The Springspeed Festival Saturday:
Saturday morning was spent unloading the trailer, getting the car race ready and fitting a new shift light freshly imported from the states; i'd like to thank Clive Bush for sorting us the shift light when he was on holiday in the states, and Derek Flynn of Gold RV Racing for taking the light to the track for us.
When we fitted the shift light we found during the warm up it would work when connected but wouldn't turn on at the correct RPM. After a few hours trying to find the fault we eventually sourced it to one of the magneto's not working, which would also explain why the E.T's during Easter's last 3 runs weren't upto scratch. We thought it would be shift times, but all the incrementals were slower.
After finding that, we wrapped up the rest of the car and made it down for the 2nd session in the afternoon. Shortly before we went to the fireup road, the crew suprised me with our new crew shirts! Here is a posed shot of the crew, i'm strapped in the car unfortunately:
Photo courtesy of Sue Whyte
We were paired with Jim Usher in The Mob, I did the burnout and it went wayward... felt pretty much same like last August bank holiday against Bob Glassup.....
Photo courtesy of Eurodragster
... and I was right. On launch the car went very hard left, missing Jim in the other lane by about 3 feet. Luckily I was very quick out of the hole with a .094 light to his .179 and was able to make enough ground between us to avoid catastrophe, but it was saved, the crowd loved it (where my Mum didn't for the record!) and made the car ready for the next day.
Sunday:
We were originally not going to be making the morning session due to some engine damage on the lane crossing run yesterday, but things turned out well enough for us to make it. Because we originally said we wouldn't but then said we would, the pairings had already been done and we were to run a single. Choosing the other lane this time around I burned the car out to about 100ft.
Photo courtesy of Peter Donaldson
After launching off mild revs, the car just planted and launched really hard. The photo does the launch justice, with both wheels well in the air and the rear slick sidewall actually overlapping itself... crazy! This has got to be by far my favourite photo of the car yet.
Photo courtesy of Peter Donaldson
After the madness of the last run on Saturday we needed a good run, and we got it: 7.37 @ 182mph. Another new personal best E.T and MPH. The best parts of this run was for the day a few friends from my University AND the head of engineering at the university were all in attendance to watch the racing, to record a new P.B in front of them meant alot to me.
After deciding to sit the car out of the afternoon session again we waited to see what would happen on the Monday.
Monday
And what happened on Monday was next to nothing really. It rained all night and well into the morning, the track crew had a fair few attempts to get the track ready and worked tirelessly to get the track ready but it was to no avail. With that said, the car is still ready to go for the next meeting, which isn't for another 7 weeks until mid-June for the Summer Nationals. We look forward to it! Until then.
Joe
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