Marc S – Carlsbad in July – 12.14, clutch-limited..

I’m exhausted as hell so this will be shorter than my usual novels (but
still long) :)

– Billy ran an 11.97 I believe. YES! Finally an 11, now him & I can go
home & rest for the next few weeks, we are sick of going to the track
trying to get that 11 we both knew we could run :). Major congrats!

– I got a personal best of 12.14 @ 113mph. I continued to have major
problems launching… 60-foot times were mostly 1.8’s and 1.9’s. Highest
MPH for me was 113.6 mph. Other runs included: 12.15 @113.4, 12.18 @113,
12.18 @113 (another), 12.18 @112, 12.24 @113.2. I’m confident the car
could run 11’s… All it needs is a good launch… And/or remove the
headlight… And/or take off some weight like Billy :) hehe… Or add the
ITC… Or… :) But the bottom line is now that 11’s have been done I’m
taking a rest from racing for a month or longer & when I come back likely
it’ll be with additional stuff so I don’t have to just “squeak” an 11… And
I’ve got to figure something out about this whole clutch/launching
situation… Maybe re-treads for traction… Who knows. 4 puck clutches just
don’t seem to be the way to go for launching…

– Carlsbad… Anyone who went to Pomona missed out. Anyone who did not go
racing PERIOD missed out. There were 40 cars total at Carlsbad. I got
*16* runs in when I finally “had my fill”… Coulda kept going and probably
had 20+ runs! That’s 16 runs in about 2.5 hours time (2pm to 4:30pm).
Pretty insane! There were never more than 4-8 cars in front of you in
line! Weather was warm but the air wasn’t too hot unlike Pomona last week.

– DSM’s @ Carlsbad… Well, we just had our “West Coast Shootout” :).
Nearly 1 out of every 4 cars there was a DSM! We had about 9 cars (one
DSM wasn’t a Club DSM’er). With 4 of us running 12’s and 3 of us running
really low 12’s (and an 11!) we dominated and kicked muscle-car a$$. The
good ol’ boys were commenting how we were mopping up. I really enjoyed
killing some of the big loud big block slick wearing and super-charger
breathin’ brutes :)… We popped a lot of ego’s today :)

– We had an awesome drive after leaving the track with 7 DSM’s… The road
was 3 lanes wide, so we had 2 rows of 3 DSM’s (With Steve H. in the rear
trying to snap a picture)… Felt like I was in a fighter plane formation :)

– Personal thanks go out to Scot Gray & Henry S. Scot let me borrow his
BFG TA R1’s to try to get more traction (couldn’t get them heated up enough
w/ drag racing so they weren’t as grippy as we were hoping) and Scot and
Henry were both a killer pit crew changing the tires back & forth :).

– On a final note… Damn DSM’s are built tough :)… In the past week I
have put *27* 12 second passes on this car, mostly low 12’s, without a
glitch (knock on wood). Mike Ferrara wouldn’t like it! :)

Hope you all had a good 4th.
-Marc