Saturday I went out for an unusual (for me) day race. I normally run Friday evening series because my son is on a horse riding team that practices every Saturday. Well, they're out of town this weekend for a show, so that left Dad free to race Saturday. This is a series that qualifies you for the Summit ET divisional race, but this is only the 2nd of 6 of this series that I've made (I'm in 1st place in the similar Friday series, went into the day in 46th place in this series!).

To set the scene, the night before I went out for "Club Clash", a trophy-only series, ran the '57 in the quicker class and Camaro in the slower class, and managed a first-round runner-up in both. Grrrr! Also, at Bandimere, you only get 2 time trials because of the high car count, but the Saturday class I run is the first to get their TT, the first after the track is prepped, so if you're one of the first six down to the staging lanes when they call you in, they don't count that run. I jumped in and got the "free" time trial. That was at 10 a.m. This weekend was also a special sponsored race for diesels, so we had to wait around for them to get their TT's as well as the 3 other normal ET classes, so first round of eliminations was at 2 p.m.

Okay, that's the scene. Here's my round summary (I left first in all but the 2nd round):

Rnd*******My RT*******Opp RT
1 ******** .026 ******* .380
2 ******** .060 ******* .181
3 ******** .034 ******* .411
4 ******** .052 ****** -.003 (he was in 6th place going into the day)
5 ******** .033 ******* .161
6 (semifinal) .079 ******* -.027 (first time I've beat that guy)
7 (final) *** .063 ******* broke after burn-out (probably ignition)

I wasn't exactly killing the tree, but the other guy gave it to me each race.

That's not being lucky, that can only be explained as being blessed.

 

Dosent matter if you get .00s or .05s as long as you did better than the person you are racing.

Congrats on the win.

 

Thanks.

It's true you don't have to be the best racer out there, just better than the guy in the next lane.

 

Better than my reaction times
.416 was my BEST. First times at the track are always fun.

I did manage a 2.01 60' though.

 

winnin' ugly is still winnin'! take it where you can get it brother!

 

Winning the event and not really winning each round just doesn't feel right but I always figure winning a bracket race with luck is about 80% of all wins.

If both cars cut a good light, both run close to their dial ins, and someone has to lose, I call that a good race. Even if I lose those races, I congratulate the winner because he had to fight for the win and I didn't easily give it away. We all know that these types of wins are hard to come by.

More races are lost from a driver being asleep at the tree, red lighting or breaking out, than there are good races where the MOV is very close.

 

The guy who won the Pro bracket yesterday said his wins came pretty much in the same way (although the RT margins weren't quite as wide).

My loss Friday night was the other guy having a package that was slightly less than half my light. My light was twice as good as usually required in 1st round of that class. He went out the next round.

Previous edition of that race, I cut a .006 light to the other guy's .010 light, he broke out by a couple of thou. Similar thing happened the next day. I expected one of those kind of races yesterday, but it never materialized.

That's bracket racing. . .

 

wish i could be so lucky.... .021 red friday in the semi's. Saturday .011 red second round. Sunday .002 red, dead on with a zero, third round. .002 on the green side second round though. worst light on the day was an .013 first round, which i lost because he was .008, won re-entry.

 

Congratulations. You are having a good season so far!

 

haha that is pretty lucky lol

my luckiest moment in the brackets was one that happened by accident. My '97 was bone stock (street meats and all) and I just dialed in 14.20, I figured I'd break out pretty easy but didn't care because I wanted to sit her in the lanes and let her cool down anyway.

I lined up, hit a .090 RT iirc, then BLEW the 60 foot BAD - about a 2.38 IIRC, me spinning through the whole thing - at that point I figured I'd run a 14.5 or so and get knocked out anyway.. I ran EXACTLY 14.200 LOL

The girl in the ticket booth looked at me and said "wow, nice one!" The look on the guys face when I said "nice race" was priceless.

 

My favorite story was of friend, a vetran sport compact driver that has a VW Manx wheelie machine. He drops the hammer at about 6k to get his rear engined buggy way way up there. Anyways, he was dialed in at a low 15 against a high 13 honda del sol. He went to launch hard a the car stalled. The honda left on a green light and then hustled down the track. The VW owner fired it up and ran the car down the track anyways only to win the race as the honda driver broke when the chasing car was at least 4 seconds off his dial in. A fairly rookie mistake to make and hopefully you only make that one once in your life.

 

I've seen a couple of races where one guy (the quicker one in both cases, and therefore the last to leave) launched and broke, and the other guy ran it through and broke out. But, since the broken car broke the beam, he won the round. One of them fixed it between rounds and answered the call for the next round (the other left his rear end guts on the track).

I had been talking to my final round opponent in the staging lanes all day, starting at the first TT. We had to wait for the final while a Super Pro loser was complaining about the track and demanding a rerun, and while we waited he was telling me about his car - he's running a clean '70 Nova with Gen VI 454 crate shortblock, Canfield heads, roller cam, etc., that he built several years ago, and was saying that all he does to it is change the oil and add gas - it hasn't given him any trouble. Then, during his next burn-out it pops and stops - go figure. Oh, he had a bye into the final, decided to break the beam and back out, and therefore didn't do a burn-out. Had he done the burn-out and it stopped on him then, he wouldn't have been able to stage and break the beam, and therefore wouldn't have won the semifinal! So, his luck wasn't all bad.

(Honest, I didn't touch his car while we were talking!)