Billy, you doing any local racing. I haven't been out in years.

Chuck O',
I've got four cars that are toys, and trying to throw money and time at all of them, means not much gets done, and I'm getting lazy(er). In 2016 I did The March Meet at Bakersfield, three races at Firebird-WHP, and one in Tucson. This year, I've been to Firebird-WHP once. Mix in a few local car shows and cruises since all my junk has tags now.

I took the hemi Model A to Tucson last weekend to the reunion. I wasn't to sure the field mice hadn't eaten the Colt, so when I got home Sunday, I looked in the box. It was still there under about 4 inches of dust.

One of the benefits of the long oil downs for those watching the live feed at home is that they mix in little features and interviews that were shot earlier in the day. Elana Scherr did an excellent one comparing Hemi Joel's survivor 67 Hemi GTX drop top to David Meyer's custom 66 TT Hemi Belvedere. I've posted a screen shot, showing the time and video so you can chase it down if you wish, definitely worth the time!

Teri Skrab's Spirit R/T followed the Daytona with a 13.33-102, her best pass of Drag Week by a half second, so with half of the Mopar Turbo crew down the track, it looked as though they would escape with one pass each, and be on their way. The second half of the six car effort didn't go as planned however. The sticky tire rule plagued Marybeth in her AWD Talon all week, as it seems she needed tire spin to get up on the engine. She bogged horribly and went 13.62-120, then Pat Culkin, who's 88 Shadow had been in the twelves all week, stumbled to a 15.30-95. Warren Hall's Shelby CSX left the line so poorly that he took the short push-off road at about 40 feet out and looped back around to the pits!

James Sandlin's first pass of the day in his low thirteen second 2013 Ram wasn't what he was looking for, so he made his way back for the final all-run session as well. Dillon Ogle closed out the SME session, as just one of three or four cars that were able to get a second hit, and he laid down a very nice 11.83-113 to put Indy in the books. It was 1:05 in the afternoon when the second session mercifully closed, the call went out for the all-run final session, and finally some Gebhartmobiles could make their way towards the staging lanes!

Great pics Billy it is great to relive the whole week, when you are there it seems like everything is a blur!

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me walking the lanes was just how many cars (besides us) hadn't been down the track yet. Garry Ross Jr. had taken over the driving duties from his sister Addie in their Dad's Falcon Wagon, and he ran 9.71-137. After two years, and two different power adders Terry Keifer finally got a ten out of his beautiful Barracuda, with a 10.92-122.5. Derek appeared to run his Land Cruiser on the 408 only, deciding not to abuse it any further, settling for a smooth 12.39-107.
We had all our junk in the lanes, so it was just a matter of waiting our turn, and none of us could really expect more than one opportunity to get it right.

Up next was John Faraone's 72 Valiant Charger. The twin turbo, Predator headed Mopar had made the trip to Drag Week for the fifth time, and it took a last ditch 16 second run to keep him in competition the day before, so everyone was in anticipation to see if they had it straightened out. John is his own worst enemy on Drag Week, because he swings for the fences every single time he stages the car. He runs Methanol, so he was moved from Pro Street Power Adder to Unlimited a few years back when the rules changed. In 2013, with a finishing average of 10.71-143.8, he had a best run of 7.85-182 which stood as the quickest Drag Week Mopar pass until Matt Blasco's 72 Dart went 7.70-185 in 2015.
John has voiced his displeasure over this fact because he ran a 7.49-189, and a 7.43-192 in 2015, but those numbers aren't included since he was a DNF. There was also speculation, innuendo, rumors and accusations that he was "Tipping the Can" to get those numbers, but we may never know.

The burnout looked like all business, though his crewman backed him up about a foot and half to the right of the rubber he had just put down. The 4100lb beast left hard though, and the typical black smoke that the turbo guys belch when they are fat was nonexistent. In total, it was a beautiful run and the numbers bore that out: 7.65-182! He was one drive and one more pass away from once again owning the quickest Mopar pass on Drag Week!

Great story as usual, Billy!

For those of you who can't look away from a train wreck, here is the easy link to the video of Elaina interviewing me and David. Not that I have it saved in my favorites or anything...


https://youtu.be/roUjDqgDiv4

Joel,
If they've stuck with this story so far...it's safe to say they enjoy a good train wreck!

Just when it looked like we were going to get through some cars in a hurry, Colorado's Darryl Yost pulled up in his small tire 69 Chevelle with it's Pro-Charged 540 BBC. Now, last year Darryl's Chevelle featured a G-Force 5 speed behind said BBC, so it was understandable that it used up a little more than the 1320 on each pass, but for 2016 he opted for a power glide. Unfortunately he never got any advice on suspension tuning, so the thing is still as loose fore and aft as most 396 four speed Chevelles were set up back in the day. The resulting pass saw him miss the 1/8 mile foam blocks by inches, still at full song, tiptoeing down the center stripe. The 1000' blocks weren't so lucky, but he did lift and make it back in his lane after sending them to the great beyond. Maybe the Indy crew has more practice at the former, but I found it odd that they could consistently drag and spray the first 60' in six minutes, but it took eleven to replace two dead foam blocks! It was 1:41pm, and the prevailing consensus was that we would be shut down by three...I was starting to get nervous!

A couple of pairs later Drag Week went full on Freak Show when Greg Trapnell pulled up in his "three wheel motion" purple, injected, on nitrous, Holden Monaro beside Vinnie Barbone's outrageous 454 SBC powered Geo Tracker. This kind of crazy stuff only happens on Drag Week. Vinnie fed a plate nitrous system through his small block and delivered on his promise of a nine second Tracker with a 9.91-133. Trapnell let the Tracker leave first, then ran him down on a great pass, but a hot dog wrapper through the lights scrapped his ET. slip!

Finally we were moving towards the burnout box. For some reason, David Kirwan in the red HellCat Challenger was only two sets ahead of Rachael, and was making his first pass of the day as well. The 11.346-122.86 that he accepted and turned in basically bumped him out of the quick 32, following the 11.08 from the day before, his second attempt was an 11.37-119 just eighteen minutes after the first, and supercharged cars, even modern ones, notoriously dislike being hotlapped. Rachael made a clutch, picture perfect pass in the Belvedere, with an 11.57-119.2, so I breathed a little easier in my helmet. I was in the right lane, and as I eased into the water I looked to the left and realized I was paired with the red 34 HotRod of John Pfister!
"This is going to be interesting", I thought to myself. Pfister would be looking for a 10.00, so if I could lay down another 9.60, I'd be driving around him at some point.

I felt good, and relaxed as I started my burnout. I had a perfect plan to just repeat the second run from yesterday, "Light foot brake, leave with the front barely off the ground, grab the nitrous about ten feet out when the front end settles, short shift and let it eat!"

I came out of the burnout, stopped about twenty feet from the beams, turned on the nitrous, and purged the system into the idling engine. "Yeah, Buddy, that sounded good!" Once more for emphasis and I was convinced she was clean and ready to fly.

We rolled up to the tree, and he turned on his top bulb. I turned mine on and brought the rpm up a little as I was preparing to stage second, and wanted to be somewhat ready for the Pro tree. He didn't stage,"One thousand one, one thousand two..WTH!"
I looked over at him, and there he sat, giving me a big ole stinkeye!

Back in my Super Street days, you usually just pulled up and done your thing, time runs, or eliminations, and everyone was pretty respectful. But if it was personal, if there was some "juice" associated with a match up, guys would pre-stage, then wait for you to make eye contact, or make a gesture or point. This was no longer a couple of guys in different classes making time runs to turn in for day 4. He obviously wanted a race, and he was about to get one!
"Oh, heck yeah, it's on now dude!" I felt the rpm creeping up a good 6 or 8 hundred more against the converter than I had planned and my pulse jumped perceptively as I lit the second bulb. He was in, the tree flashed, I was at WOT... and I got treed...bad!

In heads up, pro tree racing, you train yourself to immediately look over at your opponent as soon as you react to the light so you can determine who has the tree, as that may determine how you race the stripe. When I glanced over he had a half car on me, very ugly!

I have to explain something, for those of you who might have never driven a ladder bar car that does wheelies on a regular basis. I've had three, The 73 Cuda, which sat up high, had no wheelie bars and was an absolute joy to drive, once I put good adjustable shocks on the front. Dale's 100 inch wheelbase AMX, that had wheelie bars, and the Valiant. Usually they go as high as they are going to on the initial hit, and if it's a good one, they may carry it out a ways before they come down, or the horizon of the track might just disappear for a half-second. It's great fun really, but on occasion...exactly three times in my life, the car rotates up initially, then you get this eerie foreboding sensation that the rear end is driving under you...that, that is not fun!

As soon as I glanced back to look down track, the racing surface and the walls disappeared from my view over the front of the hood. I realized I was on the nitrous...and must've been right from the hit, I couldn't recall when my hand had squeezed the button. I felt the car still rotating up, so I shifted to second and lifted off the nitrous, but never considered lifting my foot at all. It seemed to hang forever, time stood still as I stared at blue sky, but finally I could feel it coming back down...fast! I grabbed the button again to try to mitigate the impact.

When the front end touched back down, it bottomed out pretty hard and rebounded back up a bit, so I lifted off the nitrous just long enough to check the oil pressure as I feared for the oil pan. I saw a flash of red to my left as the 34 Coupe was pulling away, so I shifted to third, grabbed the nitrous again, and gave chase.

My 10.03-135 to his 10.16-133, but he'd killed me on the tree (he went .012 on a four tenths pro tree, in a street rod!) and took the stripe by a full car! Very, very disheartening. I tried to show Rachael my time slip but my hands were shaking so bad I was embarrassed.
"They aren't shutting the lanes off for another fifteen minutes", She tried to encourage me, "You can go back up and get your nine!"
"Oh, no...my day is most certainly done!"

Very cool!

There are a TON of subtle things done to David's Bel... spent a good hour looking it over at the hotel one night/morning



The 66-67 B's were out in force it seemed...

ice in veins Billy super street racer wouldn't have let that happen... guess we'll just call you pudding now.

I have too much respect for Billy to call him Pudding. It's Mr. pudding.