wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:00 PM
Long Race Report - NHRA Division 7 in Phoenix
As some of you may know, I went down to Phoenix over the weekend to run in the first NHRA Division 7 race of the 2004 season. In case you haven't been following along with some of my previous dragracing posts, the NHRA Division races are a drastic step up in competition compared to the local track races. That's why I run them. I figure that if you want to get better, you have to race with people much better than you. You may get outclassed in the beginning, but your learning curve is much steeper.
Last year, I didn't know that Division races were more difficult. I was a rookie, and I sucked. I just saw a race in Phoenix on the schedule and decided to go because I could pair it up with an excuse to visit my God-daughter. I qualified dead last (by a long way) and was just happy that I didn't crash. I raced a full season with those guys and tried to suck up as much knowledge as I could along the way. I finally caught a clue at the last race of the season in Vegas and worked really hard in the off-season to get things dialed in for the 2004 season. So, coming back to Phoenix was extra special for me because after how I did last year at that race, I wanted to go back, kick butt, and say, "How ya like me now?!!!"
With that in mind, I went back, and it was great to see everyone again. I still feel like a total rookie compared to these guys, but this time around, I had some skills that I didn't have last season....yes, this is called foreshadowing... 
  
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:01 PM
 Edited By: wannabe on 26 Mar 2004 08:01
Qualifying Round #1: (Friday, March 12th)
In the staging lanes, we all agreed to kick down an extra buck for a reaction time pot for this round. It's not much money, but it's great for bragging rights when people have to pay you a dollar. I set up the bike identical to the setup I used the week before in Sacramento. Unfortunately, that made me bog really bad off the line. Nothing like a quick reminder that the track is much stickier at division races.
I picked up my time slip and noticed that I cut a 0.009 light. (We run a 0.400 Pro Tree.) I walked over to the guys in the pits ready to collect my buck from everyone only to find out that one of the other guys cut a 0.003 light. I just smiled. "Welcome back to Division racing." At the local races, a 0.009 light is usually good enough to get you the #1 qualifying spot. But, at a division race, that was only good for the #2 spot....and, I knew that there was a good chance that I would be bumped down even further in the next couple of qualifying rounds. (by the way, in case you don't know, we run on a 0.400 pro tree with LED bulbs.)
Yes, these guys are so good that they can adjust their reaction times by making adjustments to their bikes. They know enough that they can add more tire pressure to the front tire or tighten up the clutch a little to get a slightly better reaction time.
Did I mention that I really dig racing with these guys?
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:04 PM
Edited By: wannabe on 15 Mar 2004 19:05
Qualifying Round #2: (Saturday, March 13th)
Round #2 of qualifying was supposed to happen on Friday, but on Friday afternoon at around 2pm one of the Super Comp cars decided to go airborne and catch fire....in the process spewing oil all over the track and actually taking out a 1 square foot section of asphalt in the right lane. After 2 hours of trying to fix it, they eventually gave up and called it a day. They told us that we would start again on Saturday.
So, I wake up on Saturday morning, and it's freakin raining HARD. I'm thinking the worst. I'm thinking that we're going to end up running eliminations on Sunday with only one test hit on the track. Ouch. I knew that I was a goner if that happened.
Luckily for me, the asphalt guys came and fixed the track, and the skies opened up. The best thing about Phoenix is that the ground does not absorb water. Add that to the low humidity, and the whole track was dry in less than half an hour after the rain stopped.
So, they call us up for our second round of qualifying. I knew that I bogged badly on the first round, so I add a full PSI in the rear tire to compensate. This doesn't sound like much, but I normally go in ΒΌ psi increments. A full psi is quite a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the new running order. This time we would be running after the Top Alcohol Dragsters and Top Alcohol Funny cars. Just as an aside, for those of you who don't know, the only difference between Top Alcohol and Top Fuel is that Top Fuel gets to add a blower to the motor. The Top Alcohol guys get to run the same 90% (or is it 80%???) nitro mixture. So, needless to say, they lay down quite a bit of sticky rubber on the track.
What does that mean to me on a motorcycle running after them? Well, that meant that I bogged even worse on my launch in the second round, and only cut a 0.025 light. So, my 0.009 reaction time from the previous round would be my qualifier. After getting back to the pits, I find out that two more guys cut 0.003 and 0.005 reaction times bumping me further back in the ladder as I expected.
So, after the second round of qualifying, I was sitting in the #4 qualifying spot completely lost in my setup. I had no idea what to dial. I knew that if eliminations started now, I would be done after the first round....
Luckily, we were able to convince the powers that be to give us another hit at the end of the day.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:05 PM
Qualifying Round #3: : (Saturday evening, March 13th)
So, here we are at the end of the day. I bogged twice on the previous runs and learned nothing. This time, I decided to lower my wheelie bars a full turn on the adjustments. FYI...the lower the wheelie bars, the more they unload the rear tire on the launch. I was hoping that 1 full turn would be enough to keep the bike from bogging on the launch.
Before, I go on, let me give you a little background on what I learned inn Sacramento the weekend before this. I ended up losing there because I red-lit after it got dark. After the sun goes down, the bulbs on the tree are brighter in relation to their surroundings. So, you see them faster. In Sac, I saw them too quick and red-lit by a lot. So, fast forward to Phoenix where I'm sitting there on the track after the sun went down remembering what happened in Sac the previous weekend. I figured that I would red lite again if I didn't do something different. This time, I consciously stared directly into one of the overhead track lights to kill some of my night vision.
Well, it worked because I ended up cutting a near perfect 0.001 reaction time and bumping myself into the #1 qualifying position.
"How ya freakin' like me now??!!!"
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:07 PM
Eliminations Round 1: (Sunday, March 14th )
As luck would have it, I get paired up with my buddy Leo in the first round. The winner between us would get a bye in the second round. This was especially important to me because Leo took me out in the first round of last year's race. I was hoping for a little revenge. But, I still had a dilemma. I was still bogging off the line. I had to choose:
1. Leave my setup alone and bog off the line...compensating with my dial-in, or
2. Change my setup trying to get rid of the bog.
I decided to leave it alone. I may have been bogging, but I was bogging consistently. Because of my bog, I ended up dialing slower than Leo. Why is that significant? Leo normally has the slowest bike in the group. This means that he is used to leaving first. But, in our race, I had the slower dial, so I would be leaving first and possibly distracting him. It worked out. He ended up sleeping at the line with an 0.080 reaction time compared to my 0.013. That is too much of a difference to make up in a division race.
So, I managed to win the first round of the 2004 season.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:08 PM
Eliminations Round 2: (Sunday, March 14th )
Eliminations Round 2: (Sunday, March 14th ) Since I had a bye, I decided to use it to try to get rid of my bogging problem. This time, I decided to turn up my launch RPM from 8900 to 9200 rpm. Long story short, I ended up spinning badly off the line. I overshot and now had no clue what to dial in the next round.
So, I'm stanging there arguing about lane choice with the guy I was supposed to race in the next round when the following announcement comes up on the PA:
"Sportsman motorcycles, we are going to rerun that round because of a problem with the ladder. We paired you up with the wrong people. Please return to the lanes. I repeat, we are going to rerun that round."
It turned out that it wasn't a joke. Needless the say, the people who won that round were not happy while the people who lost tried to make it look like they didn't care either way. (Yeah, right.) How did I feel about it? I was freakin ecstatic!!! That meant that I got to make another bye run to help me figure out my setup.
I ended up going down to 9100 rpm on the launch, and it ended up perfect. I was ready for the next round.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:10 PM
Eliminations Round 3 (Semi-finals): (Sunday, March 14th )
This time, I was paired up with a former division 7 champ. I was really worried here because I know that this man does not make many mistakes on the track. John has been dragracing for over 20 years, and it shows. Part of me was just happy making it to the money round. Making it to the semi's guaranteed a $100 payout. But, the other part of me figured that I made it this far, I might as well shoot for the moon.
This is where I have to go back to something someone told me last year. He told me that if you have outstanding reaction times, you will invariably win rounds because you will "skull fuck" people at the line. (Yes, those were his exact words.) What does that mean? It means that people end up attacking the tree or doing something different because they know that you're going to cut a great light.
In this round, it worked. I ended up cutting another spectacular 0.003 light, and my opponent ended up redlighting by a bunch.
I was now on my way to my very first final in a Divison race.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:12 PM
Finals: (Sunday, March 14th )
So, now I'm sitting in my pit area waiting for them to call us to the lanes for the finals. We had to wait a while because they like to run the finals of all the classes at the same time. So, we had to wait for all of the other classes to get to the finals before they called us up.
What I didn't know was that our runs were being posted on the internet almost as they happened, and I had a few friends watching their computer screens cheering me on. One of them told me that he was hitting refresh every 30 seconds just in case there was an update. I ended up getting telephone calls from 5 different people wishing me luck in the finals. It made me feel really good to know that I had a virtual cheering section.
So, now, it was down to business. What do I dial in the finals? Well, my opponent was riding on a turbo Kawasaki. He had over 20 mph on me. What does that mean? That means that there was no way I could look over to judge whether or not he was coming. So, I decided to stick to my 9.92 dial to make sure that I could stay on the gas and not breakout.
I did everything that I planned to do. The run went well. I ended up cutting an 0.021 light and ran a 9.97 on a 9.92 light. That's a darn good run in anyone's book. Unfortunately, my opponent made a better one. I remember passing the 1000-ft marker and not seeing him in the other lane. I figured that I had the race won. Then, out of nowhere, he shoots past me and beats me to the stripe. It turns out that he treed me with a 0.013 light, and he ran an 8.743 on an 8.74 dial. Congratulations, Ken Van Buren. You freaking earned that win!
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 07:14 PM
The aftermath....
So, here I am at work. I am beyond tired. The race ended late for me yesterday. I got on the road at 6pm Sunday in Phoenix and finally pulled into San Jose at 10am Monday just in time to take a shower and drop off my trailer before heading to work waaay late on less than a half hour of sleep. Yes, I'm freaking tired. Yes, it hurts to even be vertical right now. But, you bet your sweet pippy that it was totally worth it.
I didn't get the coveted Wally trophy this time, but my runner-up finish earned me $350 in prize money along with oodles in contingency prizes including $50 toward a new Mickey Thompson rear slick tire. This is good because I just about wore out my existing tire doing John Force burnouts because they look better in the pictures.
I hope you enjoyed my writeup. I'll post pics later when I get home....if I don't pass out first.
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osti33
Needs a job
Posts: 2973
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posted March 15, 2004 07:43 PM
Great write up! Congrats on making it to the finals.
Osti
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swft
Needs a life
Full throttle!
Posts: One MEEEEEELLION
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posted March 15, 2004 08:28 PM
Man, that's a great read! You did us all proud! Congrats!
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krexken
Zone Head
Posts: 732
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posted March 15, 2004 08:30 PM
Great job! Keep it up!
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 08:50 PM
Thanks, Guys. OK, here we go with the pics:
What do you do when you get to the track in the morning, and it's raining? Well, if you're me, you take pics so that you can share your misery with everyone.
I was amazed how quick this water dried up after the rain stopped.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 08:51 PM
Here's the token shot of my bike in the pits. 
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 08:52 PM
I left San Jose on Wednesday night right after work and drove through the night. This is a shot of the sunrise I got to see around 120 miles outside of Phoenix.
I was so scared that I was going to drop my camera outside the window.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 08:57 PM
This cool helmet paint job belongs to Ken Van Buren, who eventually took me out in the finals. I was lucky enough to pit next to Ken. We were lucky enough to get a pit spot under the only tree a 10 mile radius.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 08:58 PM
Edited By: wannabe on 26 Mar 2004 08:03
This is Ken's turbo Kawasaki. He got this thing to run 8.74 @ 153 mph in Phoenix, which is at over 1000 ft.
That's the only complaint I have about the division races. I always come away wanting to make my bike faster. Ken just about convinced me to forget nitrous and go with a turbo on my bike.
Ken and I lined up and made a pass together during qualifications. I swear that he was just about past half track before I even got past the 60-ft.
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 15, 2004 08:59 PM
If you think that buying a dragbike is totally out of your budget, here's an example that may change your mind. This bike belongs to Rick Newport. He waited until the end of the season and was patient. He ended up buying this bike ready to go for less than $9000. So, for less than the price of a lot of new bikes, Rick is now running in the 8's with a turbo Suzuki chassis bike.
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MadMike
Moderator
FEAR THE BLACK FLAG!!!!!!!!
Posts: 6579
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posted March 16, 2004 05:08 AM
first off! GREAT JOB!!!!!! TFA ROCKS the West!!!!!! man that is so cool. and good pix's!!!!
one note. do you always do John force burnouts??
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200-MPH CLUB MEMBER!
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 16, 2004 06:47 AM
Thanks, Mike. As for my burnouts, no, I don't normally do the big smokin' John Force burnouts. It usually takes too long to get the tire temp back down to where I can get some traction. I usually just do enough of a burnout to clean off the tire. There were 3 photographers there. I've got a bunch of pics of my launching, but I don't have any burnout pics. I figured that if I was going to get a burnout pic, I wanted it to look good and smoky.
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entropy
Moderator
Posts: 8671
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posted March 16, 2004 11:24 PM
Congrats Wannabe!!!! Out-fukken-standing lights!!!!!
Keep up the smoky burnouts; tire smoke is COOL!
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This moderator uses moderation in moderation
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wannabe
Pro
Posts: 1931
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posted March 26, 2004 12:17 PM
Ooh, check it out. My thread got 5 stars!!!
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