4 February 2014 – Starting the Year in Fourth Place in Both PSCA Classes

I experienced a roller coaster weekend at the opening Pacific Street Car Association’s Magnafuel Record Breaker Nationals. I race two championship classes in PSCA, Street Muscle and Bracket-1. After a promising first round of qualifying, I had to drop Maggie out of the race weekend with a fuel supply issue that after several hours of work in the pits we determined to be unrepairable.

My car had run its quickest ever ¼ mile pass and I and my crew were thrilled with the car prior to the mechanical failure. The new FTI Torque Converter was working really well in the test session on Friday. We are also running a new, larger diameter carbon fiber driveshaft from the Driveshaft Shop which was really getting the car off the line. And finally we are now running Mickey Thompson Tires ET Street Radial Pro. With the new converter, driveshaft and switching from bias ply slicks to radial ones, we really didn’t know what to expect. But my crew chief really nailed the set up. Right off the trailer the car’s first lap, even with green tires, just hooked and flew down the track.

This made the mechanical issue extra disappointing. We went from flying high to crashing down and scrambling. The team made a phone call to our friend, Tony Rowe of Tony Rowe Enterprises. Tony had a shop full of cars, one of which was a 2006 Dodge Charger Daytona which he loaned to me.

It worked out really well, I’m very comfortable in late model Mopars and since we were down to a single time trail per class and then eliminations on Sunday, that was really important.

We’re calling this the weekend of ‘Friends and Sportsman’ because the whole race needed a lot of them to work for us. Our friend’s at BSG Racing, Gavin, Emil, and Ryan loaned us a truck to tow the car to the race since our new one isn’t available yet. Another good friend, Jim Bassett loaned us a trailer, again because our new one isn’t available yet. And of course, ultimately Tony ended up loaning us a race car.

In eliminations I managed to go rounds in both of my PSCA classes and made it to the quarter-finals. The way the ladder worked out there were only three pairs in the quarters, so ending my weekend there left me in an unexpected fourth place in the points after the first race of the seven race season was completed. This closed the loop on the team’s weekend rollercoaster ride from high to low and back to high again.

Of course, we always want to win. But, given all that we went through this weekend, we’re very grateful to end up in such a great position to start the season.