American DRAGCAR Race Report       

The April 7th 2012 American DRAGCAR  Full Power Challenge  event at Speedworld Dragstrip near Phoenix, Arizona was again somewhat disappointing in racer turnout but it did prove to be an entertaining and exciting venue, while at the same time a few issues which needed addressing had arisen and have since been corrected.

The 50 car requirement for running an 8-car DragCar Eliminator  was far from met which again dictated that only the EconoDrag Eliminator  was to be run.

First round did however see one of the goals of the American DRAGCAR  venue realized as the first pairing of the round saw an all out heads up battle with Ron Shelly in his big block powered Vega going up against Larry Bierbaum in his small block powered Camaro. Both racers were running on EconoDrag  Adjusted Indexes of 9.40 and Larry took a 2 hundredths reaction time advantage off of the line, but Ron made up the difference and then some by running 9.41 to Larry's 9.47 to take the stripe by 37 thousandths. That was a race indeed!

Ron's second round opponent failed to show which put him in the finals against Jeff Sefranek in the Mustang who had been Re-Indexed during eliminations due to running 36 thousandths under his 10.75 EconoDrag  Adjusted Index in the first round.

The final round was another awesome drag race as Jeff took the 1.25 second handicap with a .035 reaction time and ran all out to the finish line as Ron waited for his tree before nailing a double "O-9" to give chase. To all observers it looked as if the Ford had the Chevy easily covered but in true all out drag racing fashion, both cars went across the finish line at full throttle and Ron's Vega snatched the stripe from the Mustang by 9 thousandths of a second for the EconoDrag Eliminator  win with a 9.46 on his 9.40 index to Jeff's 10.69 on his 10.65 index.

A number of issues which arose during this race and required rule and policy modifications have been addressed and corrected.

    First: was the fact that the re-indexing table was still a bit harsh on racers running reasonable amounts under their index so that has been softened up a little bit and effectively has reduced the run-under penalty by 5 hundredths.

    Second: has to do with bye-runs and run-unders during such runs. The revised policy will be that run-unders made on bye-runs will be exempt from run-under penalties and those racers will be re-indexed just as if this were a qualifying run.

    Third: is that in cases of re-runs, racers may in fact be index re-adjusted without penalty prior to the re-run should they have actually run under during the run which has been thrown out.

    Fourth: is merely a stipulation that any racer feeling that their Adjusted Index is in fact slower than what they expect to run during eliminations may request to have their Adjusted Index lowered prior to the start of eliminations to keep from being re-indexed and possibly penalized.

I want to thank those who did come out for this event and I hope that more racers will get to come out and try this very exciting venue.

Pre-Stage

Stage

Get

Set

Let's

Race!

NO More BREAKOUTS!

Real Drag Racing is Back with  ^American DRAGCAR!