September 30th was a hot day in Las Vegas! It was the site for the Strictly Performance NMRA/PROSTAR event. It was also the first time I had competed in a Prostar event since '98. Our weekend started out rather poorly, and I do mean POORly. You see, I had just finished a major custom paintjob on a racecar and the $$$ from it were going to fund my trip to Vegas. Well that fell through...the payment not the paintjob! So I called my motor guy, Larry laye an told him that I was not going to race but I wanted to tag along just to spectate and help him on his effort, as he was to ride Ryan Evans' TSP CHASSIS Pro Mod Suzuki. Well Larry is pretty persuasive and he conned me into bringing J.Y.D. I got loaded up by 10:30 p.m. and was on my way to L.A. to Larry's house. At 1:30 a.m. I arrived at his front door. After a pint of Heineken I tried to get some sleep for the day to come. No such luck...WAY too anxious!
We woke up at 6:30 Friday morning and started in on my motor...did I mention that we needed to build the top end of my motor? So While Larry was getting the kids off to school, I was assembling the motor. When the bolts were all in place he worked his magic on the cam timing. While he ran other errands I got the heart put back in the bike. On The Road Again!!
We stopped and picked up my crewchief for the weekend, Steve Carter and we were on our way! Friday night we arrived to unload and do a few more things to the bike and get our spot for the day to come.
Saturday came real early, we got our daily recomended dosage of Mickey D's and went to the track. I got to work on the bike installing the DYNA 2000 ignition plate since I left mine on my other motor. It was graciously supplied by Raymond at DYNATEK. It finally fired for the first time ever during the first round of Qualifying.
In the second round Steve picked me a good spot, and we got ready for our first hit. WHAT A TOTAL DISASTER!!! When I let the clutch go it imediately fried the tire and went hard right and across the centerline at about the 70 foot mark! I got it straightened back out and got it back into it's proper lane at about 250 feet. It ran 10.86 @ 140 mph. I knew it had some beans after that! The next run was going well until it developed a strange miss at about half track. Turned out that the hot wire on the airkill had come off. Easy fix. On to the first elimination round.
The corrected index for Super Comp was 9.05, so I was pretty sure the bike would run that. I got a guy on a GSXR 1000 with a SCHNITZ box controlled nitrous bike. I ran a 9.06 tp his 9.04. The bad news is that the computer in the tower went down for that run, so we had to go again! This time we ran identical 9.224's but I had a .012 second advantage on the tree, so I beat him again. In the second round I ran a 9.095 to my apponent's 9.179. Third It was me and West coast's "Mr. S/C" Tom Medlin. When the lights flashed he left 6 thousandths early, I cut a .449 and saw his red light so I took the oppurtunity to "run it out"...it went 8.817 @ 150.03. Pretty stout for a little 1201 GSXR motor! TO THE FINALS!!!
Well it was down to me and Scott Packer, a Suzuki dealer from Idaho. He was on a brand new TRAC DYNAMICS small tire chassis with a 1317 GSXR motor. When the tree went he put a light on me, his .455 to my .467. We were absolutely side by side! At half track we were looking at each other chopping the throttles like like crazy, we traded the lead by about 6 inches, probably 10 times in the last half track. When we got down to the traps I thought we were going to break out so I gave him the stripe, big mistake!!! He got me by about 6 inches and 3 thousandths of a second! What a race and what a weekend! And not to shabby for a bike with no electronics!
I think I'll keep this old bike around for a while longer!!
