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27/09/2005 WHAT, MORE RAIN? Ironic really, here we are in the UK facing water restrictions and the 2005 European Championship has been the most disrupted in living memory because of rain. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the sunroof in my bunk has a slight leak. I lie there around midnight listening to the rain falling on the truck roof and drift off feeling smug that I’m not under canvas like some of our crew. 4am and it’s a different story. The damp patch in my sleeping bag starts way down below and ends just below the shoulder blades. Not enough to be saturated of course but sufficient to leave a cold streak right down the back. I bet formula 1 teams don’t have to contend with this. Still, the happy campers would be lucky to escape drowning later on. We arrived at different times but were all present and correct by late Thursday evening. The more numerate amongst us had calculated that we only needed to qualify 3rd to take the championship. We had hoped to take a commanding lead in the championship sooner!! and then intended to get our best toys out to play with at both Gardermoen and The Finals. Excessive precipitation (i.e. p*ssing down with rain) ensured that nothing would be settled at least until the first round of eliminations at The Finals. The bright sunshine of Thursday continued into Friday and even lasted for our first qualifier. You must know by now that we always start qualifying with a conservative tune-up and this one was true blue Tory with a 5.59 @ 246mph. There was a lot of tyre shake and the tyres were blistered having made a grand total of just 3 runs. Our time was a little disappointing but quickly became downright depressing when Krister Johannson ran an astounding 5.49. Oh b*gger, can’t blame the track then. We always knew Krister would come good once he got that A-fuel car sorted but why now? Cool heads prevailed and some changes were made to the tune-up for Q2. The beaming smiles at the shutdown area outshone the continuing sunshine as Dave knocked out a 5.49 @ 257mph. Our 5.49 was 3 thousandths lower that Krister’s so we had taken no1 qualifier and then…....it rained. It continued to rain throughout Saturday and qualifying was effectively finished after just 2 rounds. You shouldn’t worry about us being bored however as Dave has us changing the cylinder heads on the car every 4 hours. We think he’s a fan of Jose Mourinho and runs a rotation system on the heads so that those stored in the truck don’t feel left out. The rain became torrential and both Ricky’s and Harry’s tents were waterlogged. So much so that Sue Callin stopped in the fire-up road and took a photograph. The hospitality area at the back of our pit was under 4 inches of water. It was still raining Sunday morning and racing looked to be a million miles away. Time for more bench racing, a quick change of the cylinder heads and then some discussion with Andy Robinson about his run data. Apparently his last run had been described by someone as being a bit ‘gay’ in 2nd gear. We told him to use oil rather than Vaseline in the gearbox. Presumably his rear end wasn’t too soft! The Santa Pod crew worked wonders and by late Sunday racing was on. This was an incredible achievement after first starting preparation work at 4:30 in the morning. We had the opportunity to watch some early runs and decided to make some last-minute changes to our tune-up in order to back it off a little. The tannoy had announced that we had won the European Championship but we wanted the event win and to overpower the track by being too aggressive would be foolish. Our opponent was the TMD rookie John Parkinson and whilst he and his crew were delightful neighbours in the pits they made it quite clear they would happily take the win if we were to red light or break or go up in smoke. Thankfully everything was fine and we took the win in 5.56 seconds to guarantee the championship and thus give us the opportunity to play a little harder in a bye in the semi-final. The blistered tyres were changed and the tune-up adjusted to be a lot more aggressive. In fact we were digging deep into the toy box. It was 8pm and dark by the time of the semis and we towed into a highly-charged atmosphere in the fire-up road, surrounded as we were by doorslammers and dragsters gleaming under the artificial lights. Krister was now too close for comfort and we knew his A-Fuel car had the potential to go a lot quicker. Dave made his customary strong burnout and staged without delay. The next couple of seconds seemed to pass in slow motion as the car left the line with blistering pace and just as quickly began to slow with showers of sparks falling from the bottom of the car. We drove to the recovery area to find the diaper on fire. This was quickly extinguished by the Pod crew and we towed back to the pits at speed. The car was in a sorry state. The blower was lying loose on the top of the engine having sheared its mounting bolts and the belt was shredded. Removing the bellhousing resulted in clinking and clanking as metal pieces dropped on to a catch tray. A piece of the clutch pressure plate had decided to part company with its colleagues and then proceeded to smash itself into everything else in close proximity. The decision was taken to try to fix the car for the final. The ACI team flew into action but it was all to no avail as the 9pm curfew was approaching and the TMD finalists were called. Rob Turner had no option but to stage alone and take the win. Just to make a point we continued to work and at 9:20 pm we fired the car up and went through a warm-up routine. In 50 minutes we had repaired the blower mountings, carried out a full race service and replaced the damaged flywheel/clutch assembly. The data graphs for the last run were amazing and confirmed our launch had put us on track for a very good time. No fishermens’ stories here about the one that got away, we didn’t clock a time and that was that. We celebrated Dave becoming European Champion for the third time in a row and reflected on a season with many high points but also some lows. Most of the lows were of course weather-related but we have also lost several drag racers this year and our team especially remembers Dennis Stone. The Wilson family remembers him well and his passing leaves a gap that cannot be filled. We move on to the British Championship at the Pod in a few weeks time, hope to see you there and, as always, thank you for your support.
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