Had a fantastic trip to the "Salt" this past week. My first visit without a
racecar however. Will try not to have that happen again, but it was nice not
to have that 3 1/2 day ride home. Great to see all my old salt buddies. Tom
Bryant even offered to let me borrow his old engine if I'd come back and race.
What a great family this is.
Not one to sit around, and since I would rather be racing, I offered my extra
pair of hands to David Friberger who was trying to set a new record and
hopefully get in the "two club" with an old style Camaro and no electronics.
David already had things pretty much under control, all we really did was lean
out the jetting from the Texas settings, add the proper salt race tires, add
some Dzus fasteners to the hood and head to the inspection lanes.
David did a masterful job making that big Camaro handle at speed. He showed
some of his driving skill in the shut down at Texas. How does 241.582 MPH in
the middle mile sound. Not bad on a 224 record. David had a little smoke in
the cockpit so he actually backed off early. We headed to impound, made some
quick observations, decided not to change a thing, and buttoned things up for
the evening. Not a lot of time left in the day anyhow.
Next morning we headed to the start line with everyone else who qualified from
the day before. Tonya was there too with a 239.764 MPH pass on her 223 record.
We were hoping that if he was able to run the complete middle mile under power
he could manage a slightly better speed. David made what looked like a great
pass, but no speed, problem was that lightning zapped the printer and we
didn't get a time slip.
Well it looked good and David said the tach was at the right RPM so we headed
to impound anyway. Glen Barrett fortunately was able to pull the speeds up
from the bowels of the data base and 'voila' a 244.448 MPH return run which
averages to a 243.015 MPH record. Just awesome.
Had to come home waaay too early. Missed the 2 Club banquet, with Tonya and
Dave's induction. But not all was lost, with a little direction from Dave
Dahlgren, have firmed up my plans for the new motor for the Honda. C/BGCC here
I come.
JB
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