Parking in lane six meant I had a front row seat to lane 7 which I heard Freiburger announce earlier as the "impound and exhibition" lane. The "and exhibition" part of that statement didn't sink in immediately, but it became very frustrating once I saw all the guys who were disqualified or hadn't completed each leg using that provision to get fast tracked to the head of the lanes, and making runs before guys that were actually still in competition. As I mentioned earlier, Sunday through Thursday this Drag Week was among the best; smooth, well organized, great facilities, but Friday was like a bad ending to a really great movie.

Friday had been overcast all day, and they were worried bout rain hitting us later in the evening pretty much from the get go, but about twenty minutes into the Street Machine Eliminator session it became clear that they were worried about something else even more. Gateway had scheduled a piggy back event onto ours, sort of a street drags, and drift style event, that was set to kick off as soon as we were done. It seemed that the Gateway staff, and the Drag Week staff suddenly realized they weren't going to be finished with Drag Week 2015 by the time the locals expected to have the run of the place.

At 5:07pm, just twenty-two minutes after the Street Machine Eliminator class got their first shot at the track, Brian Lohnes suddenly announced over the PA system, "I've been informed by Race Director Lonnie Grimm that we are shutting off the back of the SME lanes at 5:15!"
A scant 7 minutes later, he announced: "We are opening up the lanes for the all-run, final session."
Two minutes later he called out once again, "The lanes are filling up fast with class cars, so all you spectators better get back to your seats!"
You can imagine the frustration if you were an SME racer who wasn't fortunate enough to have made your first pass in the first 31 minutes. They had waited two and half hours through the class car first session for their opportunity, and now thirty minutes into the SME session, the back of the lanes were cutoff and the class cars were given a head start to back fill all the other lanes, The chance of getting another run to turn in before the bracket race was pretty much null and void at that point.


John nosed the 67 Valiant into the water at 5:25 PM, pretty much aware that this might be his only pass before the Quick 32 bracket race. He had the 440 tuned up perfectly for the weather conditions, but the well worn drag radials slipped just enough to card an 11.004-120.92. He drove straight back to the lanes intent upon getting a ten second pass all five days, but pulled up behind pretty much every car still running at Drag Week...it was going to be a long wait!

Still, when they finished up, and took a break to prep the track for the all-run session, the track time break down looked like this: The "Class cars (148 still running)", were on the track for two and a half hours in their first session, the SME cars (92 still in) were on the track for an hour and two minutes!