I know everyone is familiar with the phrase good new and bad news, well I guess that is the best way to sum up the race in Phoenix.
The weekend started off with the bad news: rain. It rained all day Friday. Now, everyone says it never rains in Phoenix but I beg to differ. When we were there a month ago for testing it rained all day one day and we lost a day of testing. Then it rained all day on the Friday of the race, washing out another full day. You are going to have a hard time convincing me of the "it never rains in Phoenix" thing!
I think it changes the dynamics of the weekend a great deal when you lose qualifying on Friday, when you are faced with only having two runs to qualify instead of the normal four your game plan changes dramatically. It is especially difficult when you are sorting out a new combination and need all the runs you can get to help get your car straightened out.
Your mindset goes immediately to "lets just get it down the track so we don't go into the last session not qualified" instead of the normal thought process of going as quick as the conditions allow. Instead of the car being on the edge you back it off and not take any chances.
Here is where the "good news" starts. Well, I guess some good with a little bad. Our first qualifying attempt had the car going down the track very well until once again it threw the blower belt off - the engine is still not happy. It ran a 4.64 at only 260 mph which put us 7th after the first session and safely in the field.
When you are safely in the field you can be more aggressive and we were on the last run. We ran a pretty good 4.54 at 329 mph which was better. The engine was still not happy and hurt itself. The good news is that it ran 329 mph, the blower belt stayed on and we think based on the fact that it went 329 and was not happy it should really run fast when we get it figured out. We are guessing the thing may really surprise some people by running upwards of 336-337 mph!!!
We ended up in the 7th qualifying position and would face Cory McClenathan first round. Cory and I used to play little league together back in California. He was coming off a final round appearance at the last race so we knew would have our hands full.
The good news-bad news theme continued in round 1 on Sunday. While the good news is we got the win light, the car only ran a 4.59. The bad news was it ran very slow through the middle of the track and we didn't know why. We made some changes for our second round opponent David Grubnic to try and fix the problem and hoped for the best.
The bad news once again is we didn't fix the problem. In fact it got worse. The car slowed to a 4.62, was even worse through the middle, and we got blasted by Grubnic's great 4.49. When we got back from the run and downloaded the computer we were really dumbfounded by what we saw. After discussing it for a while, we have decided it must be an ignition problem. And as I stare out into the shop right now I can see the guys stripping the car from one end to the other. We are going to replace everything on the car relating to the ignition system and get our act ready for the Gainesville race coming up in two weeks.
I do feel we are making some progress on getting the car to run very well. Sometimes when you make changes in an effort to improve you take one step backwards for every two you take forward and we are definitely doing that now. We may try and test the car out if we are able to before the Gainesville race, just to make sure we have found the source of our problem. As tough as Top Fuel series is right now we can't afford to come to any race unsure of our performance.
Thanks for reading,