She turned out great!

"She turned out great, video attached" was how Cliff Moore's email read. Short but sweet!

As you may remember, earlier this year we spun a bearing during testing with King Kong IV. As we have a long standing relationship with Jon Kaase, I decided to ship the engine to them, instead of this engine's original builder Sonny Leonard.
Since I know many of you will want to know this, we only had Kaase's people repair and refresh the engine, for it did not make any sense to have the engine's maximum HP increased. She has about the same maximum HP as before. See picture to the right.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who supported our fundraisers directly or indirectly. We could not have done this without you.

Thanks for reading and see you at the races!

Photo credit: own files

On board footage

Most guys go bar hopping on Friday nights. Not us. Given the opportunity, we go racing.

I quickly made a 2 minute video for those who couldn't make it last night, containing two new positions, filming from the rear spoiler and the passenger door (inside).



Watch closely and you will notice I lifted before the finish line. Even so, we ran a 6.77et.

Fellow NHRA Pro Stock driver and friend, Dave Connolly watched the video and commented: "That's awesome man, Straight down the track!"

Thanks for watching and see you at the races!

Pre-sale of our new T shirts

Even though I consider our Pro Stock operation to be one with a very low budget, I always strive to make the most with what we have and I constantly seek to push the boundaries.



Tyler Clark's rendition of Pete

It is with this in mind that I am very proud to announce that we are in the final stages of completing a design for our very first T-shirt. The design is in the very capable hands of Tyler Clark and the T- shirt used will be of high quality.

The picture on the right shows how PISS'D OFF PETE is depicted in our design. Of course, there is much more but I am not going to give anything else away, other than I am very proud of it.

At this time, we are taking pre-orders so that we can get the right sizes to the right people in the color they prefer. The shirts used for this pre-order all have been washed and treated to an hour in the clothes dryer, to insure that what you try on will fit you later as intended.
So that's either black or white for the fundraising price of Fls. 75,00 or long sleeved T shirts for Fls. 95,00. A portion of the sales will go to charity.

Should you be interested in pre-ordering one of the coolest drag racing T shirts on the island, then let me know by sending me an email at: daniel@dekortfamily.com

We only have a short window of opportunity to do this so please make good use of this opportunity.

Thanks for reading and see you at the races!

Tramm Imaging

TRAMM Imaging is our sole supplier of racing decals and vinyl. Also, they were one of our first sponsors and supporters since we first started Danny de Kort Motorsports back in 2011.

If you think our reflective same-color flames of the hood scoop look super cool, or Pete's skull on the sides of the Cobalt jumps out at you when the light hits it just at the right angle, it's all thanks to the great people at Tramm!

Their knowledgeable staff used state-of-the-art equipment and will tend to all of your needs:

- High quality offset printing / Leaflets / Booklets / Magazines / Flyers / Business Cards

- ADVANTIX / APS One Hour Printing and Processing

- Hi Resolution Scanning / Photo CD

- Color Copies / Digital Printing on Photographic paper

- Posters / Signs / Banners / Trade-show Graphics

- Truck Wraps or Billboards or Fine Art

- Photo Mouse-pad / Photo Buttons and T-shirts

- Wide Format Scanning and Copying

- Plotting and Copying of Construction Plans (Blue Prints)

- Mounting on Foam Board / PVC Board

- Plastic Comb- Coli- and/or Calender Binding


Contact info:

Tramm Foto:
Dr. Hugenholtzsweg 36,
Phone: (599 9) 465-0095,
email: foto@tramm.com

Tramm Imaging:
Caracasbaaiweg 234,
Phones: (599 9) 465-9065 or 465-9062,
email: info@tramm.com

Business Hours:
Mon-Fri 8:00 - 12:00 and 14:00 - 18:00
Sat 09:00 - 13:00

For more information, please click here.

Funny picture

The picture to the right was taken Urven Broos when I was getting ready to make our third pass at the Drag Fest earlier this year. In pro categories drag racing is clearly a team sport.

How would you caption this photo? Send us your thoughts and you may win a prize. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Where are gonna be testing soon. Please check back for your personal invite.

Thanks for visiting and see you at the races.

Curacao Drag Fest - Day 3

Day three started earlier than usual and meant that we would have one pass in daylight, albeit the afternoon. Knowing that we had a good clutch set up, even though a bit on the soft side for my crew which required some arm twisting on my part to leave untouched, we set off to the staging lane confident in our combination.

And boy, was it a nice run. As I am still in the orientation phase with Pete, I wanted to take things slow and didn't mind running a 1.04+ 60 ft, as long as I got down the track in a comfortable run.

The video below shows the run, which had a 6.807 e.t. at 201.97 mph and a 60 ft of 1.03.

Later that night we ran a 6.79 at 204.03 mp with a 60 ft of 1.02. I ran into some trouble with water temperature rising somewhat and I had to re-stage the car. Eric realized that I was either a bit out of the groove or not pointing straight, so he took the right decision to have me re-stage the car. I guess the public must have wondered what was going on with us, but when I dropped the hammer, and Pete took off down a 6.79 pass, even the commentators pointed out that we had delivered on our promise... consistently six second runs.

All in all, not bad for Pete's debut. A "masha danki" to Jeff Dobbins for a job well done setting up the Cobalt.

Since many of our friends were unaware we would be testing at these races, and so missed watching our runs in person, I have posted the videos we made. Also, I will be posting more in the near future, so check back from time to time if you're interested.

Our next test day will most likely be Sunday, June 2.

Video courtesy of Gerardo "Gege" de Kort.

Curacao Drag Fest - Day 2

working on the clutch 

As the festivities around the celebration of the Queen's day (which is a national holiday) came to a close, some of these folk found their way to the drag strip, as this was the second day of racing. It's funny. The stands are full of fans in orange, some of whom spend the entire day in Punda or Otrobanda celebrating amongst friends and with beer in hand. Many came by our pits and hung out.

The second day of racing seemed to go bit slower than we're accustomed to. But the guys doing the drifting put on a hell of a show, while the track's crew tended to the many oil downs, including ours.

Our first and only pass of the night didn't turn out like we wanted. When I went on the throttle-stop the engine suffered a small oil leak, which in turn was blown all over the engine and eventually onto the track. The car didn't seem to want to make up its mind where it wanted to go (hey, I am just the passenger at this point) so after pushing Pete into third gear and still having excessive wheel spin, I clicked it early.

Below the video of our run on day 2, still had a decent 60ft of 1.02 seconds.



Personally I dislike very much oil downs, so I spent the rest of the night underneath the car wiping off any oil that remained. Unfortunately, some other cars ran into the same problem and there were some long delays. The track guys worked feverishly to clean these up, so they deserve two thumbs up!

For those of you who haven't been to the track lately, mostly, the races are held at night under the lights.

Curacao Drag Fest - Day 1

Henry Ford said it best, "Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success".  And so it was.

Looking back on the first day at the track, I must say it went pretty well. Of course, there were the small mistakes which were in essence avoidable, such as the driver (me) not taping up the shift light and then, as he went down the track, being startled each time the shift light came on. You should have been there to understand.

At first I was just trying to get the feel back, after all, I hadn't driven a mountain motor pro stock in almost two years. The first attempt at a pass ended prematurely when I had to lift due to the car getting out of the grove and moving hard to the center. Still, we had 60 ft of 1.02 seconds, which confirmed that we were running the correct clutch set up for the track conditions. Running a skeleton crew of three (driver included) meant that our turn around time was longer than usual, however, still quite effective.

The second attempt at a pass ended early as well, as the car moved to the center again. Even though my intention was to just go through third gear, I felt the car move a lot and not wanting to tempt fate I backed off earlier than expected. To my amazement, we still covered the 1/4 mile in 6.94 seconds.

The video below shows this run, which starts at the one minute mark.



Only two passes were allocated to us on this day and I must admit that I was very happy to dive into the six second zone so quickly.

Pictures courtesy of Roy Rojer, Priscilla Lotman.

Name, Number & Flames

As the end to the wait comes into view, activities in the garage have started to pick up.

Like us, many racers are holding fundraising activities. One of them, the Black Max Racing Team have invited us to attend their car show this weekend. If we finish the car in time, we might be in a position to help them draw a larger crowd and in doing so raise more funds. The event is scheduled for Saturday, April 7, at the Stadium Ergilio Hato (formerly known as SDK), from 19:00 to 23:00 hours.

A shout out goes out to our friend Andre van Hoop, from Visuals Graphic Studio, who in spite of it being a national holiday, came out to help us with the vinyl lettering on the car.
It should be noted that the graphics on the car as well as the decals were designed by him and cut by Tramm Imaging, our sole supplier of racing decals and vinyls.

See you at the races.

2005 Mountain Motor Pro Stock Chevy Cobalt stats:

Curacao drag racing

Chassis: Constructed of 4130 chrome-moly with Funny Car cage, proffesionally built by RJ Race Cars, Galesburg, Illinois. Additional chassis components include Penske Pro Stock shocks and springs with bleed off system, Strange struts and carbon brakes. Carbon Fiber body and interior, including all oil containment devices.

Engine: 762-cubic inch with hemi heads, by Sonny's Racing Engines, Lynchburg, Virginia

Carburation: Custom HP split dominators by Bob Book, Bonfield, Illinois

Horsepower: 1525

Transmission: CS3 Lenco transmission activated by a Liberty shifter

Tires:  front: GoodYear Eagles, rear: Hoosier

Weight: 2.350-pounds, including driver

Performance: 6.7 seconds (quarter-mile elapsed time), 200+ mph top speed