I've got a couple of funny ones -- and yes they involve me doing something stupid.
About five years ago, Big Red Ram was still being built and I ran the black Coronet with a tired old 451 and a trans-brake automatic. I'd made arrangements for Dallas and I to go to Frank Hawleys in early February to get our Class IV Comp licenses. In late December they called to firm up the early February class -- and ask how much I weighed. When I said 300 pounds -- they said "Holy Chit -- you'll never fit it our door slammer"
They tried to instead talk me into getting my dragster license -- and cross qualify later. I wasn't interested in that and asked if I could bring my own car. I was told I could -- but that it needed to do at least mid 9s.
The best I'd ever done in the Cornet was a 10.92 -- and that was on a perfect evening. However, I had bought an used Indy 540 motor from Dean Stevens -- and it was in Mark's and Damon's shop -- having Damon look it over.
Mark and Damon told me that they could do a quick engine swap (also required a hood swap) for me and I bought the car up. The next weekend I came up and we were going to take the car to the track (Denton -- which was not known for its fast car friendliness) to see if it would stay together. I'd spent the night up there at Damon's, and in the morning on the way to Marks shop -- is was so cold that we had to leave the truck running for a half hour to let the defrosters melt the ice on the windshield. (We don't have no stinkin ice scrapers in Texas)
When we got to the shop -- Mark was about frozen -- as they'd run out of propane during the night and it was 30 degrees in the house and shop.
By the time we got to the track -- it had finally warmed up to a balmy 38 degrees.
I was a little apprehensive -- as the fastest I'd ever gone in my life was 10.92 and I had no idea what the car would do, plus it was a frozen track, and prep wasn't going to happen as there were only three cars there.
Now the car had a three step MSD 7AL3 -- and I had a 5000 chip in the burnout socket, a 3800 chip in the launch socket, and a 7500 chip in the race slot. My trans-brake button back then (now it is on the shifter) was on the left steering wheel spoke. That was a little bit of a problem -- as I'm a wide body and the net (which I'd never used before) had my left elbow sandwiched between it and my side -- with no room to move my left arm.
So I pull into the water box with a millions things racing through my mind (not a good thing) and do a burnout while Mark is spotting me. Mark doesn't like my burnout and backs me up for another. Then I pulled to the line to stage, push in the trans-brake button, and as soon as the top Yellow lights -- I floor it and let loose of the button when the last yellow lights -- while at the same moment of thinking "man this new engine sounds pretty damn loud and high reving at launch".
Ok -- so you know what the deal was. I wasted my launch step with the second burnout and I launched at the third stage of 7500 RPM. Well the car goes straight up and I immediately shifted to second. When the car came down (pretty hard even though I hadn't lifted) I must have cocked the wheel a little to the left with my steering arm being sandwiched, and so I'm heading towards the wall (I was in the left lane). An over correction and I'm heading towards the reflectors -- and so I finally shut it down at just past the 330 and drove back to the pits.
In the pits was virtually the whole track laughing their asses off at me as I pulled in. Up to that point -- everything had been a reaction (this was the first time in my short career in racing a real race car (raced 14-15 second cars since the early 70s) where I'd ever had trouble with controlling the car) to that point -- but once I got out of the car I finally had a chance to have thought about what had happened and got a little shaky. |