It was Dale Gebhart in the Pro Street duster. His heavy trailer had pushed him off the road in a hairpin turn at the bottom of a steep downgrade in the mountains, and he crashed into a wall of rock. Out here in the parking lot, nobody knew for sure if they had been injured, but they said the car was pretty bad. Dale had been running high 8’s at 160 mph in unlimited. I felt bad for him and the whole Gebhart family, and hoped they were all OK.

Hilborn EFI tech Andrew Starr had found a spot in the hotel parking lot and was working on the failing valvetrain his mid 9 second Pro Street N/A 1956 Bel Air that was, of course, fueled by a Hilborn individual runner EFI system. The 565 in.³ pump gas Chevy was backed by a Hays Dragon Claw dual disc clutch, a G-Force 5 speed, and a narrowed Dana 60 rear end. He was running the "Hillbilly soft lock" a.k.a. clutch tamer and explained to me how it worked and that it was very effective at dialing in a little bit of clutch slippage at launch and preventing parts breakage. It was as good as the soft lock I was running he said, but adjustments were made the easy way with a knob under the dash.

Andrew was frustrated, as well as disgusted because these were all new valvetrain parts that he had put in as a preventative to improve reliability through drag week, and now the new parts were failing. He was solidly in 2nd place in Pro Street N/A, but the leader of the class, James McIntyre with his big inch hemi-powered 69 Camaro had fallen 2 seconds off his usual pace today at Charlotte, turning in a 10 second time slip. Would McIntyre get back his ET tomorrow? Would he drop out, or continue to slow down putting Andrew in first place? A close race for first in class makes it very difficult to drop out. Andrew didn’t know if he could get the big Chevy fixed or not. I offered to help, but he said he didn’t need any help. What he needed was parts. At roughly midnight, I decided it was time to call it a day.