Dale and the Gremlin pulled into the water for his first run of Drag Week. Also his first run on the new front end, the new Et Streets, and the new 4.10 gears. He stabbed the throttle, and did a nice, arrow straight burnout to the eighty foot mark, then calmly backed up in his own tracks, pulled up and turned on the top stage bulb. He accomplished all that without the aid of a person in front of the car, or a person behind the car, or some one to show him where the beam was, or someone to measure the wheelie bars, or someone to open the passenger door and turn stuff on. I was pretty sure a couple of the twenty somethings standing around me had never seen anyone do such a thing after an across the start line burnout.
The first kit is on a timer and full throttle switch, the second is thumb activated. The Gremlin jumped off the line and immediately pulled the front tires about 8 inches off the ground, then ole greedy thumb fed the second plate in at 20 feet out, and it struck the tires and the front end slammed down so violently that he freaked and lifted off the throttle. I'm pretty sure the twenty somethings standing around me have seen that move plenty of times!
He stabbed back into it and marched out the back door at 150.23, but the 9.59 was definitely not what he had in mind.

I think Boone and I were ready to stand pat on our first runs, but we knew Dale wouldn't, and they had already called Street Machine Eliminator to the lanes, so it looked like we were all pretty much locked into sticking around for the final, all run session.

The Street Machine Eliminator session was next, and 16 mopars were in the field, including the usual suspects, Clark Lamb, Clark Strong, the Ogles, Scott Abbott, Rachael, and John. Then the were the very unusual suspects, including three Dodge by Shelby front scratchers, and a 79 300! When I looked to the starting line and saw a pairing of the 300 and an Omni, I hid my Mopar cap under my Drag Week shirt, and hoped nobody noticed. When the Omni drove around the big Chrysler I was embarrassed! Then the Omni put a 10.89-130 on the board, followed by the 300's 11.59-116, and I stuck my hat on, pumped my first, and yelled, "Those are my boys!!"