"Should we start packing up and get ready to hit the road?" Rachael asked, pointing towards the huge pile of stuff in front of the Valiant.
I looked around our pit spot, quickly realizing that other than Derek's Chevy truck, and Pops crashed out asleep on a folding cot, everyone else was still in the lanes.
"Naw, let's just stand at the fence and watch everyone else run...we'll be ready to roll before the rest of these jokers anyway!"

At 1:49, after we'd only watched a few pairs, Brian Lohnes made the announcement that Lonnie Grimm was going to close the back of the lanes at 2:15 sharp.
"So the gang needs to run in the next twenty minutes if they want the chance for more than one run!"
"You sure you don't want to go back up", Rachael asked, "I'll ride up with you and take more pictures."
"Nope, that was the best pass the Valiant has ever made, so I've got nothing left to prove today...save it for tomorrow."
Tom McGilton was back for a second hit in his Larry Larson prepped 2013 ZL-1. His earlier 8.26 wasn't going to keep him in contention with Hunter's 56 and Blasco's Dirty Dart for Pro Street Power Adder, so he needed a smooth pass. The white fifth gen appeared to roll the tires slightly out of the hole, a suspicion that was confirmed when Lohnes announced a 1.30 short time, but the rest of the pass looked amazing.
"One fifty in the eighth, seven sixty-two at one ninety", Lohnes' voice boomed over the loud speaker.
"That wasn't a killer sixty for a car that fast, was it?"
"No", I smiled at Rachael, happy that she was paying attention, "but forty-two hundred pounds it tough to get moving!"

Two pairs later, Tom Bailey brought his Steve Morris powered Skinny Kid built Pro Mod Camaro around in the right lane with it's "Beast Mode" grille blocker in place.
"I told you he wasn't going to leave here two tenths behind Schroeder", Rachael pointed out.
"Well, with the amount of time it takes to turn those cars around for another hit, this will be his last attempt today!"
The stretched and narrowed 69 left extremely hard, but tried to rattle the tires at 200ft out, so Tom quickly peddled it once to calm it down. He'd have likely blown the tires off and wasted the run a few years ago, but time spent racing the Skinny Kid shop Pro Mod over the last year has clearly given him the experience and feel to make the quick and timely correction seem effortless.
"Six fifty-one at two thirty-eight...wow, that's not good for the Nitrous Corvette", I groaned.
"It's only a couple of hundredths", Rachael shrugged.
"It's not the ET, dear, it's the twenty mph! When you've got that much speed over someone, you have a much larger margin for error."