Ass Kicking Goodness

Due to two rained out weekends at Thunder Mtn this season, the July 17/18 race weekend was slotted as a triple header extravaganza that also included an instant green street drags race on Saturday night. We generally pit with the majority of the volunteers so needless to say, they weren't too excited about all the work ahead of them. We started early Saturday morning with the intent on hammering out two points races in one day. Everything started out tight but soon turned to shit when it was discovered that freshly laid asphalt that was put down on Friday afternoon was not staying where it should be. I did a wild pass consisting of spinning the tires half track and steering the whole way before they shut it down for 2 1/2 hours to scrape out all the asphalt repairs.

Back on track with traction to spare we started the program again. I went to the second round for the re-run of race #1. Round two (race 3 re-run) found us bouncing through the competitors until the emergency staff was called away for an accident in the pits. Apparently someone's neutral safety switch wasn't entirely working and crushed the owner between two Darts breaking his femur. Crushed by your own car, how much does that suck? Regardless, that ended racing for the day since we can't run without an ambulance on site. Sunday morning came rather early after rockin' out until after 4:00 am but we handled the situation like champs. I did a qualifying pass for race #5 then went back to finish off race #3 from the day before (confused yet?) Race three landed me in the finals against Ralph Pool in his '66 Cuda. He's a man who knows his machine really well and is a genius when it comes to messing with other racer's minds. No problem here, my hungover brain can only see what's in front of me and our car is set on "kill". I tree'd Ralph big time and with no green Cuda in site I lifted way before the traps but still managed to breakout by a microscopic .008 seconds. Second place for Polara Pat. Chris drove for race #5 that afternoon and his sober mind cut some stellar lights, also landing him in the finals against Charles (?) in his Dart that he has owned since high school. Unfortunately Chris hammered out his only red light of the day leaving him with a runner up finish as well. All in all we racked up 17 passes in two days, brought home some hardware and $200.00 in cheques. Not a ton of money but every bit counts when you operate a DIY race team.

Polara Pat