| May 3 Thank God for cold temps and red lights! What am I saying, drag racers don't talk like that but on this day it holds true. At Action City Dragway in Terre Haute IN unseasonably cold and cloudy conditions made the track a little tricky and I just wasn't there either. In the 2nd round, it was a good thing as the tree came down I flinched on the button and went big time red. I was going to run it out but as I neared the finish line I chattered the tires and lifted crossing the finish line at only 102 mph. Shortly after, I looked up to see my competitor move around a little and all the sudden crossed into my lane on 2 wheels hitting the sand and rolling onto his top. Fortunately, I had plenty of time to safely come to a stop. The driver of the other car exited safely from the back window of his car, but the car itself was in pretty bad shape. I love red lights. Woe! Stop me, there I go again, slap me, lock me up, but don't let me say that again. |
| May 4 When the car's on I'm not, when I'm on the car's not. Coles County Dragway in Charleston IL couldn't have asked for any better weather. Temperatures in the 60's, sunny with very little wind who could complain, well we're drag racers we'll find something. As for me, I'M ON, finally! The car is on and were making good time passes . I won the first round with a .009 reaction time and pedalling the car big time to a 5.24 on a 5.14 dial in. The second round, I wasn't so fortunate I hit the bump down button a little too many times going red by .010, if I hadn't hit it, I would have had a perfect light. Honey go get me the check book, time for a second round buy back. In the third round, I had this all figured out, I was going to go out there & cut a good light (not hitting the bump down button), run dead on my dial and win the round, but the car had it's own agenda. It knew I had a full week ahead of me with 2 car shows, my father in-law Larry Davison's election and my computer work so it decided to throw the rear-end, their goes any hope for any sleep this week. Would anybody be mad if ask for some rain in the middle of the week? If it doesn't rain, then I will see you Wednesday at Terre Haute North High School for their car show, Friday morning at the Memorial School in Paris IL for their car show, Friday evening for Friday Fun Night at Action City Dragway and Saturday at Action City Dragway for their weekly bracket program. If you don't have anything to do, come by and help. |
| Coles County Dragway Charleston, IL |
| May 7-10 Goals are made and a plan comes together. After the past weekend with ill runs and part breakage, our work was cut out for us. The week's schedule without repairs, included 2 car shows and the next week's bracket race. After assessing the damages, we had ripped all the teeth off the ring and pinion and hurt some bearings, so I cleaned the car and reassembled it into show able condition and headed to Terre Haute North High School for their 14th annual Motorsports car show on Wednesday. After some morning showers, the show went on as planned. The students and faculty had a number of different cars to check out, including dirt and asphalt circle track cars, personal cars, go carts and drag cars. Thursday, with the help of my dad, we finished the repairs to the race car got it loaded and was ready for Friday's Race Day Show at Memorial Elementary School in Paris, IL. Students from kindergarten through 2nd grade had a chance to meet the drivers and owners, get autographs and pick up some picture cards. All the kids had fun and the rain held off till the last group was ready to go in. Saturday morning was beautiful with bright skies and nice temps, it made for some good racing. Listen to this, I was on and the car was on guess what, this was going to be a good day. With good reaction times, a deadly car and a couple of lucky breaks the PerformLink.net, Motorsports Unlimited, Lang's Body Shop and Painting, Lidy Graphics, APT Powdercoat, Davison Service & Equip, Crow's Hybrids, Mean Machine Dragster made it through a tough field of drivers including John Blake, Cheryl Pounds, Sonny Cox Jr., Brian Brown, Tony Virgilio, Cory Brenton and Jake Orman to take the Super Pro Win. |
| Super Pro Winner May 10th Action City Dragway |
| May 16-18 A win after a win? Are you kidding? It didn't happen this weekend but some day it will. The PerformLink.net, Motorsports Unlimited, Lang's Body Shop and Painting, Lidy Graphics, APT Powdercoat, Davison Service & Equip, Crow's Hybrids, Mean Machine Dragster started the weekend testing at Action City Dragway making some good runs and feeling good about our chances on Saturday. Oh, how things change in just a few hours. With consistent runs in the upper teens and lower 20s, I definitely had a good car; but even though we stayed the night there, my performances on the starting line proved I wasn't. My .001 red light in the first round and crappy light in the 2nd round made for a very short day. So we packed up and headed to Coles County Dragway. We arrived at Coles in time for their US Army Street Car Night. If you haven't been to this, you need to. It's a very relaxed atmosphere with any and all kinds of street vehicles running from 6:00 to 10:00 pm. We set up camp and I proceeded to take over 100 pictures that are, upload to Performlink.net. Sunday looked good beautiful weather, a consistent car and I'm on. I had my work cut out for me though. In the first round, I sneaked by Gary (Too Tall) Morris, second round, I edged out a red lighting Bob Wright and barely won the race against Doug Patrick who broke out by .001 after we left the line with nearly identical reaction times. But in the 4th round, Craig Minor put a stop to all of that after I gave it away at the starting line with an .007 red light. I guess I have to go back to work this week, I didn't make enough money to consider myself a professional bracket racer but maybe next week LOL. See you next week at Coles County Dragway Friday, Saturday and Sunday and have a good memorial weekend. |
| May 23-25 Here's the plan for the weekend. Go to Coles County Dragway on Friday for the US Army Street Car Night, win Super Pro on Saturday and on Sunday win Super Pro and qualify and win the Quick 8. Now thats what you call setting your goals high. With all that said, do you want to here what really happened? You might want to go get some tissues first. If you don't think you can handle that, visit www.performlink.net and check out some pictures of some cool cars. Friday, rain. This gave me a chance to work on the motorhome, oh how I love to do that. Saturday, we woke up to clear skies and headed to the track. I made some good time runs, running in the mid to upper 5 teens at a little over 131 mph and with reaction times that were close. In the first round, I met up with Johnathan Jones and his cool little yellow Camaro, I beat him at the tree and whacked the throttle at the finish line to take the win. The second round was Craig Minor and his dragster, I got a little anxious and turned on that stinken red light. Good thing for second round buy backs. In round number 3, I ran Billy Mason in his purple notch back Mustang. At the hit of the trans-brake, I was in trouble and didn't know it till I neared the finish line. Knowing I wasn't going to catch him, I turned him loose hoping for the best. Guess what, if we were playing heads or tails and I picked heads the coin would turn up tails, so you know what happened from here, I was getting out the grill. I don't like 2nd round buy backs now. Sunday morning, we had cloudy skies and a pretty good head wind but surprisingly the car ran good and we qualified 7th in the quick 8. As the day progressed, the skies got darker and the weather outlook didn't look good. I pulled into the lanes for 1st round of Super Pro and got paired up with Troy Salazar and his blown dragster. As the tree came down, I got a slight starting line advantage and was able to carry that though to the finish line, backing into him with a narrow margin of .004 of a second, winning that round. As we pulled off the track, there were a few sprinkles that turned into that 4 letter word, RAIN and the race was postponed till a later date. So I got the car cleaned up and ready for next weekend and started the process of getting things ready for the Chicago National and Divisional race that starts a little less than 2 weeks from now. If it wasn't for rain, red lights, bad lights, bad runs and broken parts, we would all be winners! Oh hell, who's kidding who we would still find a way to get our a$$'s kicked. Have fun and see you at the track next weekend. |
| May 31-June 1 Busy, busy, busy getting things ready for Chicago, so I'm going to make this short. We had highs and lows but all in all, it was a good weekend. We won the Quick 8 race beating Bill Roth in his Mopar powered dragster. In Super Pro, we made it to the 3rd round getting beat by Zip Donnan in his Chevy 2. Zip went on to kick some more butt getting a runner up finish for the night. Sunday's big money was rained out in the 2nd round. In this race, we entered twice. We won 1st and 2nd round in our first class and in our second class, we won 1st round and was rained out before we could run our 2nd round race. The purse was split and we headed home. Our next adventure is the Chicago National and Divisional race. If your going to be there, please look me up and we can do some bench racing. By the forecast, there will be a lot of that going on. |
| PerformLink.net wins Coles County Dragway's May 31st Quick 8 Race |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
