Night time pictures

The sport of drag race, as with most forms of modern motorsports, has many facets that requires constant attention. In this piece, I am referring to semi-professional sport photographers.

Stills are important, but so are burnout and launch photographs of a car. Some areas which requires more attention from local sports photographers are the mid-track and the finish line.

So last weekend, during a special test session, I took an aspiring photographer with me to the track, at Urven Broos (DAC).
night. As we stood at the finish line, it became very clear why this area isn't serviced. The conditions are extremely challenging. Still, Priscilla managed to get some decent photographs taken, albeit with the help of

If you'd like a high resolution picture, please contact us.

Clean up operation after oil down

Maybe in the future we can help set up a special tower from which photographers can do their thing, maybe around the generator area, and then some 2-3 meters of the ground.

In a nutshell, sport photographers have a supporting function, for they supply us with the photographs needed to market our sport, not only to our fans and sponsors, but also to spectators and the public in general. Whenever you are in a position to support them, please do for they are very under appreciated!

Thanks for reading 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.

Testing cancelled

The original plan was to have Jeff Dobbins fly in from Wilmington, North Carolina, sometime before the races to get me acclimatized to the car and its Lenco transmission, which is new to me. However, due to his tight working schedule he was unable to travel in the first months of the year. All in all, not bad since we had an unusual wet start to the year.

We had been gunning for a test in the middle of April but due to unforeseen circumstances, and to help get some testing going for the end of April races, we are allowing the track to use our traction compound for their testing, scheduled for April 21 next.

At this time will be testing during the "Dia di La Reina" races, scheduled for April 29-30 and May 1. Hopefully, we will be invited to make some exhibition runs for the fans!