Yesterday, Friday evening, first time out since Div V ET finals two weeks ago (hadn't even started the car up since then). Recall my previous post ("Something worse than losing"), last race in ET Finals had broken out in 2nd round, and discovered soon after one slick had suffered a sudden & catistrophic tube failure (got that fixed, of course - tubeless now). Went out to Bandimere for "Club Clash", a car- & bike-only (no dragsters), no electronics, no tranny brakes, DOT tires & mufflers required series. Over 300 cars start running them off until there are only two left for the finals.

See attached timeslips. I'm B757K in right lane. Some details of the night:

1st time trial just happened to be quickest time to date at altitude, 13.97. Per normal pattern, 2nd TT & 1st two rounds of elimination slightly slower.

Kept going rounds. Kept getting quicker. In round 5, I'm paired up with the guy who put my heads together this spring - he's running his mid-13 sec '37 Chevy PU w/huffed 383, a tough racer, won Club Clash season series last year. He treed me by .005 but broke out (he was trying to fender race me, I dumped him at the traps putting a 9 on my dial).

If you look close at the bottom of those timeslips, you'll see "Rnd # E8 0/1490" & "Rnd # E9 1492/1491". Those stand for Elimination Round 8 & 9, runs 1490, 1491, & 1492 made that night.

Left slip is semifinal bye (determined by coin toss - it now stands as my quickest time to date @ altitude).

Right slip is final round: And the winner is....

(Sorry for the long post, I'm still jazzed)

 

Congratulations. That is great you won that shootout and set a new best while doing it.

 

yea congrats man on winning and setting a new best

 

I'm glad I never have to go that many rounds. It's not as easy as it sounds.

I don't agree with a coin toss to determine who gets the bye round. First round can be random pairings and the person at the head of staging can determin who might get the bye in the first round. Usually they know how many cars are in the field. 300 cars, he can radio the tower to pick a number between 1 and 300. If 100 is picked, he can then go and tell the 100th car that shows up in the staging lanes that he has the bye. That prevents stragglers who wait until the last minute to show up and hope to get a bye round.

Going into the second round, the track should have made up a ladder (it's not hard to do). Depending on who wins a round will determine who gets the bye. I had 2 byes in one race. The first one was just luck. Next round I won and winning that round gave me another bye for the next round. Everyone complained but if I lost someone else would have gotten it. It was just the luck of the draw.

I see your final MOV was .0071. I did a bunch of calculations. It must have been real close at the finish line. You beat him by just under 1 foot.

 

Since this is a club event, they are a little looser with the rules. However, they do pull a bye candidate out in the early rounds randomly (you can refuse if you like and they'll pick someone else). If the field comes out odd, you get the bye. If even, you run the last race of the round. They do limit it to one bye per racer per night.

As for this bye, I figured pulling into the staging lanes I was going to have to run the race. Again, this is a club event, so they do their best to not have fellow club members run each other, and the other two were from the same club. Also, our club has run away with the series the past few years, and earlier this year when I was up for a bye in an odd field, they reshuffled so I had to run (no byes for our club). However, we're back in the pack now, so much to my surpise they went coin toss for that bye last night.

In "normal" races, they ladder after the 2nd round based on closest to dial-in w/o breakout, one bye rule applies. Avoids all this straggler, who's-running-who stuff.

Yes, that MOV was tight. But, he broke out, too. I scrubbed slightly to avoid breakout, but it wasn't necessary.

At Super Chevy last month, I had a MOV of .0013 sec @ 92 MPH - that's less than an inch.