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AmericanDRAGCAR Race Report
November 16th, 2013
Tom Payton takes his
first DRAGCAR win on his first try!
Tom Payton�s �Ol Red� had
been a regular fixture at each of the DRAGCAR Season II visits to Southwestern
International Raceway throughout the year, just not in the staging lanes.
Tom had apparently been working out some bugs in the Test n� Tune lanes
during our previous Tucson visits, but Corvettes are as much American drag cars
as baseball is America�s pastime
and we wanted to see this exquisite �Vette in the DRAGCAR lanes from our very
first visit. Well, we finally got
our wish, and what a showing Tom made with this pretty little �57 in standout
fashion. As
the old saying goes, �Be careful what you wish for,� and Jeff Sefranek got
the full impact of the meaning of the phrase during second round of eliminations
when he went up against the racer he had so long been wanting to see enter into
DRAGCAR competition. Sefranek needed
to score 4 round wins or a race win at this last race of the season to overtake
Ron Shelly for the Season II points championship and he got the perfect
opportunity to capitalize on when his first round opponent, Brian Johnston�s
beautiful Corvette sheared the axle studs while giving chase to the Mustang and
gave Sefranek a pass into the next round. Brian Johnston�s car took a hard
left turn and plowed the wall badly as the left rear wheel tore up the quarter
panel but fortunately, Brian was physically unhurt.
Emotionally however, there is certainly some pain.
We truly hope to see Brian and his gorgeous silver bullet back in the
lanes at the start of DRAGCAR�s Season III series. Then, Ron Shelly himself was put in the trailer in first round by Dale Schroeder with his wheel-standing �Orange Crush� Fairlane wagon by a 3 hundredths margin which was also what Jeff needed in order to close the points gap, so things were going well for Sefranek, but Payton put a quick end to all of those dreams of glory when in second round he hammered out a fine .016 light against Sefranek�s late leave which added up to a full tenth of a second hole-shot, and then rubbed salt in as he caught the angry sounding Mustang running a tenth off index at halftrack to easily maintain a full car length lead across the finish line for the sure win with a 10.909 on his 10.85 DragSport adjusted index. In the closest race of first round,
Nick Johnoff took a nice hole-shot advantage with his 10.605 on a 10.55 adjusted
index to hold off the 9.380 of the beautiful hard charging '58 Chevy Wagon of
Mark Ballard on a 9.35 adjusted index for a mere .0152 margin of victory. Though Chris is a true sportsman,
this particular instance demonstrates the need for a mandatory performance
threshold for disqualification. As
much as we wish not to enforce anything which can be construed as a breakout,
it�s just a matter of time before less ethical personalities will fail to make
the better judgment call in such situations and will ruin the DragSport program. Third round was show of nearly all
heads-up drag races as Matt Hawk took the round win with a mean hole-shot and an
11.979 on a 12.05 adjusted index over Bob Thurston�s 11.986 on a12.00 adjusted
index while Tom Payton went straight heads-up against Dale Schroeder and came
out on top with another hole-shot 10.840 to a 10.829 victory as both racers were
running on 10.85 adjusted indexes. The
third pairing of the round had Mike Gonnell in his Nova paired with Daryl Amans�
third generation Camaro but Mike�s march ended abruptly when his electrical
reserve failed to provide the needed power to get the engine started for his
call to the lanes and Daryl was awarded the competition single. Matt Hawk�s substantial run-under
of 71 thousandths carried a 15 hundredths adjusted index penalty which looked
threatened to be the end of his day as he would now be re-indexed at 11.90 but
he was on the right side of the ladder to draw the semi-final bye-run, and he
likely watched with some degree of relief as Tom Payton encountered an index
run-under penalty of his own of 5 hundredths while taking his semi-final round
win with a 23 thousandths run-under. In
the final round, Matt�s chances looked fairly slim
but he was actually only at a mathematical performance disadvantage of.052
seconds so a strong hole-shot could pull off a win. Matt
started off the race strong with a nice .027 swing at the tree in the hopes that
he could overcome his performance deficit but Tom�s .005 light in conjunction
with his 10.823 on a 10.80 earned him the spot in the winner�s circle.
Tom�s 5 round reaction time average was an impressive .0206 and a racer
like that is going to be a threat to anybody, even of the Hawks� stature.
It could easily be argued that this final round of DRAGCAR�s Season II
series was between two of Arizona�s, if not the country�s, toughest racers. Tom reveled in the realization that
he just captured the extra special $750.00 guaranteed winner�s check but in
addition to that and his EconoDrag Exterminator trophy, he also pulled in the
Kenny Speed�s Tire and Performance Center�s Best Reaction Time $50.00 Award
with his .005 final round reaction time performance for a cool and even $800.00
total prize take-home. Daryl Amans collected the Kenny
Speed�s Tire and Performance Center�s Best Defeated Package $50.00 Award as
well with his .066 package against Payton in the semi-final round. All throughout the day and well into
the evening, racers were asking for the DRAGCAR schedule which has yet to have
been negotiated, but we will certainly be getting with the new management team
of SWIR to get something in the works that we can get publicized as soon as
possible so that racers may start making their plans for being a part of
DRAGCAR�s Season III series. I personally and sincerely thank all
of the American DRAGCAR racers who
came down to help make this race more exciting than any other to date, and to
those members who so actively promote the American DRAGCAR program to fiends and
competitors, which as I understand it, was behind the resulting largest DRAGCAR
DragSport Eliminator field to date. I
also thank all of those racers who came to this race to try out the DRAGCAR
program for their first time. And thanks again to Southwestern
International Raceway and it�s fine crew who continually accommodate
DRAGCAR�s unique program with such ease, understanding, professionalism, and
hospitality. THANK YOU ALL! Season II was a real challenge with
all of the track scheduling issues, and frankly it was quite a struggle to see
it through emotionally as well as financially but if this last race of the
Season II is any indication of the future of DRAGCAR, Season III may turn out to
be some kind of drag racing excitement. |
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