Not a very stellar start considering last season's ending.

1st race on 4/22, won 1st round handily, 2nd round got treed by 4 hundredths, usually good enough for 2nd round. Of course, he went out in the next round.

4/29 race was rained/snowed out. I'm tied for 17th place in season points (with 16 others...).

Yesterday I went to a non-points race just to get some seat time. 20 mph gusting head wind, not a bracket racer's idea of good racing conditions. Time trials were within a hundredth of each other, though, and I think I've finally got a staging routine worked out for decent RT's. Dialed the slower time for 1st round against a '91 L98 Camaro who dialed 16.30 - he cut a .105 light, I was happy to see a green in my lane. Got the win, looked at the time slip - oops, I treed him by .104 (I didn't think I was trying that hard). 2nd round paired up with a '62 Chevy 409 dialing a 13.60, I dialed one hundredth slower just in case, our RT's were .033 & .034 (me slower, of course), he backed off at the traps, I backed off 30' later, he drove around me for a .0035 MOV win. Rats! Crunching the numbers I would have run the number.

Next chance for redemption is this Friday.

 

We had our first points race saturday... not to hott of a turnout for me either... red lit first round, which was the first one I've had all season of testing, bought back and ran way off the dial in second round.

I'll be hitting up a couple test and tunes to try and get this all figured out.

 

I did all too many 1st round losses last year, typically on Friday night in one series (the non-Summit ET qualifying series, thankfully), and lost more than I liked with red lights. One of my problems was the brakes slipping in the beams when I staged & stalled, going through the brakes this past winter seems to have helped that. The other was hitting the staged stall speed, which I guessed at a little too much last year, and tended to be too high (hence, along with the pushing in the beams, led to the red lights).

I also discovered during a T&T session this spring that my throttle linkage wasn't straight to the carb, leading to binding when stalling up, exacerabed by loose engine mounts (polys went in this winter). Fixing all that allows me to find the stall sweet spot more easily - although I was still 100 RPMs too high in that 1st round yesterday, and didn't try to adjust it (lights were coming down).

Good thing it's early in the season, right?

 

Damn that sucks, I usually have a hard time backing off unless I'm way out there. Like you said though, the season is early

Steve

 

The wind was gusting from 15 to 25 MPH. Of course, you have no idea when you dial which it was going to be. So, if the wind had died down on me and the other guy had dialed tight, I risked breaking out myself.