ANRA Fall Nationals- Woollybear and Zac and the hardware!

 

Wow! What a blast that was!  The ANRA Fall Nationals and annual Track or Treat did not disappoint.

The Flying Pig Racing pit was in full swing with Me and the Wingman, Kenny the Nuke, Sneaky Zac plus Chuck, and the dynamic duo of Woollybear and Gangster Frankster . 

We procured the same approximate pit space as last race and immediately set up camp and pilfered the picnic table from the late oil dump. I decided to up the lunch game a notch and BBQ'd some delicious brats, topped 'em with some sauerkraut and put out the habanero mustard that Wingman snagged at Blackwell's Corner (aka James Dean's last stop). That made for a pretty spicy and satisfying lunch! Oh yeah and we got an early start on Mrs. Racer's brownies and Pammy/Tiegen's chocolate chip cookies!

Anyway, the weather was a pretty tolerable 90-ish and we completed set up and tech before 5PM. Beer-thirty at the track is always a pleasure!!

Saturday rolled in beautiful, waking to the sounds of Jimmy Black "draggin' the track" laying down lots of sticky for us racers, and the smell of sausage and pancakes on the griddle. Yep. Zacster treated us to breakfast again! Dang, that was good.

Qualifying went well- I had a decent .013 reaction time. Woollybear was inching his way towards 10.60 in D-Gas. And Zac nailed the #1 qualifying position in Open Wheel picking up a nice little trophy (the traditional ANRA October pink-ribbon-trophy) for his effort! Way to go Zac and Chuck!

After qualifying we began to set up for what was to be an EPIC Halloween track or treat. This got started a couple or 3 years ago and has just begun to blow up. I can't believe the extent to which some pits were decorated!  There was chaplain Matt running around in his Uncle Sam costume, and ANRA grumpy guru Butch and Cindy tooling around in a cart dressed as Fred 'n' Wilma.

Yabba Dabba Do.

We had a pretty bitchin' set-up too. I brought a 6' motion activated screeching witch that I thought was pretty cool, that is until Zac brought out his home created "Scary Flying Pig". Holy crappers. That thing was cool. He had the pig sitting in a chair holding a bowl of candy. When the wee ones stuck their hands in the bowl the Pig reared back his head and let out a frightening squeal followed by some kind of sinister laugh! The kids were pretty wary of that thing. I saw a couple kids standing there working up the nerve to reach for the goods and when they went for the treats that pig scared the candy out of 'em. They spilled half the candy on the ground with their hasty retreat. Mom and dad sitting in the golf cart had a good laugh! 

                                                                                                           scary pig video

                                                                                                         the witch video

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!! 

Eliminations kicked off at 9:00 AM with Jr. Dragsters. They were probably all still jacked up on candy from the night before!

Anyway, Hot Rod hit the lanes around 10:00AM and I was gifted a first round win when my opponent red lit. 

In open wheel, Zac had a competition bye as his opponent was unable to make the call. Thank you very much!  As I tell everyone- It seems like you never win one of these events without a gift or two along the way...

And in D-Gas Woollybear lit up the win light, so we had 3 cars in 3 classes going on to round 2! Nice.

In round 2 I lost in a close one when I went too quick by .008 second, running a 10.562 on my 10.57 dial.  That left Zac and Woolly to carry the Flying Pig Racing torch for the remainder of the event. And boy did they! 

Zac and Chuck have put a ton of work into that Sneaky Topolino over the last three seasons sorting out the bugs, chasing gremlins and figuring out the fickle fuel system, and they have finally got it done! Zac drove his ass off, running some consistent 10.44s and absolutely crushing the tree in the final round to take the Open Wheel win with a deadly .005 reaction time and another 10.44 with a 4.  Super impressive!

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Woollybear put together a string of deadly runs that took him all the way to the final in D-Gas. As the #1 cheerleader for FPR I got to watch both of these finals from the starting line and when I saw Woolly pull ahead of his opponent I was getting off the gas in my mind and Woollybear was getting off the gas in the car trying to prevent the breakout loss. unfortunately he reeled 'er in a little too much and handed the stripe back to take a loss and finish with the Runner-up trophy.  All in all a great day of racing in the Flying Pig camp!! Next goal is to get all three cars in the finals!

We're all looking forward to the November race!

SLORacer. Out.

ANRA Summer Nationals

On Friday August 19th The Los Osos contingent- (Me and my wingman "not Dan") haulin' the Pig, and followed by the Nuke, headed out to the Patch for the ANRA Summer Nationals. The weather forecast was calling for +/- 104 degrees each day, so we were pondering how miserable it was gonna be. Not really.  My wingman aka Barry, aka Weldo had returned less than 24 hours ago from a trip to Nashville where he sweated it out in the 90/90 kind of temp/humidity that makes the 100 plus "dry heat" seem like an improvement. And the Nuke, well he just thinks "the hotter, the better". I mean the dude wants to live in Margaritaville- Daytona! Just get a sauna.

Anyway, a little later Woollybear and Gankster Frankster set out from Ventura land with the Nova as did Zac and Chuck hauling up the Sneaky Snake.

So we all rolled in to Famoso Dragstrip shortly after Noon o'clock and settled into a perfect patch of very hot asphalt to start the tedious routine of setting up the pits.  By luck we were pitted next to what used to be the old oil dump station, which has been "reclaimed" for some reason. Like probably the insane regulations surrounding the storage and removal of used oil products. LOL.  Anyway, what remains is a dirt patch with a comically placed picnic table on top!  So my ever industrious and accommodating crew hauled the picnic table over to our pit and created the perfect hospitality area. 

I promptly lit the BBQ, because as said before, you can get a lot done if you put out a pile of hot dogs for lunch while the boys are hard at work. So we ate our all beef wieners with some chopped onion, etc. Shortly thereafter Dave "the wrench" Lee rolled in with his trailer and set up opposite of me creating that sweet pit/hospitality space between our two rigs

But wait, there's more! He also had his Pit Boss Smoker in the truck!  

But wait, there's more! He had a 10 lb. brisket with him!!

Meanwhile Barry pulls out a new flying pig deal that he carried home from Columbia Tennessee. Something he found at the flag shop while doing the tourist thing- you know- antique shops on main street- ice cream shops- all that. so he sets the thing up, zip ties it to the EZ up and boom. We have a big ol' pig flying like a madman over the place.

After a little lunch, a lot of leisure, and a cold beverage, the boys installed some new belts to replace the date expired harness in the pig and the wrench installed a new "solo cup transbrake-button cable protector". Hey, don't judge. That cable wants to get pinched between the end of the steering column and the steering wheel adapter. But a nicely placed solo cup and some duct tape works to right that! With evening coming I threw a pot of Chile Verde on the burner in the wrench's outdoor kitchen, blistered some tortillas and sat down (at the oil dump picnic table) for a nice dinner. 

Next day Zacster breaks out a new flat top griddle and proceeds to absolutely blow our minds with a sausage and pancake breakfast! I kid you not. Man we live good at the track!  Not to mention, he topped it off on Sunday with scrambled egg-and-sausage breakfast burritos.  Breakfast has been elevated!! (I didn't bother to break out the frozen breakfast croissants I brought)

With full bellies we made our qualifying passes. Me in Hot Rod, Zac in Open Wheel, and Woollybear in DGas.  The weather was pretty miserable- the humidity was high, the barometer was low and the temperature was climbing fast.  All that makes for some pretty hefty power loss. Anyway the pig huffed on down there to a 10.62 at 125 MPH, probably about right for the conditions, but my reaction time was a terrible .110 or so .  Woollybear, if I remember ripped off a respectable 10.65 which temporarily put him at the top of DGas qualifying, and Zac had a good reaction time and legged it down track in the ever challenging alcohol injected Topolino.  On our 2nd qualifier I improved my reaction time to a .005 and ran a 10.65.  Woolly tuned 'er up a little too tight and went something like 10.57, and Zac ended up qualified 4th I think. A nice day's work by all.

By the time we were done qualifying the temp was pushing 100 degrees, so some of us retreated to the motorhome, and some took off to walk the aisles of Walmart and enjoy their 65 degree A/C!

Meanwhile the wrench, er, shall I say Pit Master, was keeping one eye on the temp reading of the 10 pound brisket he put on the pit boss at around 6 AM. 

 ~The smell of smoking beef was gently wafting throughout the fabled pits of Famoso Raceway~

I'm guessing it was around 5-6 PM when the brisket was removed from the smoker, wrapped in a towel and placed in the cooler for a little rest.  Once the evening cooled down a little we gathered up at the picnic table and noshed on delightfully tender brisket and coleslaw. 

Finally, Sunday came around and Eliminations were off to an early start...trying to get this thing in the books before we all spontaneously combusted.

I was first of our group to run in Hot Rod and I cut an .033 light besting my opponent by a whole bunch, and was able to coast to an easy win at 10.69 on a 10.62 dial.

Zac was up next in Open Wheel and his opponent broke out at the top end handing Zac a nifty round 1 victory.

And Woollybear drew a bye in round one to take the easy win and store some more performance data!

Its super fun to have all 3 cars going on to round 2.

Luckily for us, there was a good hour+ to enjoy that before round 2- which resulted in all 3 of us being eliminated!  Man drag racing can be humbling.

I lost by red-lighting away my chances by 5/1,000ths of a second, and then to add insult to injury I ran 10.625 on my 10.62 dial.  I was so spun out, mad at myself that I can't even remember how Zac and Woolly got beat.

  

p.s. any rumor that I quit drag racing is totally unsubstantiated. ;)

So for Flying Pig Racing we got to take home some great memories with great friends, a full belly and lot's of stories, but no hardware this weekend.  We'll be back at it October 7-9 to try again.

On Monday, me and the wingman and the nuke drug the pig back to the poke and went out for lunch and a beer at the Rib Line . We sat in a newer section where I'd never been and saw this on the wall. A sure sign Flying Pig Racing WILL be back.

SLOracer. Out.

 

SUMMIT RACES 1 AND 2

The Flying Pig bunch loaded up and headed to the Patch for a little warm up session by way of the Summit Series.  We won't run the full Summit schedule but instead figured this would be a good way to get a little seat time and knock some rust off before the ANRA season opener.

So Me, Barry (not Dan) and the Nuke headed over Friday morning and met Woollybear and Frankster there, Friday was an open test n tune day so we figured we'd get in a few passes to get re-acquainted with the car and procedure, and it's a good thing we did. We went up around 2 O'clock to make our first pass.  Staged the car, hit the transbrake button and when I brought up the RPMs the car jumped the lights and, well, that was that.  I idled 'er off the track and went to the pits to start the troubleshoot.

After the Nuke spent some time under the car trying to fish his way under the transmission blanket to trace the connections to the transbrake solenoid, we commenced to test continuity from the button to the box and low and behold the button just wasn't working.  As luck would have it or by some divine intervention, about 2 weeks ago I stumbled upon a transbrake button in my garage tool box and I says to myself "self, that won't do any good here. It should be in the race car bin in the motorhome". So I took and tossed it into the motorhome basement. With a snip here and a twist there we had the new button mounted on the steering wheel and at about 4 O'clock I went out and made the first pass of the season.

Time Run 1 ☝

Round 1 win 👇

Round one on Saturday was a good little race with Jack Swanson last year's Summit Pro champ.  ☝

And then in round 2 I lost one of the closest and most fun races ever.  I had a 6 thousandths advantage at the starting line but that didn't matter anyway because it was a double breakout affair, with me breaking out more than the big hitter Vic Hudson.  Margin of victory was 23 ten thousandths of a second!  When I talked to Vic later he said the same thing I said- one of the closest and most fun races ever! It was one of those things where I didn't feel so bad about losing because it was such a cool race.  Unfortunately you never see his car in this video, but trust me he was right next to me!  👇

So, we got to do it all over again on Sunday!  Here is the video. I had a couple good rounds and then lost round 3 with a red light. DOH!

Round 1 win

Round 2 win

Round 3 loss

Other than that it was the usual fun time at Famoso Dragstrip!

Oh and then there was the generator lost another fuel pump! Luckily I had a spare. Who makes these things? You don't have to answer that! This one lasted less than a year.

2022 Season Prep