List:
We are home from a great weekend on the Salt. We arrived Thursday PM and
slid in next to John Beckett and crew in a space he was gracious enough
to save for us.
It was good to spend some time with my "chief competitor" and swap
stories. John has a neat car and will make some waves in the future, I
suspect. It was a pleasure to meet Emily and John G. I warned John that
he was working himself out of the cockpit by letting the offspring a
taste of the "salt fever". They did a marvelous job of putting down some
good numbers. 195 MPH for John G. and 188 MPH for Emily.
I also had the pleasure of meeting several from the LSR network that I
had only known from emails prior. It is good to put faces with names,
although my memory will likely fail me when we meet again.
We had some fun and spent time in the impound, but it was dull compared
to our Speedweek performance. We still have some issues to workout on
the engine tune-up. It does appear that we are making progress on the
cooling system, however. The highest temp this weekend was 230 F. Mostly
in the 210-215 F. range. Better than the 270s F. it was running during
Speedweek.
Both John and I were running D/FCC, since the record (234.393 MPH) was
lower than the D/GCC record (242.934) we set at Speedweek. I drove the
Tom Thumb Special this meet and posted a 239 MPH one-way and raised the
record to a shade over 237 MPH, not what I had hoped for, but the best I
could muster.
It was one of those strange atmosphere meets. Great air, but I couldn't
get dialed in to take advantage of it. Including two record return runs,
I made five runs, two were on seven cylinders because of a broken spark
plug porcelain. Brother Gary then made a pass qualifying at 237.8 MPH,
but declined to return, which turned out to be a good choice because on
the next pass, with Barry driving, the transmission went away at the 4
mile.
I am planning to go to the GasUp this weekend if tickets are still
available. Work starts tomorrow on readying the car for the World Finals.
Tom, Redding CA - #216 D/CC
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