Arizona Nationals Update

Just figured I would take a minute to hit everyone up with a schedule for this weekend . I'll start with super comp the class Dave is running again this weekend . Friday Q1 should be about 10am and Q2 about 12:15 pm . First round will be Saturday about 10am and second round maybe about 4:15 pm . Just in case anyone wants to came by and say hi we are all the way at the back of the pits . You go under the Goodyear bridge and go around to the left and you can't miss us . Now for the Pro schedule Friday they have two sessions 1:30 and 4pm . Saturday there sessions are 11:30am and 2pm .Sunday eliminations start at 11am and Pre Race Ceremonies at 10am . If you haven't seen Top Fuel or Funny Car there is nothing like the raw power these machines produce . It's the fastest show on earth . See you at the races .Thanks for checking in .

Kenny Speed The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual.Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. -Ayn Rand

Pre-Race CeremoniesPre-Race Ceremonies

Pre-Race Ceremonies

SUPER STREET TT-2 11:00 AM TOP FUE

NHRA"S qualifying sheet shows Dave in the number one spot   

Good morning from rain soaked Pomona . It's early monday Morning and the wet weather continues . NHRA has us scheduled to run 4th class out at 10am. Looks highly unlikely to me but we'll have to wait and see. It's 10am ,they just called us up for round two and as soon as they run the first pair of stock it starts to rain . Back to the trailer we go . Fast forward to 2pm and the call goes out for super comp to the lanes . The weather is looking pretty good , maybe we can get this done . This is second round so from here on out lane choice is decided by the flip of a coin. . Lane choice is said to be unimportant unless , you don't have it. As crew chief I almost always have a lane I prefer . This weekend it's the right lane . There are different reasons to like one lane over the other . The main reason is how consistent the car has been off the starting line during the runs you made so far . At this particular race we had a problem with tire spin in the left lane just a few feet after launch on one of our qualifying passes. Now on NHRA's behalf I'll say at national events , track condition is not usually a problem except when the weather has been  either to hot , to cold , or to wet . This weekend we had the cold and the wet thing going so track conditions were constantly changing and were definitely not optimal . You may also pick one lane over the other if your driver can see better in one of the lanes . Where that comes into play would be at the top end when your looking for the other car so you can lift off the throttle before the finish line , if you have him covered. Now I know your saying to yourself why would you lift during a race . Here's the reason and I'll try my best to explain it. Since the lanes are timed with there own timers it's possible to run 8.90 seconds a lose . Since the timers don't start till the car moves both cars could run 8.90 and the one who leaves the line first or has the better reaction time would cross the finish line first . Now back to the reason why you would lift before the finish line . If you leave the line first you would have the advantage at the other end so you would lift to keep from breaking out ( breaking out , going faster than they allowed time for your class )in this case 8.90 seconds . Drives in door cars prefer the right lane for two reasons ,first it's easier to see the Christmas tree because in the left lane you have to look around the huge hood scoop that most of the cars have , Also it's easier when your looking for the other car at the top end you can look right out your window instead of trying to see through the roll bars and out the passenger side window .Ok now that I cleared that up ( ha ha ) back to second round . The other driver flips the coin I call heads and we get the right lane . They do there burnouts ,line them up and away they go . Dave gives up a little on the starting line but makes up by running 8.919 to other guys 8.934 . With the other drivers reaction time figured in Dave sneaks around him by a scant .0027 seconds or about 6 inches at the stripe. Back to the trailer for a quick refuel and battery charge and about 30 minutes we're back in the lanes for round three . Another coin toss and again I call heads and again we head to the right lane ,so good so far  Burnouts complete they line up and just that fast we're done as Dave  (trying to improve on his reaction time from last round ) leaves to early and gets the big red light. Overall a good weekend . We learned a lot , qualified number one and went a few rounds . Not great , not bad . Next blog should be Friday that's our next qualifying day for race number two. Thanks for playing Kenny Speed

First Round results with a cool on car video

Sunday Morning  ,what can I say it's 7am and pouring rain , not a good way to start the last day of the Winter Nationals .No runs Saturday now rain on Sunday .We should be in the 4th round of competition and we haven't even started  .After they dried the track they send the first pair of fuel cars down track about 11:30 only 30 minuets late . The revised , revised schedule says we run after the second round of the Pros  so I guess we'll go watch for a while . The racing was great , Courtney Force got her first win  over Bob Tasca .and John also collected his first round win of the season . The only real upsets were Clay Millican over Khakid alBalooshi and Todd Lescenko over Robert Hight , NHRA has decided to revise the already twice revised schedule .Looks like now we're right after 3rd round of the pros . We head up to watch 3rd round and some more great racing  was on tap , Wining and going into the finals will be, in Pro Stock Greg Anderson vs Jeg Coughlin Jr. . Funny Car will see team cars Mike Neff and John Force  square off and in Top Fuel Spencer Massey and team mate Tony Schumacher . It's now 4:34 pm and it's time for Super Comp first round . The temperature a brisk 58 and the humidity 66 with a slight head wind . Jason and I compare notes and set the timer for the throttle stop for what we hope will get the dragster to run 8.90 . After a long two days of waiting around Dave does his burn out ,stages the car , and there off . Dave goes 8.902 good for the win and number one qualifier . The winning margin of victory a scant .0027 thousands of a second . Now the not so good news . By time they run the finals its to late for us to run again . Looks like we're playing hooky from work Monday to finish up .For the record Anderson , Massey and Force are winners in the  Pro classes . It's late and I'm spent . Kenny Speed   PS This is a really cool video we shot on Friday Night during Q3

New in car HD video from Pomona

It's time for you to get feel of whats its like to go 0 to 150 Mph in 8 seconds . This video is from  thursday nights dinner winning run . I ran the video until the very end when Dave climbs out of the rail ( another word for dragster ) just to give you an idea of what the entire run is like . The whole run took only about 4 minutes  .As your about to find out we spend a lot of money for a few minutes of  fun . If you think about it a set up like Dave's would cost  about 75k.  That's just car , truck and trailer no motor home or spare parts . Then you get to add in the weekends expenses gas, food, hotel , entry fees , etc .For a race weekend out of town you can figure about at least 15 hundred providing you don't break anything . Is it worth ? All I can say is , hell yes .Now let's  move to Fridays qualifying run . The  morning run called Q3 or 3rd round of qualifying weather wise was pretty much a carbon copy of Thursday . If you remember we were way to fast Thursday morning so we need to add some time to the throttle stop timer . Now here's something cool about the video . If you listen to the rpms of the engine you can here the throttle stop come on and then go off. First the car leaves  the starting line,you'll here the motor rpms climb to about 7200 rpms then the transmission shifts into high gear , about a second after the shift the rpms drop off for about 2 seconds , then its back to wot or in layman's terms wide open throttle .(  A throttle stop is a devise that's connected to the carburetor that opens  and closes the carburetor and is controlled by a timer ) If  you want the car to go faster you decrease the time the stop is on and if you need to go slower you increase the time the stop is on . Sounds simple enough and it is,the tricky part is trying to figure how much to add or subtract to run the class index of 8.90 seconds , remember we're talking thousands of a second . After taking every thing into consideration we added 4 tenths of a second to the stop timer and ran 8.894 just 6 thousands of a second from a perfect 8.900 . We goofed around all day waiting for our first round of eliminations only to have a Super Gas car crash ( no injury's to the driver ) and make them move first round to Saturday morning . Guess what it's now 9:30 pm Saturday and all I can say is rain , so no runs today for us.And finally if your scoring at home  Lucas, Hight, & Line finish atop Pomona qualifying fields for the pro's .Thanks Kenny Speed

A new video from Pomona

Day one in Pomona

Jason adding a new decal to the draster

Well here we are in Pomona, after a late night bumpy ass flight courtesy of Southwest Airlines .Howerver all was not lost I did have A01 on my boarding pass , first time ever . So that was good first one on and off the plane . Up bright and early Thursday morning, Dave and Jason had everything setup as you can see in the first picture . After reviewing our Phoenix test session runs we decided to run the same setup that produced a 8.939 on our last pass just to get an idea of the difference between the two tracks . Our first run came at 1030 am and our setup produced way to fast 8.789  on a class index of 8.90 seconds . The next few hours were spent watching the first Pro qualifying session where we got to see John Force's daughter Courtney Force make her first pass in NHRA Funny Car competition driving her Traxxas Ford Mustang with a 4.210-second pass at 303.16 mph, which was good for the provisional sixth spot, not bad . Jack Beckman in Funny Car , Morgan Lucas in Top Fuel and Mike Edwards Pro Stock were all in the number one spots after one round of qualifying . Then we stopped by Simpson Racing Equipment to pick some new gear for my first race in to weeks at Firebird . Unfortunately I was unable to pull enough strings to get in the nationals next weekend and Bryan's Vett has some engine damage he just discovered while doing some routine maintenance so next week Dave's dragster will be the only car I'll be working on . It's now about 4pm and time to get ready for the second round qualifying in our class,Super Comp . We head back to the trailer to do the math and set the car up . Dave offers up a little wager for dinner and drinks for who is closer to a better run , His reaction time (The time it takes a driver to react to the green starting light on the Christmas Tree, measured in thousandths of a second. The reaction-time counter begins when the last amber light flashes on the Tree and stops when the vehicle clears the stage beam ) or how close 8.90 we get the car to run . I.ll let you figure it out we ran 8.903and dinner was great . Thanks for checking us out . Kenny Speed

ZO6 Corvette / Top Fuel Dragster Comparison With one week to go

      I thought maybe between races and testing I'd try explaining Drag Racing and the different classes for those of you who like the sport and would like to know more about it  . Of course we have to start out with what they call the King of the sport , Top Fuel Dragster. These are 300 inch long rockets with wheels . Without wings for down force they would fly away . Drivers pull about 6g's the same as the space shuttle launch .They produce 7000 plus horsepower while weighing in at only 2250 lbs . That adds up to 3.1 horsepower per pound  . To give you something to compare that with a 2012  Z06 Corvette makes 505 horsepower and weighs in at 3132 pounds or a measly .16 horsepower per pound . The dragster goes 0 to 300 mph in 3.7 seconds . The Corvette 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds .1/4 elapsed time for the dragster 4.4 seconds at 330 mph . The Corvette 11.5 seconds at 127 mph . And then the only thing the Corvette is better at , fuel mileage . The corvette averages 21 miles per gallon . The dragster , check his out , 60 gallons to the mile . That's right it takes up to 15 gallons of Nitromethane to make one 1/4 mile run . That means , at a cost of about $16.00 a gallon it cost $240.00 for enough fuel to make one run. I'll leave you with one more T/F fact . Counting all expenses , crew , engine parts , tires , fuel etc it cost and average of $5000.00 per run.                                                                                                                                                                                Next time I'll check out Funny Cars .As far as our team we're just a little over a week away from the opening race at Pomona . We have one car entered and that's Dave's super comp dragster  .Wish us luck . I'll keep you in touch .  Thanks for checking in .                                                                                                                                                            Kenny Speed