As soon as Boone's scoreboard lit up, I attempted to start my burnout, but the Valiant pushed through the line lock. With my thumb still on the button, I pumped the brakes twice and tried again, but apparently I hadn't got back to the water because it shoved forward again without rotating the Hoosiers. Disgusted, I released the line lock, maneuvered the Cheetah shifter to R, pushed the trans brake button and attempted to back back into the water. Despite bringing the revs up a little the car refused to move.
My heart started racing, "is the 904 broke?"
I shifted back into low, and the car wouldn't move forward either. I tossed my hands up in disgust and glanced out at the track workers, expecting them to be looking at me wondering what the hold up was. Racing NHRA races puts a clock in your head, like the 24 second shot clock in basketball, they expect the burnouts and approaches to the line to happen at an advanced cadence, but this crew wasn't even noticing yet so I took a deep breath and focused. "The line lock is stuck", it came to me quickly, because the suspension had raised, so it wasn't in the transmission. I tapped the button a few times and felt it release, then backed into the water and did a successful burnout. Despite a few deep breaths, I was still a little rattled and definitely pumped when I turned on the first stage bulb. I brought the small block up to 3K and bumped in. At the first flash I floored it, and grabbed the nitrous almost simultaneously, determined not to be late. It felt like to me that the front end rotated skyward much faster this time than it had last year at Indy, but maybe I just had a better understanding of what was happening having experienced it once already. In any case, it felt much worse, so I lifted off the nitrous and the throttle. My attempt to get back on the throttle as soon as the horizon started coming back did little to lesson the impact when it crashed back down, in fact the fourth picture below is of the rebound wheelie, not the original launch. When it touched down the second time I was on the gas, but the engine sounded weird, and the front end was pulling hard to the center line, so I abandoned the pass and just idled down track.
"Dang it! You just had to get greedy! What is that horrible sound? How bad is the front end screwed up? The alignment is all out of whack!" I tortured myself as I herded the wounded Valiant back down the return road to our pits, wondering if my Drag Week 2017 was just about to come to an end.