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12/11/2003 FEAR OF FLOATING IN LAS VEGAS This season quite a few of my race reports have started with some kind of waffle about how great life is and what a fortunate set of circumstances we have found ourselves in. Well today definitely takes the biscuit. We are here in the pits of Pomona Raceway, California ahead of the NHRA Finals, having just traveled down here from the last Division 7 race at Las Vegas where we just ran. As those of you who keep an eye on eurodragster.com will know, after a lot of help from Air Sea Logistics in the UK and Sanko, Inc. in the US our truck made it out of the docks in Miami, Florida on the 21st of October. Then Dave and David set off on their 2,500 mile trip across the country to Las Vegas, eating greasy hamburgers at lonely truck stops and chatting on the CB with the real truckers. Luckily for me I got the plum job of going to the national event at Vegas that precedes the divisional event to arrange supplies, collect parts and check out the track. And what an awesome event it was; 60 nitro cars, several 330 mph runs and the pleasure of watching Tony Pedregon stuff Whinin' Whit Bazemore for the 2003 Funny Car championship and really give the miserable sod something to moan about… The day after that event ended our rig rolled in to town. It was a very surreal experience indeed to see our "ugly little Swedish truck" (as one trucker rather harshly described it) trundling along The Strip and into the Motel 6 where Jenn and I were staying, which incidentally must be the only in the world with a flashing neon sign. After we'd exchanged lots of tall stories about our exploits in this crazy country, eaten and slept it all off, we spent the next day pottering around getting everything we needed before heading out to the track. It's interesting how everyone over here actually knows what drag racing is and how many of them have been out to the races. We went to a truck repair place to try to have the blown exhaust on our tractor unit fixed up and the shop foreman turned out to be part owner of an alcohol funny car team. And the guy we dealt with at the US Department of Transport when getting clearance to use our rig over here was part of the team that ran the first 180 mph pass by a Chevy powered dragster way back when. Once the exhaust was sorted out, we had raided the local grocery store for 3 carts of supplies and had some guys with very long brushes wash the whole rig. With everything ready to go and an evening to kill it was time for a night out in Vegas. After riding the New York New York rollercoaster and wasting a few dollars in the horrendously expensive bar there, we headed down the strip to watch the Bellagio water show. Now this is a truly impressive display of water whooshing in time to music, and it's all free. I understand there are about ten different shows performed randomly so we were a little cheesed off that the one we saw was accompanied by that wailing banshee, Celine Dion. Still beggars can't be choosers and after a tasty meal and more dollars wasted in the slot machines we had had more than enough of Vegas and were well and truly ready to go racing. On Wednesday morning (after we had collected our old buddy and returning crew member for the weekend, Fred Wilbanks, from the airport) we finally rolled through the gates of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and managed to blag a pit spot big enough to erect our awning, which is way oversized by NHRA standards. It didn't take long to get set up and perform all the necessary servicing on the car and so of course it wasn't long before we were meandering around the pits drinking beer and bench racing with a whole new bunch of cronies before calling it a night. When we built our new rig we put in sleeping accommodation, so we will be staying in it at the track during this NHRA tour rather than fork out for hotels. And it's a good job we were staying at the track this time because during the night one hell of a windstorm picked up. If we hadn't been around to tie everything heavy we had to the canopy it would have been tossed off quicker than the clientele in some of Vegas' seedier establishments… The awful flapping and banging outside kept us all awake most of the night, except for our guest crew member, Dave Smith from Classic American magazine, whose ability to sleep like the dead amazed us throughout the weekend. It really was brutal weather with gusts over 80mph. Several other teams lost their awnings, several port-a-loos made journeys of hundreds of yards across the parking lot and for a while it seemed as if our whole truck was just going to blow away. The whole day on Thursday was much the same and a lot of the qualifying scheduled for that day was cancelled because of the high winds. We did at least manage to pass tech inspection, get registered and collect all the necessary stickers ready to participate in the first Top Alcohol dragster (yep, we're a TAD once again over here) qualifying session the next day. Thankfully the winds dropped down in the evening and we all got some much needed sleep, while Dave S just got even more sleep. When I went to set up the laptops on Friday morning I discovered they were missing. I was certain I had packed them in the normal place and they were nowhere to be seen in the trailer. Unfortunately we had to come to the conclusion that whilst the trailer and keys were out of our possession while the rig was in the docks some **** had pinched them. Everyone knows you keep back ups of important computer files but when someone steals both the original and back up machines what can you do? Two years of Racepak downloads lost just like that. So if, by some fluke, the guilty party happens to reading this I hope next time you're at the docks you fall in and drown you ****… Anyway we managed to get hold of spare laptops to use and were soon ready to go. After a nice, strong warm up we loaded up our tow truck, went to the staging lanes with the 21 other alcohol dragsters entered for this 8 car field, and then waited for over 2 hours whilst several Z Stock cars made a mess of the track ahead of us. After what seemed like an eternity waiting around we finally got out on the start line ready to fire up when the TAD in front of us oiled down the track too! This meant that the chief NHRA commentator and all around good guy Bob Frey spent most of the clean up hyping us up and interviewing Anthony on the PA. After all this talk there was even more pressure on us not to screw up and we were all a little nervous when we got the signal to go. Over here dilly-dallying on the track is severely frowned upon. You fire up, you burnout, you back up, you stage, you run and you get off the track as quickly as reasonably possible. So what we really wanted to do was lay down a tidy pass, not get told off by any officials and not make a mess of the track. Also, the track at Vegas is concrete for the first eighth-mile and seemed totally different to anything we had run on before. Bearing all this in mind we dialed in a middle of the road tune up and were delighted the car pounded out a very nice 5.519 at 258.71. Not bad for our first run, we thought, and a stout speed at a track that is over 2000 feet above sea level. The motor looked sweet when we checked it; none of the bearings had grown by even half a thousandth of an inch. Plus, once the session finished, we were in the show in the number seven spot, much to our surprise. So that evening we were all feeling pretty chipper and it was great the way all the US racers were congratulating us and really making us feel at home. I'd like to say right here that you hear a lot of talk back home about how the NHRA racing is all about money and how the teams don't help each other out. That's crap. We have been made to feel really welcome by a group of people that only spend more money because they run more races and they are just as die hard as any European racer. Plus we have been offered help if we need it from just about everyone we've spoken to out here and every single one of them has wished us luck. The fact that there are so many cars competing just to get in the field, with no bye runs on offer means everyone just wants to race. We found it very refreshing to be a small part of something big rather than a big part of something small… At the end of a very satisfying day we went to bed really excited about what we may be able to run during the final two qualifying sessions on Saturday. Dave S was so excited he could barely sleep, but in the end he managed to get 11 hours kip in. The track condition was awesome on that first pass so for the Saturday morning session we really went for it, putting in the most aggressive gear ratios we could find. Rather than just take a swing at the fence, we climbed in our space rocket and blasted clean over it. If the tyres had stuck by some miracle we would have run the first four second TAD pass no doubt at all, but physics intervened and around 30 feet out they started to smoke and by 60 foot it was all over. Dave backed off and saved the car because he knew we wouldn't improve and eased along to a 6.699 at 158.97. Much to our surprise we stayed in the number seven spot because everyone seemed to be struggling in that session, but we still didn't expect to stay in the show after the final session. Obviously we backed the car down for the last pass but didn't go too far because we wanted to run quick enough to qualify. We did indeed go quicker, but only by a thousandth at 5.518 / 259.16 due to a little shake in first gear. By that point the very amiable, low buck hero Joey Severance had already moved us down to the number eight spot, bumping 2002 US Nationals winner, John Haley out of the field. Unsurprisingly John wanted his spot back because he needed to qualify to stay in the top ten in the national points standings. He carded a 5.49 and bumped us down to the number nine spot where we would stay until all 22 cars had had their go at the track. Although that made us first alternate, nobody withdrew and that was the end of our race weekend in Vegas. Of course we were disappointed, especially because we have made laps quick enough to get in that field previously in Europe, but we had represented ourselves well and had actually out-qualified some big names. 2003 NHRA champion Alan Bradshaw only mustered a 5.53 and Darren Nicholson, Mitch Myers and Darryl Hitchman languished even further back in the order behind us. Once we had the car turned around ready for Pomona we went over to the ½ mile dirt oval next door for the night's World of Outlaws show. Man those guys are crazy! Lap times around that track in the 14 second region - that's an average of over 125 mph! On dirt! In the dark! Plus, being the unscrupulous types that we are, we fooled the lady on the pit gate into thinking our drag strip pit passes were in fact Outlaw pit passes and all got in for nothing. It was a great way to round off a truly enjoyable weekend of racing for us and we didn't even kick up a fuss about paying $5 for a Budweiser in a plastic bottle. Then things got even better when we bumped into fellow TAD racer Greg Tacke and his great bunch of guys on our way back who were very generous with the beer and great company. Then it was on to recent A/FD convert Duane Shields (provider of excellent free hot dogs during the weekend) for some more beer and a very entertaining conversation with our new chums Mark Niver and Jim Rizzoli. We spent Sunday having a lie in (Dave S got his record up to a monstrous 15 hours straight sleep), clearing up ready to leave on Monday and watching the alcohol eliminations. Duane took the win, beating Marty Thacker's TAD in the final when Marty pulled the most awesome, six-foot, eighth-mile wheel stand I have ever seen from an alcohol dragster. That night we headed back to the strip for a fun evening out with Tony from American Car Imports, two of his Canadian suppliers, his outrageous cousin Helen (who seemed much more like a Gloria to us), Kiki from Euro American Car Services and Shirley from Sanko Inc. After a huge meal in the NASCAR café washed down with some rather tasty cocktails called "Burnouts", we piled into a huge stretch limo back to New York New York where we wasted a few more dollars in the machines and even more when we discovered the JD and Coke dispenser. After much fun was had by all we went back to the track and retired to bed ready to get on the road to Pomona in the morning. The journey to LA was a little sad as it took us through some of the area ravaged by the recent forest fires in the San Bernardino area. Thanks to some recent heavy rain they have all now gone out and no more homes or lives are threatened. Like I just said the racing was a truly enjoyable experience, as was the whole trip out to Vegas. Many thanks again to all the people already mentioned as well as Jenn for kindly lending us her pick up to use as a tow car and to Sean Hyland Motor Sport for supporting our US venture. I'll let you in on a secret; I sent this report home at the same time as the Pomona report so if you want to find out what happened there you can click on the appropriate link and read straight on. If you've lost all interest by now, well I'm amazed you made it this far, but thanks for reading anyway...
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