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| Well, you’re not going to believe this one. On the weekend of, July 14-15 , I took my racecar drag-racing. Yes, you read it right, drag-racing. And I know what you’re thinking: Joel’s car is a road-racer not a dragster. Right again. How do I explain this one? As some of you might know, I was born and raised in Elliot Lake. I recently discovered, in a round-about way, that Elliot Lake had hosted it’s inaugural drag races last summer. (kinda like Terrace Bay has done for the previous two summers) The event is named the Elliot Lake dragway ( www.elliotlakedragway.com) The race is part of the Canadian NHRA,” Show-Me-The-Money Tour” and the person who is responsible for it’s organization is Steve Hollingshead. So I called Steve. At first, it was simply to get information about the race as I was considering attending as a spectator. But that’s not how things turned out. In the end, he agreed to let me put my car on display, It would let me have a little booth where I could sell my T-shirts and optionally, I could do a few passes on the dragstrip. And that’s pretty much what happened. Not having been to the “Elliot Lake Dragway “ the previous year, I had no idea what to expect in terms of participant or spectator attendance. I was astonished. I don’t have any numbers but the place was full. There was wall-to-wall participants in the paddock . And it wasn’t limited to just cars. No, there was cars, trucks, motorcycles, snowmachines, rail dragsters, jr-dragsters and funnycars. Equally, the grandstands were full of spectators. The majority of the cars were spectacular in appearance and mechanical preparation. I might be a road-racer but I appreciate all forms of racing and all cars in general. Going to one of these events, one would expect to find that the majority of cars present would be from the late ‘60’s and early 70’s, ones from the muscle car era. And these definitely had good representation. But I didn’t expect to see this one. The oldest car in attendance was a show stopping, late 1920’s, 5 window coupe. The kind of car you’d expect to see in a museum not at a drag strip. I wasn’t the only one in attendance to make demonstration passes. Present was the “Blast from the Past”, an F-5 jet turbine propelled funnycar. There was also a “Sidecar”, a three wheeled roadracing machine which is neither a motorcycle nor a car. It was piloted by , Paul Mirfield of Sudbury and can be seen at www.barosoapracing.com. The “Blast from the Past” had mechanical problems all weekend and it’s only successful pass was it’s very last one, suffering “flame-outs” in it’s previous passes. The flame outs were spectacular and suspenseful as the car was briefly engulfed in flames. The safety equipment did it’s job, however, and the driver emerged unscathed each time. Paul and I had originally planned to race against each other. He also had never run his sidecar on a dragstrip and like me didn’t know what to expect. Our vehicles were not equally matched, however. His engine had more horsepower and his sidecar, at approx 500 lbs, was much lighter than my car. But being that it’s a sidecar, he carried a passenger. Yes, a passenger. There is a platform at the rear of the vehicles where another person rides. Therefore his total weight was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 900lbs. He still had a weight advantage over me as the total weight of my car, with me in it, weighs in at exactly 1150 lbs. My only advantages was that I had two driven wheels to his one drive wheel. The organizers had different ideas and motives, however, and believed that, for safety reasons, we would do solo passes instead. I still think it would have been more fun, for the two of us and the spectators, if we could have raced against each other but, this wasn’t our show. We were guests of the “Elliot Lake Dragway” and had no choice but to comply. Paul went first. When the light went green, he gave it too much throttle, dropped the clutch and smoked the tire for the first 100 feet. He still managed a respectable elapsed time of 9.0 sec. As this was my first time on a drag strip, I probably made every possible mistake there was to make. The first thing was that I was asleep at the light. Of all people, I should know how to proceed in front of a “Christmas tree”. I’ve been to enough NHRA Pro races and watched enough of it on TV to know what it is I’m supposed to do. When the last yellow light flashes, you launch. The delays that are present in the human body as well as the mechanicals of the car dictate that you can “cut a perfect light” if you begin the motions as the last yellow light has lit. It has been calculated that from the instant that your eyes send the information to your brain and your brain tells your muscles to move to the instant that the car starts to move and breaks the beam, the elapsed time is 0.4 of a second. And if you do it perfectly, the car will break the beam just as the green light comes on. Thus a perfect reaction time. But if one anticipates the last yellow light, then the reaction time is too quick, the car will move across the beam before the green light has had time to light and the racer will receive a red light instead and be disqualified. Conversely, if you wait for the green light to come on, you loose a minimum of 0.4 sec and your competitor will most likely be ahead of you by a significant distance. As I was there on the line, staged, with everyone watching me, I forgot everything. Everything went out the window. My, reaction time was a laughable 1.5 sec. Trying not to duplicate what Paul had done, I over compensated and didn’t give it enough throttle. The car bogged on the line and took what seemed an eternity to come up to speed. I confirmed what I suspected: my car is not a dragster. The gears in the tranny are much too tall for this application. At a distance of approx. ¾ of the way down the dragstrip, I shifted to second gear. Total elapsed time: 9.2 secs, with a speed of 89 mph. For my second pass, I vowed that I wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of my first pass. I didn’t. Once staged, I revved the engine up quite high, then waited for the last yellow. As it lit, I dropped the clutch and the car launched. The rear tires spun for a very brief moment then hooked up. It felt like a much better run. My time slip, however, showed that my elapsed time had been only slightly better at 9.02 secs. with a top speed of 92 mph, however, my reaction time was a much better 0.5 sec. I was proud and satisfied with the reaction time as it was almost the only factor that I had control over. It wasn’t perfect, but for having been in front of the “tree” only twice, it wasn’t bad at all. I can’t change the fact that my car is not a dragster. Paul’s second pass was better as well. He shaved a few tenths off his previous time to finish in the high eights. Many interested fans came over to ask questions about my car and I gladly answered them. I also had many young children have their pictures taken with me. I’d sit in the car first. Then the child would sit on my lap. Mom or dad would click away. The kids loved it. Most had ear-to-ear smiles. I’m sure I did too. I think that I enjoyed that as much as they did. All in all, it was a excellent weekend. The weather could not have been better. Attendance was good and the action on the track was terrific. I hope that I can attend again next year. |
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