I qualified for the NHRA Div 3 ET Finals...BARELY!

[ATaylorRacing]

Yesterday was do or die for me to make the Indy team for the NHRA Div 3 ET Finals. I went into the race #9 in pts and after winning 5 rounds I clawed my way back up to #5! (Indy takes 6 Sportsman cars this year) I thought I was dead meat before the race even started since I blew out one of my DOT slicks before I even made a pass and had to race on my street tires, itty bitty 185x80x13s compared to the 245x40x15s DOT road racing slicks. I was shocked that the street tires hooked, but them having a larger diameter took away some gear. The problem was to cut a light...1st pass with my normal shallow stage was a .107 rt and the next (last) practce run I red lit by deep staging with a -.070...ended up staging and bumping it in which resulted in a worst light of .046 and my best three were .001, .006, and .010...which allowed me to get a computer picked bye run into the final four.

For those of you not familiar with this HUGE bracket race (Sept 18-20)....the 25 tracks in Div 3, from 5 states and Ontario, send their best 32 drivers to race as a team against the other track teams. Indy will be packed with 800 bracket racers that had to prequalify. The winners go to Pamona to duke it out on a Div vs Div race with $3500 spending money up front to each contestant.

I won the Sportsman class in 87 with my 5 speed Shelby powered (non-turbo, one of 84 made...only one built with no A/C and radio delete!) Horizon. After 3 days and 8 rounds I was the winner out of 189 cars...NO practice passes at all on the last day of the event. Back then my average rt was a damn good .012 and my worst was a .020 in the final. The purse was $1000 and my contingencys totalled another $3000, not bad for a daily driven 15 second street car! That car is the one that I will be using...now it have over 270,000 miles compared to the 33,000 it had back then.

Today I had a set of Hoosier road racing slicks mounted that are tiny 20x6x13s and that combination saves 20 lbs compared to the tires I mentioned earlier...and they are stickier!

I was only able to use the Horizon (Matchbox) at 3 pts races since it had issues to be worked out...finally got them fixed and just need a little more fuel, more cam advance, and less timing to be 100% ironed out. The other 9 or 10 races I used the 12 second SRT4 Stage 2 named Pit Bull.