I got out for the street legal night last night. Official car count through tech was 197 cars. The word is out that the track is shutting down and everyone is making an effort to show they need a place to race. There was also an oval race so I'm guessing there were at least 400 race and spectator cars in the drag pits. Damn spectators just parked everywhere. They all think they can squeeze another car in closer to the entrance so they don't have to walk not realizing that they blocked in a bunch of drag and street racers. Our pits are poorly designed when the main spectator parking lot isn't used.

I made one pass early in the evening. The track was very slick. I got paired up to a roadster and while we were sitting in the water box, we got to watch two street cars spin off the line and fishtail down the track. A new Charger was in the right lane. By the time he got the car under control, he was pointing backwards in the left lane.

The timing lights were screwed up in the left lane. According to the timeslip, I had a 2+ second reaction time and ran slower than the roadster in the other lane. I can only estimate that I ran a low 10 or high 9 second pass based on the roadsters time and knowing he peddled a couple of times. I was spinning all the way down the track but never red lined the engine. It just felt like it never really hooked up. I probably still had better traction that the street cars because of my big tires.

After they ran a few more cars down the track, they shut it down for about an hour to fix the timing system. By the time it was repaired, it was dark and getting cold. I didn't want to try another pass on such a slippery track. I was packed up and snaking my way out of the pits through all the spectator cars around 9pm. I heard they shut it down at 11:20 when a corvette exploded a diff and covered the track with synthetic gear oil.

We have a track rental race coming up this weekend but the long range forecast is predicting snow on Saturday. There's a race in Edmonton tomorrow but there's a very good chance of rain late in the day and I don't feel like a 5 hour round trip to have a rain delay.

That's probably going to be it for the season. Next year they'll have Friday night street legal racing and I can still get some track time but traction will always be poor for proper testing. I now have to travel if I want to race unless new land is located for a new race facility. There's talk of an oil company or 2 (Alberta is oil rich) who wants to invest in a track if land can be located.

Here's the in car video of the run last night. You can see the car moving back and forth as I try to keep it going straight. I never lifted the entire run.

http://videos.streetfire.net/video/C...ing_185450.htm

 

Spectators are clueless, tracks dont care as long as they can pack the spectators in, street nights are and have always been a dangerious waste of time for guys like us that race race.

Too bad it had to go out like that though. Dragstrips are shutting the doors slowly due to lack of interest, which is a damn shame. lottsa folks come out to a T&T, slip and slide like last night with you and get mad and dont want to return, others think it costs too much, but they'll spend much more buying worthless stuff for their car that does nothing but give them something to say they bought. It's too bad, but this is a world wide thing right now.

 

Weather is going to hold out tomorrow. No rain forecast until the evening now so I'm doing the road trip to Edmonton tomorrow. 2 weeks ago, I left the house at 6AM and arrived at the main gate at 8:30 then waited for the fog to lift, track repairs, juniors to run and a couple of other classes that needed to finish off the previous nights racing. I never got on track until just after noon.

Tomorrow, I don't expect to be on the road any earlier than 6:30am and should arrive at the main gate at 9am or a little later. If everything is on time, the juniors should run at 10am still giving me lots of time to get set up. If it's like 2 weeks ago, there will probably be about 50 juniors running or at least seem like 50 of them.

 

I like the jr's and what they're doing for the sport, but as a racer who wants to stay in a zone and win....i think i share a common hatred for them as well LOL!!! Maybe last time you were there they had some special jr event going?

It was sooo nice today at our combo race, no box/box and that was it. 2 classes all day, no jr's, no bikes, no trophey, no street..just a big 2 class gambler until the end...talk about a fast program. They gave us 10 minute timed cool down periods...plenty for me, not so much for a few of my buddies, but i loved it and wish programs would run like that eveytime!!!!

 

Yikes... makes me feel kind of spoiled. Atco is 45 minutes away, Cecil is an hour, Englishtown is an hour and a half. Then if you really feel like doing on an adventure we got Island, Maple Grove, and Capital all about 3 hours away... and then literally a mile away from me is NJ Motorsports Park so if I ever catch a bug for auto-x

 

Rain

I got up at 5:30 and checked the weather. Too high of a chance of rain to risk the trip. Before I got out of bed at 8:30, a thunderstorm already went through here and Edmonton's track is still looking for late afternoon rain.

I feel I made the right call. As much as I'd like the track time, I don't like waiting out rain delays or having to haul the car on an open trailer in the rain.

They're probably racing right now but it's only 8c so the track is probably cold.

 

Here's how slick the track was on Friday night. This is a fourth gen against the new charger that spun out. Listen to them both spinning out on the start line.

http://s243.photobucket.com/albums/f...gerlosesit.flv

 

I'm sure it was dewy since you said it was, but to me that's just typical assinine street cars with a rookie drivers. the driver/s was probably spinning like crazy out of the gate, not bright enough to pedal it looking for traction, or thought it'd be cool to say he spun half way down the track like the big dogs, and then wheel speed caught up with him LOL!!! I put that pass on idiots behind the wheel and not the track.

 

Did you say there is a chance of snow?

 

There "was" a chance of snow. They're now predicting a high of 8c on Saturday. The weekend race has been called off. There wasn't enough time to arrange the track rental, weekend insurance and stuff. With the technical problems they had with the timing system and the poor weather in the forecast, they decided it was easier to just call it off.

That's it. 2008 race season is over. There will be a couple of more Friday night's but track conditions will not get any better.

Yes that driver didn't know how to drive even though he saved it in the end. He was trying to power his way down the track and the back end got away from him. The street legal racers just have the attitude that the first to the finish wins no matter how you do it. The dodge driver probably didn't want to be beat by a GM etc. Personally I don't really care what's beside me. I've won and lost to all sorts of cars.

The track announcer you hear is for the oval race on the other side of the grandstand.

 

One more race!!

It was announced today that one of the local racers has rented the track to hold one final race. This Sunday will be the last race for the season and probably the last organized drag race for the track unless someone rents it again next year. They'll still have the street legal nights with an unprepped track.

Glad I didn't start my winter projects yet.

 

Cool. The track's not making enough money?

Did the charger break something or was he just catching his breath? Easy way to wreck a nice car.

Are you still spinning quite a bit on good days? Any ideas? I know there are guys with similar power and smaller tires hooking well, even with a 3 speed.
Can't believe its that cold up there already.

 

After a lot of discussion, it appears the charger just didn't know when to let off the gas and when the back end started to come around, he panicked.

On good days, my traction is typical for tires that are the end of 2 short seasons. I have new tires ready to go on but will wait until after this last race. I've played around a lot this year with different chassis settings to see what they do. I think I'm about done testing and will be ready for next year's traveling race season. Our track has never been known for great traction. Anyone can make a high HP car hook up on a good track. It takes skill to do it on a poor track.

The track hasn't made a lot of money in the last 3 years. Every time we get a big race event, the weather turns sour which keeps spectators away. On a good year during the annual father's day funny car race, we've had close to 10,000 people in the stands. Last year it was rained out and this year it wasn't much better. That's a lot of revenue lost. It's not that people don't want to come out and watch racing. They just don't want to watch in cool damp weather and we don't want to race in that kind of weather either. Of course, we've also had fantastic race days but they never seem to fall on a race day. What comes after 2 days of rain? Monday!

Temperatures? It's dropped down below freezing on a couple of nights already. This weekend doesn't look too bad now. The Saturday forecast is now a high of 15c and going down to 2c at night. I can't see the track being warm enough to race on until close to noon on Sunday but I won't see a Sunday forecast until tomorrow and even then, that's a long way away and could change.

The juniors will start time trials at 10am followed by Street, No Box then Box. Hopefully by the time I go up in Box class, it will be around 11-11:30am and there will be some heat in the track from all the slower cars.

We're pushing for at least 2 time trials with eliminations starting at 1PM.