.  The car ran the quickest 60" time ever- a 1.475, and the quickest ET ever 10.399!  Man that was cool.

We followed that up on the second pass with another 10.399! And then eliminations started.  1st round loser!  We dialed a 10.41 because the conditions had gotten a little worse, and we had lost the slight tailwind we had earlier. I felt like I had a decent light but it turned out I was WAY late.  I kept it hammered right on out the back door but never caught the other car.  In the end I ran a 10.407, 3/1000s too quick, but it didn't matter, I was never gonna beat the other guy with the poor light.  So, we left with the 3 quickest passes the Flying Pig Has ever made.  And that ain't bad.

Oh, and we learned another drag racing lesson. Don't make major changes (tire brand) unless you have time to test them BEFORE race day.  So having learned that lesson, we had a discussion back in the pits about the upcoming ANRA  race, and decided rather than running D-Gas and "learning at the track" we are going to stick to what we know, and run in the Hot Rod class, which is just like Summit ET racing.  So now it's just 3 days til I'm back at the track!  Me and Ken "the nuke" are going to head out on Friday to get pitted and tech'd, and then "the twins" and "the wrench" will join us on Saturday.

SLO Racer. Out.