My St. Louis Adventure
After thrashing for the last few weeks, we finally got the Solid Rock Mustang funny car up and running late Friday night, May 30, 2008. The last order of business was applying the custom, one of a kind HOBO primer paint job.
After arriving in the St. Louis area at 1:45 AM, and crashing at the motel, we made it to the track early Saturday morning.
We had some last minute things to tend to like packing the chute, installing the seat belts, and putting on the wheelie bars. Tracy Klingermann and Pat Sheer helped us out by installing the engine diaper.
We were supposed to get a bye run as there were 9 cars and this was my first pass in the car in quite some time, and the first with the Mustang body.
One of the cars had some problems so we were then slated to run against the Hustler from Minnesota driven by Keith Samuelson. I talked to Keith before hand and told him my game plan was to make a good burnout , then a dry hop, and leave easy, after he left.
The burnout was cut a bit short cause it started getting sideways. I did the dry hop and it felt like the whole car leapt off the ground. I staged and waited till Keith left and then left very easily, shifted to second and then third gear. At about half track I stuck my foot all the way down and the front end came up so I backpedaled and tried it again. It lifted once more so I just back pedaled and finished the run.
It was an 8.57 at 160mph.
All in all we were pleased with the results. The rains came a bit later so we called it a day.
Sunday afternoon we were scheduled to run against the Horvath family and their Damn Yankee Vega.
We went up and made our burnouts and Mark's car died on the burnout. I backed up, shut off and waited for him to clear the track.
We restarted, I staged, and, instead of leaving softly as I had intended, when the tree flashed on, I slammed the pedal down and the car was instantly on the bars really hard and I lifted, it hit down and I hit it again with the same result. After a third attempt, I just drove it off the track.
It was quite a thrash to get everything together and running
and I owe a big thank you to a lot of people who helped me.
Thank you, Tom Motry, Larry Kargol, Merle Mangles, Tom McKeon, Scott Ehrlich, Bear, and my crewchief, Terry Stapleton and his son Brian.
I also want to thank Denny Salzwimmer for doing a terrific job in organizing the Great Lakes Nostalgia Funny Car Circuit.
This group is one great bunch of racers and I look forward to running with them in the future.
It sure feels good to be back at it!!