- Mar 15, 2006
- 767
It's been a busy last 2 weeks running at both the Texas Mile and Maxton Mile standing mile events. We made it through both events in pretty good shape while learning a lot and got a few new speed records along the way.
In the game of high speed racing there is no substitute for experience and knowing the ropes of where you are racing. This last weekend at Maxton was quite a learning curve. Maxton has mirrored itself after many of the traditions, rules, etc. of Bonneville SCTA.
Although we had successfully run over 200 mph 5 times the weekend before, we were required to make a 175 mph qualifying pass at Maxton. No big deal, we had to play by the rules so that is what we set out to do before trying for a 200+ mph run. The biggest challenge at Maxton is the track surface. One of my guys referred to it as being a "motocross track". I thought it was more along the lines of "rallycross meets bonneville". To say that the course is bumpy, dusty/dirty and downright rough, is a complete understatement. Anybody with a pair and a fast car and go out on a smooth road and hit 200 mph without too much trouble. Maxton is a whole different deal. Imagine the worst road you know of in your home town and then cover it in dust and rocks then picture yourself going out and running 200+ mph on it. Anybody who has gone over 150 mph on this track has got a pair and those running over 200 mph are risking their lives every time they go.
Back to the "qualifying pass". Now that you get an idea of what each driver has to drive on, add in a little chicane at about the 1/8 mile and you better pay attention to where you are going on this track. So our driver heads out to hit a 175 mph pass. At this poing the CC has mirrors and wipers in place and the same plugs we had been dyno'ing on the week prior. We didnt want to mess with all that til it was time to go fast.
So he takes off slowly and short shifts 1st, 2nd and 3rd - and was sideways most of the time with a big rooster tail of dust behind him. He figures that his short shifting and less than agressive driving will have him running much slower so he nails 4th and 5th and the car finally hooks up. He is working hard to keep the car on track and doesnt bother to try to watch the speedo or gps - he is too busy trying to keep on track and not crash.
He ends up going thru the timing lights and runs 223.2 mph on his run where he was supposed to only be running 175 mph. He didnt think he was going very fast and didnt deploy the parachute. Needless to say the officials were not happy with our 50+ mph overage on speed and they really freaked out when we didnt pull the chute. The CC stopped just fine and all was fine after we got a nice butt chewing.
So they still required us to go out and get a qualifying pass. So we headed back out and made another run, this time 5th gear broke. But that did slow us down enough to keep everyone happy. The only problem was we didnt bring a spare transmission and it was late Saturday afternoon.
Part 2 coming in a few.
arty 
