Yup made a couple of more passes with launches in a more reasonable 4000 RPM range.
The next week at a local track that also doesn't car care of their track -- I took 16-year-old Dallas to get use to the Trans-brake button before the trip to Florida the following week.
This is a old track in the country that occasionally has cows crossing it. It isn't NHRA sanctioned -- and anything goes, including drunk redneck 4X4 races.
Anyway -- two drunk rednecks in the pits decide to find out if a Ford 4X4 is faster than a Chevy 4X4 and get inline right in front of Dallas in the black Coronet. To that point -- mid 12s was as fast as Dallas had gone.
Anyway -- these guys are doing there burnouts while screaming Yahoooo and waving the Beers out of the driver's windows. They line up and when they go -- the Ford in the left lane in front of Dallas has all kind of wheel spin and hop, the tail gate drops, and huge chunks of dried mud drops all of the way down the track.
So what does a responsible track do with a 16-year-old kid in a 9-second car about to make his first trans-brake launch ever? They wave him up as if nothing had just happened. I'm sitting on the top bleacher in the stands so I can watch from that angle -- and start running down bleachers two at a time screaming STOP. As I get to the bottom bleacher Dallas launches and immediately has to correct. About 100' he hits this mud clod about the size of a halfed basketball and you see the dust smoke from that. His car gets a little side ways and he stayed in it much to my horror.
I ran back to the trailer to wave him all of the way onto it -- as his racing night for staying in it (plus the track being so screwed up) was over. The next time he drove that car was at Frank Hawleys. We had to hot lap the poor car to get five good passes out of six attempts.
He was after me, and his sixth pass was after mine and he blew a freeze plug 3/4 of the way down and got in his water. I was fortunate that Frank passed him as there was no runs left in the car. Neither of us had to make any do overs -- while virtually everyone else was having to buy extra passes at $250 a rattle. A lot of people that showed up treated it more as an amusement park ride than getting a license. Most didn't pass as their money ran out before skills kicked in. I've never seen so many people have such a hard time with the concept of a trans-brake -- especially in as easy of a car (compared to the Coronet) that the tube chassis Firebird was. |