What a day - I remember why I don't go to the street legals very often. I rolled up with the rest of the group at 6a.m. At that point, the day was looking promising. Only about 200ish cars. Finally they start waiving us into tech. At that point everything starts to go bad. The line I get in for tech is not moving. Leedom's line is moving at about a 2 to 1 rate to ours. It takes over an hour to tech.
Even though we all got there roughly the same time, a couple of us are in group 1, a couple end up in 2, and some end up in 3. It's totally unacceptable in my opinion. They should tech everyone in based on when they got there, not on the luck of the draw of which line you end up in. At this point I'm already very annoyed, but have to get in line for my wristband. It takes roughly another half an hour to get that because they have ONE person working the booth. I can also see that the event is going to sell out and it's going to be a rough day.
The first group starts running and a Mustang promptly oils down the entire track
We were shut down for an hour. Leedom was at the line when this happened. Once we got running again he managed to run a 13.89 second pass (Congrats on your first 13 second slip dude!). Finally my group is up. We have switched the slicks from Leedom's car to mine (BIG thanks to Ron for letting us use the ET streets, and for the great advice) and I go to the staging lanes. It's about noon and after being at the track for 6 hours, I'm finally about to get a run in when the car in front of me oils down the track
It takes another 30 minutes to clean that up, and I pull up and run a 12.7@114mph. The ET streets hook so hard I actually bogged coming out of the hole. It was strange to not be spinning everywhere. I'm fairly happy to have matched my personal best with my first pass in a year, but that doesn't stop Leedom from giving me crap.
At this point the day is already feeling really long, but I headed up to the stands to think about taping. Unfortunately the stands were full and I realized taping runs today by myself while trying to run was impossible. Sorry everyone - it just wasn't possible to do both.
After eating something and waiting another couple hours, I finally got in a 2nd run at about 3:15ish. I ran a new personal best of 12.5@115mph despite the fact the track had warmed up considerably. I launched at 3500-3700rpm's and I could have launched harder. The ET streets are amazing. I also finally managed to get a sub 2.0 60ft (I cut a 1.9) at California Speedway. I think with one more pass I could have gotten down into the 12.2-12.3 range. I also think on a good day the car would run anywhere from 11.9-12.3 with just a little more practice.
Having said that, I probably won't go back to the track for another year because of how miserable the experience is
For being at the track for 10 hours, I mostly just felt annoyed and only had 2 runs to show for it. I wish California Speedway was run like Irwindale.
