Monday, August 17, 2009

Night Fire Day One

Something else could have gone wrong, but that would probably have involved a car upside down. I was asleep at the switch on the light first time trial, I’m surprised someone didn’t kick the car and point out the object wasn’t to park at the staging light. A bad light. That didn’t begin to cover the nonsense, the tires spun badly off the line and the power was down and then the car started running out of gasoline. Back in the pits with a one second and change too slow pass I replaced the clogged fuel filter and found a vacuum line that was disconnected and not plugged so the carb was sucking air at the bottom. I do not know why the tires won’t hook.

Second time trial the tires spun again despite lowering the pressure and heating them up more. Somehow I pushed the car through the lights and went red. This pass was only about a half second slow, still horrid but ground gained. The 60 foot time was 0.20 slow which is bad.

Time for eliminations, lowered the tire pressure some more and thought I cooked them pretty good. I got tire spin on the launch and a little late on the light, late enough that it isn’t competitive. For the dial in I assumed I’d hook and the dial was too fast. None of my existing data works for the car running this slow. I am disappointed. I also lost.

They just called my name for the consolation race, for the top 32 closest to their dials, a bunch of bad numbers since mine wasn’t close. I paid to enter it; if nothing else I need data for the next three days. I’m waiting.

I went two rounds on the others’ red lights. My lights were not good, but alright. I built data but on the third round I looked at the calculator and disbelieved it but decided to hedge and go towards it. Wrong, I cut a better light than my opponent but my dial was too fast and his was too close so I lost by .17 seconds. This was one time that my inclination, which was to copy the last run time was better than the machine. Had I followed that I would have won by about the margin I lost by. What this added up to was 6 runs in competition and that is fun. Tomorrow I should be better and I can only hope that the car doesn’t act any stranger than now. My left rear tire is losing air, I can find nothing in the tire, and my air tank might last.

The Racer Appreciation Party followed end of racing and it was, as usual, a fairly goofy affair. With the end of competition beer was flowing pretty liberally as the track gave away prizes drawn from tech cards. Those who were drawn and hadn’t stuck around were counted and by crowd proclaimed, ‘Out’a here!” There were a fair number of valuable prizes and winners who wished to have a case of Pepsi (it is Pepsi Night Fire) were required to do push ups or sing a Christmas song. Sensible ones chose push ups. The capper prizes were Entry Certificates for next year’s Night Fire drawn by tech cards for each registration. No, I didn’t win anything but Gus was a huge hit especially with kids and women. Time trials start at 8:30Am Friday.

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