Was in Houston for work on Thursday. Left at 7:30 AM, got home at 10:30 PM, then turned around and left for Tulsa to race at 6AM on Friday.
Our friend Bob Alberty brought his car back out - Twice he's been 1 for one with parts breakage on his first run. Well this time he managed not to break anything until Q4. He's one of those guys that doesn't go easy on things, smoking the tires in the previous 3 qualifiers before laboring it down through to a 3.97 in Q4.
Another friend, Chanse Bullock broke a driveshaft in the lane next to us in Q4. He's lucky it didn't tear more stuff up.
Coming back from Tech Inspection, the rear end started locking up. We barely got it into the pit space when chunks started spitting out from inside the wheels....wheel weights. Turns out the aluminum tape had come loose, and the weight glue delaminated enough for them to droop down and get stuck in the caliper. We ended up super-glueing the weighs back in place, then covering them with gorilla tape to make sure they stay, then aluminum tape to reflect the brake heat. We've had this happen once before, the the brake heat will vaporize regular duct tape - almost caused a fire last time. So now we know better.
Q1 dad had to pedal it once as the car drifted out of the groove, went 3.96 with our NHRA setup in it, was on a 93 run or so, about 5 faster than we'd like.
Q2 was almost midnight, the air temp was 50 degrees and track temp was 72 degrees.
@Nitro Dude knows a cold track is bad...but I decided to throw all the timing at it and rotate earth for the hell of it. It stuck with a .959 short time, dad had to pedal twice, out fo the throttle for a full second, and still went 3.90 to put us in the #2 spot.
In Q3 I left that same timing map in it, the 60' slowed to a .980 but was good enough for a 3.88, still #2 to Bob Henry's 3.870.
For Q4, we took some fuel away and threw some timing at it (not a combination you'd normally do) and that was good enough for a 3.870 to tie for pole position - but our 188.4 MPH was not enough to catch Bob's 189.3 MPH.
First round, we ladder up against a guy that lives 10 minutes from us. Nothing like driving 5.5 hours to race your neighbor....and lose by 0.0022 seconds.
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