TAFC Field at the Rock

Zone

Your correct they have had back to back for years and Racers have complained for years. I guess if you live in the LA area that is wonderful, but Div. 7 has Racers who live in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, ect.. not to mention the out of Div. Racers who attend. As I stated before not all Teams are happy about the back to back stuff, and it does cause the feilds to be weak.

Just thought of something. Div 7 runs Tuscon and then Las Vegas at the beginning of the year too. The Div Race hardly ever pulls large feilds of TAD/TAFC cars. Why??? In my opnion its because they are saving their stuff for Las Vegas. If they hurt something at Tuscon they would not be able to make Vegas.

 

I think this year they had a great field at Tucson
Dean

 

I attended the show at Tuscon and the TAD feild was OK but if memory serves me right they only had 8 cars. Not very hard to qualify when only 8 show up. The FC feild was not good at all. The bump was high 6 or maybe a 7. I'm not bashing the cars that were there, but the Phoenix divisional race was a lot better. I'm going to have to agree with F-O-R, it seems that when they spread them out, better cars show up.

 

Jim Sickles put a roots on his funny car and raced it at Norwalk this year. He won the race and I believe he ran as quick as 5.72 in the heat of the day without taking the bellhousing or pan off for 4 rounds of racing.

Our roots TAD we just sold was originally a screw car. We put our roots combination in it and ran as quick as 5.68@243mph, with a shit load of 5.70s to back that up and some .920 60 footers. We made seven consecutive runs in the 5.70s without taking the bellhousing off. I wouldn't doubt for a second that if we went to a PSI, we could run some high 5.30s to mid 5.40s. with the same chassis.

Yeah I will admit the faster our car went the more sensitive it became to a loss of boost, but I still liked our Mert. It will be interesting to see how good Norm's PSI High Helix will be.

[ October 20, 2003, 04:51 PM: Message edited by: T.Smith ]

 

I'll be the first to admit August/early September was a tough schedule for everyone. I was offered the US Nationals, and turned that assignment down this year simply because it would have meant too much time away from my business here.

The good folks in Great Bend were lobbying to move that event to May next year due to the heat. I only weigh 165 pounds and there were places where I was leaving Nike footprints in the asphalt that weekend.... Such a move would be great if you live in Kansas, two Divisional events and a national event in the same month, not so great if you live in Duluth.

I'd suggest the last weekend in April, except Division 4 is racing at the Motorplex that weekend (an event that is also usually on my schedule) and there were a bunch of Division 4 racers in Great Bend this year. I'd think that conflict would have a big hit on the car counts, but then again, I thought the rescheduling of Indy would have the same impact on Earlville this year, and it didn't.

I don't envy the folks who set the schedules every year, there will always be a fair number of people inconvenienced no matter what you do. Throw rain into the equation and all bets are off! I wasn't even scheduled to work Earlville this year. ...gotta call Labor Day telling me I needed to be in Iowa later that week. You should see what a 3-day advance purchase plane ticket costs from Colorado Springs to Dubuque!

....and don't it only figure, a day after I express concerns about grading points, the NHRA changes a bunch of the requirements, and eliminates selected classes from Comp on down from selected National events!

Bob

[ October 20, 2003, 11:09 PM: Message edited by: Bob Orme ]