The sound of cars firing up caught me off guard, so I spun from the fence and ran over to the Valiant. I tugged my jacket on and zipped it up, then folded myself into the car. The pair ahead of me disappeared under the tower, and I caught Lonnie Grimm's attention as I started pulling up.
"Lonnie! Can I pull over there out of line until I get ready? I don't want to hold anyone up!"
He gave me a thumbs up, and motioned me to the side.
This pass was too important for me to rush up there, and not be fully strapped in and mentally ready.

As an interesting side note to little Billy's Drag Week that he was sharing with his Dad, three uncles and cousin...he was also sharing it with his Step Dad. James Rawlins was well known to all of us long before he started dating Dale's x-wife, as gear head drag racers in a small town are a pretty tight knit group. They get along just fine, and both of them have stayed in their lanes when it came to raising the young man, so there would be zero tension on that front. James was riding shotgun with his boss, who brought a screaming yellow 2013 Zl-1 Nickey Camaro, which was pro-charged and nitroused.

As luck would have it, when I gave Lonnie the thumbs up to get back in line, I was paired with Jay and the Yellow Camaro. Just what I needed, more pressure. All those Chevy boys I grew up with in Oklahoma and street raced in my formative years, would all hear about this one, guaranteed!

Jay gave me a strange look as we approached the water and the first thing that went through my mind was, "I wonder if he thinks I pulled out of line just to get paired with him?"

I did my burn out in second gear, went to nuetral, cleared the engine, then purged the nitrous in the motor. I didn't like the way it hit, so I purged it again, then dropped it in low and staged. I'd decided I wasn't going to attempt using the trans-brake, so I could concentrate on getting on the nitrous at the correct time, with my hand on the shifter.
I left soft, the car left soft, but when I hit the nitrous, it started tiptoeing the front tires across the tarmac. Once I was in second the engine started popping in the exhaust. In all my years of running spray, and hearing other cars sound that way, this is the first time it had ever happened to me, but it was pulling hard so I stuck with it until just after a thousand foot. As soon as I lifted off the juice the engine cleaned right up and sounded fine to the stripe.
I hadn't seen the Camaro all the way down, but he was beside me pretty quick in the shutdown area, so I figured the victory wasn't a huge one.

The bottom pic is by Will McDougle and is courtesy of 1320 Video. I never crop a logo off a pic, but it in this case it was necessary to center the pic and make it fit this web site.