It took about fifteen minutes for everyone to get situated, wash up, and get orders made for food. Then we were able to decompress, and talk about everything that had happened, and what we had ahead of us.
"You've got A-Gas pretty much locked up, Jim?" Rachael asked, glancing up from her phone, where she already had the results of the day pulled up.
"Not really", Jim smiled, "Alexander in that black 41 Willy's actually ran quicker than us in Martin on Wednesday, so that's why we pulled the weight out today!"
"Even with a little cushion, anything can happen on Drag Week", his co-driver Dan interjected. Usually Dan is a man a few words, so a nice sit down meal gave us a chance to get to know him on this trip.

Dale seemed to be returning from his inward self-exile, so I looked over at him and softly asked, "How bad is it?"
He shrugged, shook his head, and finished a bite of salad before acknowledging the question. "Pretty bad, actually. It's pushing oil out of the valve covers, it's burning oil...at least one piston is just creating blow-by and a couple others are hurt!"
"Should we park it somewhere and come back for it?"
"If it was day two, yeah, it would be done", he shrugged again and took another bite. "At this point though, every mile we drive is one more closer to the truck and trailer...as well as finishing, so I'll drive it until it comes apart, or we run out of oil to dump in it!"
"Is it driving alright though", I asked, "I mean in the front end."
"Yeah, it's fine once we got the radiator sealed up, but I had to pull over once and yell at all these guys!"
"What for?"
"They stuck me out front when we left that first station, so I was trying to figure out the engine, determine if it was holding water, and trying to read the route sheet all at the same time. Finally I just pulled over on the shoulder to let them by, but they all stopped behind me. I lost it, so I jumped out of the car and starting screaming at them to drive around and take the lead!"
"Great!...well, better your brothers than half the bracket racers in division three, besides, they do have co-drivers..."
"Exactly what I told them", he cut me off, then motioned towards the waiter for another glass of water.

We were there for a solid hour and change, but it was substantially cooler when we prepared to leave, and everyone was certainly in a better mood, so I felt like it was time well invested.