I consider coffee to be one of the six essential food groups. So when I woke up Tuesday morning with less than 5 hours of sleep and no water, I was highly motivated to get out of that place and get somewhere where I could buy coffee. It's a good thing reaction time doesn't matter at drag week, because I didn't end up taking a break and finding some coffee until after I had made my pass!

Since the pass on Monday had gone so well, and I felt there was opportunity to get the car into the nines, I did what any normal racer would do. I changed my launch RPM from 4600 to 5000 RPM. One thing I quickly learned the hard way though, is that one of the settings on the clutch tamer has a tendency to vibrate out of whack on the street drive. So the perfect setting on Monday, unbeknownst to me, no longer existed on Tuesday. Hence the clutch slippage at launch.

Also, like Jeff mentioned, on that pass at Norwalk Tuesday morning the car started to lay down on the big end again, so I got out of it. I wasn't sure why it did this when it ran so nice on Monday. But after the long, strenuous day on the road Monday, and with no chance of changing my second place to a first, I thought it was best to turn in the slip and get on the road now and figure out the problem later. The most important thing on drag week once you have your time slip turned in, is surviving the trip to the next track. And hopefully get to the hotel and get any maintenance done and get any changes done, and still allow time for some sleep. Any changes to the car for the sake of gaining performance on the track can wait until after we have made the trip. With this early start on the drive I was optimistic about getting into the hotel early, enjoying a nice dinner with the trunk monkey and some fellow drag weekers, (hopefully I would get chance to buy dinner for Matt and Lance to show my gratitude for all the help they gave us yesterday) and then getting a much needed eight hours of sleep! Plus the drive would give me time to contemplate why the car faltered again and what I was going to do about it.

At Norwalk, while I was wandering around trying to figure out where I turned in my time slip, I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I turned around and there was my old pal Dave Dudek, who I haven't seen in at least a couple of years. It was a pleasant surprise to see him there! We did some very brief catching up, but I knew if I didn't get back to the pits soon, I'd be subject to a severe tongue lashing by the impatient trunk monkey!

Here is Tuesdays pass:

https://youtu.be/_1NTYO_a5NY?t=3891