In good company

I want to give a shout-out to Richard Freeman and the entire Elite Motorsports team for giving Erica a winning car in the K&N Horsepower challenge as well as the pro stock win at Las Vegas last weekend. Click here for a recap-video.

Erica beat Dave Connolly on Saturday to win the $50,000 K&N prize and on Sunday had to wait until the 30 mph winds died down in the late afternoon to take the RJ built Chevy Camaro to the winner's circle in a big upset win over Jason Line.

Regarding last weekend in Las Vegas, to me it is somewhat comforting that even though PISS'D OFF PETE and the DDKM team are more than 3,300 miles away, and the local racing is still very much below par in terms of organization, we are in good company stateside. Our engine came from Elite Motorsports, Dave Connolly helped me get comfortable on any drag strip in his dragster, my old ride was Jason Line's 2005 championship wining car, and last but not least, I get to drive an RJ built Chevy Cobalt set up by Jeff Dobbins. Jeff and his son just crew chief-ed on the winning Extreme Pro Stock car in the Inaugural PDRA race in Rockingham. It's just awesome to be surrounded by great people.

Now, if only we could go racing on a decent track.

Thanks for reading.

Spun bearing sidelines Pete

It has been a couple of weeks since the last post, but we've been very busy on many fronts. So I'll jump right into it.

In a routine engine check whilst testing last month we discovered we hurt the engine. With no spare engine, this means that we will be enjoying the races from the bleachers for some time to come. The engine must be shipped back stateside for repairs.

All in all, it could have been much worse, if the problem hadn't been identified and we had gone out to the track for another pass. An attentive team mate heard a faint noise and threw the red flag. After a quick telephone consultation with Jeff Dobbins in which he suspected our engine had spun a bearing, all we could do is load up and head home.

Luckily, as Pat Musi was testing with King Kong IV as well, we asked him to give us a hand and confirm our suspicions. Below you can see some pictures taken when he was trouble shooting the Sonny Leonard 762 c.i. hemi engine.

For those who don't know what a spun bearing is or how it occurs, usually it is caused by lack of oil during high rpm's. Since I shift well above 7,000 rpm and the car is puling some strong g-forces, there might have been a problem with the oil pick up. And on second thoughts, the oil we were running might have been a tad too thin.

A shout out goes to Stephen Maduro and Eric Felix for doing a superb job of identifying the problem. Great job guys!

Thanks for reading.

Photo credit: own files.

Jeff Dobbins tunes in ADRL

A shout-out goes out to our friend Jeff Dobbins. The driver turned tuner, helped 2010 world champion John Montecalvo win the Memphis Drags III last weekend and secure a new track record in the process.

Some of you may remember him from my earlier car, a Pontiac GTO, which he drove in its last outing in Curacao. Always a good driver and very quick on the tree, he moved on to crew-chiefing after not securing a ride in the ADRL XPS category.

Winner's circle photo (Jeff 3rd from left)

Until Memphis Drags III, Montecalvo had not found his groove. But Jeff made the necessary adjustments and with Sonny Racing Engines providing plenty of horsepower,  Montecalvo beat Todd Hoerner with a 4.089 with a .001 reaction time, and then made a event-best 4.056 at 178 mph to beat points leader Cary Goforth in the semis. He won the final when Pete Berner went red.

Great job Jeff, keep it up! We will be following the XPS category via the web (live-stream).

Thanks for reading.

Source: ADRL.

Blast from my past

The other day I stumbled upon some old pictures of when I was part of the Whathehell team and I thought it worthwhile to share them with you.

The pictures were of when we traveled to Mooresville, N.C., to take delivery of Jason Line's old GTO.  We had bought it from KB racing and crew chief Rob Downing lowered a Kaase 822 hemi in it for us. He also introduced us to Jeff Dobbins, who would become our "life line"... and still is.

The picture sequence from the left:

At this stage I was still unaware of the steep learning curve that awaited me, for I had never driven a drag race car before, let alone a Mountain Motor Pro Stock. In retrospect, this wasn't the best way to do it and I shouldn't have let them talk me into it.

Jon Kaase's 822 ci hemi engine, with intake and two set's of split dominators. I remember the heads as being huge, unlike anything I had seen before. The normally aspirated engine cranked some 1.800 plus hp, however, the exact number was never divulged to me.

Before taking delivery, Rob and Jason made sure that everything worked properly and started the engine to prove it was. Great group of guys!

KB Racing's operation in Mooresville comprises a seriously large hanger, big enough to hold a couple of large car and equipment trailers and every other equipment necessary to make them the team to beat on any given Sunday.

For those of you who are not die-hard race fans, Mooresville is also known as "Race City USA" because it has the biggest concentration of racing teams, engine builders and suppliers in the country, not only for drag racing but for Nascar and many other forms of racing as well.

Pictures: own library.

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.

February get together

Back in the summer of 2011, the Danny de Kort Motorsports foundation organized their first fundraising event to assist in getting the car to Curacao, which we did in December, after Jeff Dobbins completed its assembly and took it to the track for testing.

In February of this year, we organized a get together to allow the participants of earlier mentioned fundraising to see the car up close and get an explanation from the car owner and driver, Danny de Kort.

Even though the picture won't do the gathering any justice, I thought it worthwhile to show it anyway.

Thanks for reading.