The silver Shadow of Patrick Culkin was up next, and in the middle of his burnout, the car jumped out a little crooked, and then I saw the front fender jumping up and down as he rolled forward. It was obviously a broken axle, the bane of any powerful front drive car, but I was shocked when he opened the door, and motioned for his buddies to push it back. I felt that was a huge tactical mistake on his part, as he should have at least staged and took the tree, allowing him to take a 20.00/50 and move on to the next track. The problem now was, if he wanted to continue, he had to fix it and get back in the lanes before they closed out the day. I glanced at my phone, it was almost 12:30, and I figured the lanes would close at 3:00pm, so he had two and half hours to get the thing ready for another shot.

Rachael, rolled up in the water, and since this was her first run of the year, I coached her through her burnout. I had also instructed her to just run it all the way out on the bottle, instead of lifting off the spray at 1000', as I have had her do in the past. She launched the car very conservatively, and it seemed like she was past the 60' clocks before she grabbed the nitrous, so I was a little upset that the ET just wasn't going to be there. It did appear the Belvedere was scooting pretty good though, and when Announcer Brian Lohnes boomed out that she was almost a hundred mph at the eighth, I knew we were in trouble.
"Lift girl, lift", I whispered.
Nope, the scoreboard lit up with 11.41-122, a tenth quicker, and two mph more than the car had ever ran before. She would be happy, but we still needed a time slip we could actually turn in.