A Sunday at the Strip or- Eazib's dream weekend

[RocketmanX]

Had the good fortune to be invited to the race at Chicagoland/Route 66 speedway this past weekend. My Dad and I had been invited to come to a race by this gentlemen several times at a couple of my races he attended with his father-in-law and friend of the families. He's a local guy who's family owns a steel foundry here in Auburn and got involved with this team about 15 years ago and is part owner of the team, Worsham/Fink racing and John's the Fink part.

Tammy, his Wife and neghbor of my families for ever since I can remember, showed us a time that was unexpected by my Dad and I both. They in essence treated us like part of the team with unrestricted passes and special parking passes to even taking us up to the line with them for each run.
The day could have been fairly short but, with each run the hand-drawn bracket for eliminations kept showing Del one more step closer to the Finals.
The day for them got a bit tense as John Force set 2 brand new records in consecutive passes. After runnig the semi-finals the tension grew even more as the blower they had been running with great consistency since their win the weekend before had the rotors get chewed up by the end plate The fact that Force was in the finals was also not a great comfort. But, even with the tension growing they were all really cool and reminded me of a bunch of guys at the local track who just love racing. John was cool enough to explain to me what was going on after each round as he obviously knows I love racing tech but not wuite up to speed with drag racing.
The final round the team member that had been appointed to show us areound and haul our butts up through the staging area and to the line when the time was right told us that during the Finals anything goes on the line. He said instead of having to stand by the wall by the cars we could go stand directly behind the car if we wanted to, I sure did. Af ter the first run I experienced it was mind blowiing the vibration andsound with 2 of those cars leaving at the same time andstanding 10 feet from the exhaust
The real capper on the day was that Del beat Force!
Dad and I just kind of faded back toward the staging area to let the guys celebrate and not be a burden but were latched onto by Tammy and John and told to wait at the winners circle until they came back with the car nad Del.
Man, we never expected to be included like that They had us go into winners circle with them and made sure we each got one of the winners hats and had our pictures taken with the team after the first official pics were taken for the media. I managed to find 2 pics of that on the net as I have none yet and didn't bother taking acamera as we assumed we'd be watching the races from the good seats, but not THAT good. I haven't seen the race yet and am waiting up now to watch it as ESPN is replaying it at 1 am this morning. I'll deifnitely be TIVO'ing it and giving a copy to my Dad. We've had some very cool experiences together and I'm glad for that. Now that lucky SOB is going to the race in Reading Pennsylvania this weekend on his way to Florida

You guys get a glimpse of my skinny arse here, my Dad's to Del's left holding the trophy and I'm right next to him- skinny guy with the shades. The guy with the white shirt at the other end is Gary a guy that's helped me in racing since my start and the guy 2 to his left is John Fink and next to him his Wife Tammy. I gotta figure out how to tell them thank you in a proper manner
Route 66 Winners Circle

[TiG]

Thats excellent to hear rocketmanX, some excellent reading too

Hope you are pleased with the video footage you captured this morning

Must be some treat to be pictured in Winners Circle too.

TiG

[Lowe]

Posts like this restore my faith in human nature. Sounds like you were looked after mate, it doesn't get much better than that!

[XTR]

Sounds like you had great day!!!
Very good read!!!


One question... why do they call them Funny Cars?

[IainB]

Woah - you lucky lucky lucky person
Thats what I love about drag racing - its like one big family AND you knocked out John Force
Me jealous....... YOU BETCHA

[Zak33]

its good to be a part of summat....but its just awesome to be part of a "winning" summat

Its still quite hard for the UK people (me included) to grasp the gargantuan power and acceleration of those cars. In the UK we go pretty damn hard at our motorsport, but in the US, drag and circle jerking are ..... more... dunno....essential to the populace. While we stand like fools in the rain and snow and high winds waiting for a glimpse of a rally car, the US are stood with ear defenders on, eating hot dogs.

We gotta lot to learn

[RocketmanX]

To put the power in perspective, a bit, the Top Fuelers are putting out as much power as 8 of the best F1 engines or 10 of the type of motor I run.
John told me they're up to around 7500 HP now
But of course that's variable through the supercharger which the Worsham team increased 1% for the Finals run. They then ran their best ever speed of 329 mph @ a 4.67 I believe. They look wicked fast from the stands and on TV but watching from behind and seeing them go away and all the twitching of the car etc... it's hard to imagine setting in one. I'm not ashamed to say I don't think I'd ever want to try it either. Those nitro motors scare me a bit.

[Zak33]

just sooo sooo fast.

To be pinned to the seatlike that is hard to understand....to control something simulataneously defies belief.

Take it from me...I'd need a LOT of coffee to be fast enough on the reactions to be up to that job

[IainB]

Zak,
Remeber when I crewed on my mates 706 - being a few feet away on launch made me jump.... even going back to the pits and just twitching (literally) the throttle had it jumping forward - so launching one of the big boys must be awesome
Im sure its something along the lines of 6g at launch and around the same when the chutes are pulled (Top Fuel) - just cant even consider what it must feel like... but I wouldnt say no

[Rave]

To get to 327mph in 4.67s the average acceleration throughout the run is over 3g. I reckon they're probably closer to 7 or 8g at launch. Total lunacy TBH, but I'm glad someone's crazy enough to do it.

Rich :¬)

[Lowe]

Mental, I'm suprised they don't passout on launch!