Or so says my brother-in-law.

Apparently mine was at the NHRA Division V Summit ET Finals at Heartland Park Topeka this last weekend. I was running in Sportsman class, had to dial no quicker than 13.00 and the car kept running mid-12.9's in time trials, except when the air was really hot and there was a head wind. Backing off timing, disabling cool air intake, adding weight just didn't seem to make the difference, so I decided to put everything back to "normal" and be ready on the brakes. Only turned out to be an issue in the first round at 8 a.m. Sunday, after that it warmed up 20 degrees and we had a 10-15 mph head wind for the rest of the day.

88 cars in Sportsman, 7 rounds to win. I won't bore you with all the details, but the 1st round was a pure gift (I had a horrible light, but the other guy, 3rd gen 'Bird, didn't back off enough and broke out more than me - I guess I was sitting in his blind spot). I had to race the next 4, RT's were better, but then I got a bye into the finals. I was up against a sandbagger in the finals, I dialed .05 soft, mashed the brakes at the traps and took the win light.

Heading to Pomona in November for the Nationals!

 

Congratulations on the win! Are any tracks around you open in October for you to stay sharp?

 

Bandimere is running a Fall series through October 10th. Most likely I won't be involved after the 1st, though. According to the information they gave me, we'll get 2 time trials on Friday, 1 on Saturday, with eliminations on Sunday. Guess that will have to do.

 

WooHoo! A free ticket to Pomona. Too bad you're going to lose against a div 6 car You'll be able to dial down when there. They allow a lower ET to compensate for cars like yours that race at higher altitudes and will run quicker at the lower altitude.

One of our local/regional bike riders won the honor last year or the year before that. I can't remember. He said it was a blast.

 

nice!

 

Congratulations and best of luck in Pomona.

 

Actually, you don't get the money until you arrive. But...

We'll see. The pairings are by random drawing, with the first name pulled getting a bye.

According to the information they gave me about the Nationals, Sportsman is 13.00 to 19.99 - so, I'll have to dial no quicker than 13.00, same as Topeka.

Must have been the year before. They said the defending bike champ was at Topeka this weekend. 3 of the guys I raced came up afterward and told me they had gone to Pomona themselves. They agreed with your biker's assessment. Our track had the Super Pro champ last year, he went out in the 3rd or 4th round at Topeka, but stuck around to help me out in the later rounds. Apparently, when my win light came on, he was observed jumping up and down under the tower. He was the one that suggested the sandbag-busting strategy to me.

Oh, I also got my first 12-sec timeslip during time trials on Thursday (actually had 5 Thursday, 2 more on Friday & Saturday even though I was trying to slow it down). I wasn't trying to see how fast it could go. This was all through the mufflers, which are required at Pomona. If I still had the Bullets on, it probably would have been a tenth quicker.

 

One of the reasons I'm skipping most of the fall racing is I'm getting my left knee scoped on Oct 5. Doc assures me it will be good to go by the 2nd week of November.

 

I was wondering why. I've sorta been following your season both on here and back on burnoutbox.com before. I know that making it to the ET finals was you're goal. Did you go last year too?

Sportsman is 13.00-19.99? Our local rules allow anything 12.00 and slower without electronics. The winner was a low 12-second car and the runner up was a high 21-second Cutlass.

EDIT: I hope your surgery goes well and that you recover fast. At least its your left knee.

 

I made it in 2002 (Topeka) and 2003 (Bandimere).

Tracks can do whatever they want. At the regionals and nationals, NHRA sets the standards. For Div V, Sportsman said 13.00 and slower (amoung other things), but for Pomona they also added the 19.99 slow end and require mufflers.

The surgery and recovery had better go well. I use the left foot to hold the brake when I stage. R/T's using only the right foot, dropping off the brake and hitting the throttle, would probably not be pretty (even worse than my first round Sunday... ).

 

I guess I knew that tracks can do whatever they want but I never really thought about the possibilty that our rules wouldn't follow NHRA standards for the ET Finals. Our track is way in the middle of nowhere; the Division 6 ET Finals in Misson, B.C. are a 2 thousand mile round trip and usually only about 5 cars make the journey. Anyone who wants can go because the demand is so low.

 

Because our track has gone IHRA, a few racers went to Mission and represented either Saskatoon or Medicine Hat as their NHRA track. They only had to race there once or twice to qualify.

One of our Jr Dragster racers runnered up in Lightning representing Saskatoon in the Race of Champions.

 

Are these racers from Calgary? I don't recognize the names...

Andy Scheu - Super Pro
Melissa Scheu - Jr.Dragster
Cody Scheu - Jr. Dragster
Mark Hall - Bike
Jason Mercer - Super Pro or and Sportsman

 

The first 3 are (father and 2 of his children). Andy owns Unlimited Performance here in Calgary. www.unlimitedperformance.com I don't recognize the other 2.

Good thing we helped out but it's still a long haul from Calgary to Mission

The west coast racers always complain about having to pull over the mountains to come to Calgary for one race a year. If we want to compete in the points series we have to do that long pull over the mountains for all but that one race of the year. There's not much incentive to do that pull many times a year. Went I went to the bracket finals a few years ago in Yakima Wa, it was a 16 hour one way trip and I did it non stop by myself.

They need the incentive like IHRA did for Edmonton. If you go to the IHRA national race in Edmonton, you can get bonus points in the series. That makes the incentive for the IHRA east coast racers to come this way to race. If they didn't get the extra points, they wouldn't make that long haul.

The only way NHRA or IHRA could make this work is to form another division. It would have to include the 3 praire provinces plus a few of the northern states since we're all so spread apart. The track in Acton Montana is in div 6. That's a longer pull from someone in Mission that it is to here. http://www.raceimsp.com/ They've got a real nice looking track. If another division was ever started up for all these northern tracks, it should probably include tracks in the Dakotas and probably MN.

We're never going to see it happen though. Calgary and Edmonton are both IHRA now and have no plans on going back to NHRA. Medicine Hat is NHRA but it's a club owned, grass roots track that's happy with the way it operates. The track in Fort McLeod http://www.telusplanet.net/public/tb.../tailwind.html is still trying to raise the money to actually build the track. They already have the land.

The latest news is that the small town of Rimby Alberta (NW of Red Deer) will be building a motorsports complex. 1/4 mile concrete track, paved and dirt oval, motocross track, demo derby track. There's no word on a completion date yet or that they're even started but town councel wants to build it. We also don't know if the dragstrip will be affiliated with IHRA or NHRA. I would have to assume they're going to be IHRA since they're situated between Calgary and Edmonton. If so then the IHRA circuit could have 3 tracks to attend on a westward swing in the future. That would help bring more east coast racers out here since the west coast ones don't want to attend.

 

People complain about coming out here, and next year Div V is in Brainerd. I've already heard several Bandimere racers say they won't go there (we'll see if they follow through with that when the time comes).

Viking is in Div V, and although I don't know how many racers came, they did earn 4 points this year - same as Western Colorado, and one more than Sturgis.

NHRA has minimum facility standards that tracks have to meet in order to host the division finals. So far, only Heartland Park, Bandimere, and Brainerd meet those standards, although I hear there is lobbying to let others do so since they meet most of the requirements.

 

Per Oct 1, 2004 "National DRAGSTER" Div 6 finals article: Robert Classen, Woodburn Dragstrip. Drives a mid-14-sec '92 'Stang (at least that's what it was running at the finals in Vancouver - doesn't show up on the NHRA elevation correction chart, so I assume he'll be running close to that in Pomona). Had an .049 light in the finals, averaged .045 in 6 rounds (He called that being "on the tree".) Says he's going to drive the car to Pomona - nice touch for Sportsman, should enable him to take home a little more of the $3500.

 

Interesting - that story doesn't line up at all with the on-line version. And, one page over from the Sportsman story, they show a picture of someone else they call the Sportsman champ, which is in line with the on-line story.

Me thinks ND just pulled a 60-Minutes...