Duck Tape Racing at Rockingham IHRA Div. 9 Team Finals

(Photo: During a pop-up shower Saturday night, I helped "The Legend" Chip Johnson keep the cockpit of his dragster dry.) :-)

Cold, windy, and rainy conditions tempered the IHRA Div. 9 Raiders Summit Team Finals event, but despite some intermittent delays, officials were still able to present two Gamblers races plus the main event at Rockingham Dragway this weekend for the 11 teams and 500+ cars in attendance. Since I had worn out a set of radials last week at Darlington, the Duck Tape Volare was shod with my backup set of 28x9" M/T bias plys for this weekend, which worked tremendously, resulting in 60' times as quick as 1.440 in the cool, near-sea level conditions. I knocked off an .016 and a .002 reaction time in the first two time trials, but took a nap first round of Friday's Gambler's with an .043 for the early ticket home. We ran Thursday's rained-out Gambler's race on Saturday. We went straight into eliminations with no time trials and no buybacks. After a string of killer lights, .011, .000, -.004 red (bye run), and another .011, I pushed a little too hard in the quarter-finals, and wasted a dead-on run (6.952 on a 6.95) with a -.003 red light. Sunday was similar, as I started off eliminations with an .018, an .011, and then popped a -.006 red light to once again negate a dead-on run (6.948 on 6.94).

In good news, the car was absolutely deadly, and I've got a very good spot on the tree with just a tiny bit of adjustment needed for this coming week's IHRA Sportsman National (Thurs-Fri) and the IHRA World Finals (Sat-Sun) back at Rockingham Dragway.

Newpaper clipping: Someone left a copy of the Richmond County Daily Journal sports section (Friday, October 16, 2009 edition) in my car. Nice feature photo on the front page. (Editor's note: "Seagrove" and "2007" Rockingham Dragway Modified champion, and the photo is from that year)