01/03/09

A craptacular run of events saw us front the Westernationals with a new motor with a different fuel set up and not one full power pass on it!

Prior to the last event we went to a Wednesday Test and Tune and tyre shake saw Doug take several trips to a Physiotherapist to try to get his back in shape to race prior to the last event. Unfortunately he was still in too much pain to race and we had to miss this event and watch our points lead disappear as well as not get any set up information for the new motor. Not to worry there is always the Wednesday Test and Tune prior to the Westernationals.

We spent the Test and Tune sitting in the truck waiting for the rain to stop.

 On to the day it self...

 SATURDAY

1st Qual
The car sounded strange during the burnout and sputtered and farted there after. We elected to shut the car down on the line and push it out to see why it was running so poorly and alter the fueling.

2nd Qual 6.535 @ 182mph
Finally some data for us to make sure the engine wasn't overly lean. It was an early shut off pass but we were in the field. We made some changes to the fuel system to square the engine up and prepared for the last qualifier and expectations of the changes we made jumping us up the qualifying ladder into a friendlier spot...

3rd Qual 6.520 @ 204
A very minor improvement and a visit from our bracket Marshall to inform us we had qualified ninth and drawn top qualifier Andrew Minogue.

SUNDAY

1st Eliminator 6.764 @ 200 loss to Andrew Minogue
Yesterday had show us there was something amiss with our normally strong running car but unfortunately we could not put our finger on it. Doug lined up against Minogue and we all breathed in and crossed everything. The problem with the car identified itself with the car pulling thru the beams early for a red light run on a very unhappy clutch. We had bent some of the clutch fingers and the clutch was not releasing properly and had fried itself quite badly.

We put the car in the truck and packed up to enjoy watching some of the quality racing and think about next years assault on the Westernationals.

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