Win Number 3!

 

Man what a great weekend we had. Not only did we get to hang with our good friends but we took home another Wally to boot.

We arrived in Gainesville around 9:30 am Friday morning. Pulling into to pit row we could see that we were not the only team to arrive early, with some teams already taking time to run some test and tune laps down the track. As the day progressed we knew it was going to be a hard weekend to create power with the weather being so hot and humid.

 

Saturday morning we began our ritual of setting camp and finishing our last minute check of the car. With everything looking good on the car we lined up in the staging lanes for our first round of qualifying. By the end of round one, we were the number two qualifier with a 10.563 ET @ 127.31 MPH. In round 2 of qualifying we moved to the number one spot with a 10.473 ET @ 125.75 MPH. Round 3 only gave us a chance to better our numbers with a 10.464 ET @ 125.97 MPH.

 

You could tell Sunday was race day in Gainesville with the crowds packing pit row and the grand stands. Ken and I, along with Kilo, Rolo, and Angel loaded onto the 4 wheeler to head up to the tower for the drivers meeting. NHRA, ESPN II, and the Gainesville track officials explained to us how Sunday's events would unfold. Everyone left the meeting excited to finish the day with a win!

First round of eliminations came quickly for us. We started the race with a bi-run. This gave us one last pass to verify the car was set for the days job.

Round two of eliminations we were matched up against Jesus Padilla a long time friend. However we all know when your in front of the tree waiting for the green light the gloves come off, and come of they did. Ken was slow on the light with a 0.540 reaction time to Jesus's 0.487 RT. Unfortunately for Jesus, Ken came to the race packing a 10.383 ET @ 126.35 MPH to beat Jesus's 10.663 ET @ 124.00 MPH.

Round three set us next to Scott Mohler from team Mopar. This would be another tough battle for Ken. With Ken pulling the better ET from the last round he had lane choice. Ken took the right lane for the final round. I ran ken thru his burnout and lined him up to the tree. Now it was time for Ken to go to work. Moments later the tree began to flash its lights and the roar of the cars faded away as they headed down the track after the lights turned green. Ken had the better reaction time of 0.484 to Mohler's 0.544 RT. By the end of the race Ken had won with a 10.324 ET @ 127.87 MPH to Mohler's 10.541 ET @ 131.00 MPH.

 

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