Sorry I didn`t get back to y'all last night, but I was down with he flu. I`m hitin' on all cylinders again now.
HI RH, I got to the track at about 3pm or so and left right after the jet trucks ran.
"Have you recently become a drag fan or are you a long time "casual" fan?" Well, I`ll give ya a bit of my background. I`m 55 years old and have lived in Miami most of my life. In he mid 1960's I had a friend who's dad use to take us out to watch roundy-round hydroplane races at a local marine stadium. In the later 70's and thru the early 90`s I crewed on a few hydros. Hydro racing is barely alive now. There use to be a drag strip nearby, Hollywood Speedway, and I use to go out there from time to time to watch the big races. The Hollywood track closed up about 12~13 years ago and the property is now all condos and strip malls. I`ve been to the Palm Beach track numerous times as well as the Bradenton track. I`ve also been to the Gator Nat`s 4~5 times, but not lately. I`ve never made up to Orlando Speed World.
"Did you take in any of the class racing or were you more interested in the "wow" cars ?" I went up primarily for the "wow" cars, but I do indeed appreciate the sportsman classes. However, bracket racing does not really appeal to me all that much. I understand why bracket racing exists, but I much prefer "heads up" racing.
"Any concern that some of the passes were not overly competitive or were you content at the spectacle(it is....no doubt!
and less about close racing competition?" I had read a week or to before that there wasn`t going to be any testing/tuning/timing runs so I kind of expected that it would be kind of "sloppy",... and it was. Hopefully for the fans, and racers, they can get a few practice runs worked in before the show starts. Still, it did have a spectacle value,...at least to me.
I think IHRA and the racers went out of there way to welcome the fans and that`s cool! Hopefully they can shape up the show better in the future that makes for tighter racing. I understand this was the first time for this format so there`s bound to be "kinks" in the program.
I think I did get a few pics of the "Bullet Bob" car and/or team. I`ll go look now. JH