Lots of stuff going on! This past weekend Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosted their third and forth ET Bracket races at the drag strip. The weather was a beautiful 88 degrees all weekend, and the racers were out to have some fun. I was especially excited for this race because I wanted to rack up some points early on in the season. But because of some mechanical problems with the car, and my crew chief not being able to attend the race, I was without the Magnum to race for the weekend. Lucky for me, the father and son racing team of John and Jon Irving were incredibly generous in lending their car to me to race for the weekend. I was nervous about racing another car without having any prior experience driving it, but I decided that it was better than getting no points at all.
After a few runs in the car on Friday’s test and tune, I was feeling fairly confident about my launch procedure and driving the car on the track. Saturday evening brought lots of surprises. The Irvings were doing an awesome job at predicting what the car would run, and for the first round of eliminations we were feeling pretty good. After I got my first win light, I was thrilled. And as the night went on the dials kept getting better and the car was running great. After one extremely close quarterfinal win, where I won the round by only thirteen ten thousandths of a second, I was on the way to the semi final. My opponent was Bob Coulter, previous track champion, and unfortunately for me, his experience showed. He cut a better light than me and ran closer to his dial, so I was out for the night. But to make it to the final four cars out of 64 was extremely exciting to do in a borrowed car.
Sunday’s race was not quite as successful, but I did make it to the second round. I would have liked to have done as good or better as Sunday’s race, but it was an extremely pleasing weekend overall. I was so thankful to have a car to race, and I learned a tremendous amount from John and Jon Irving. I owe a huge thank you to them for all they did last weekend.
The next race will happen the last weekend of May. The Magnum is in the process of getting some updated suspension bushings from Whiteline Performance, new Strange Engineering drag shocks and some other upgrades. They are being installed at Voss Performance in Fullerton, CA, and I can’t wait to get the car back and race it. I am hopeful that these new parts will help the car’s stability at the top end. Hopefully we’ll be able to rack up some more points for the championship by the end of the year. I can’t wait to see what happens at the next race!
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