Peter Blake - Australian Drag Car Driver

We raced in the 2008 Snap-On Nitro Champs last weekend on the 2nd & 3rd of May, in the Civenex Top Doorslammer category. All weekend we were the class of the field, with the exception of John Zappia in the Striker Monaro running yet another sub six.

Our new personal best of 6.208sec @224 mph saw us qualify in 2nd place, and we didn’t lose a race all weekend, defeating the world renowned and all round nice guy Victor Bray in his Castrol Chevy. And a hole shot win in the final, a 6.71sec beats a 6.67sec against Andrew Sutton.

1st run the car left poorly due to a mistake in the clutch set up, luckily it threw a blower belt off at before 60ft and coasted through to a 12.2sec pass against Joe Cutelli in the Corvette, who also had a problem on the line.

2nd run saw us against Joe once more, I made a mistake (short shifted 1st gear) and there wasn’t enough clutch to run hard, 6.400sec, excitedly for us it was the quickest pass for the night so far.
We sat out the final session for Friday night as it got cold and we didn’t want to risk damage to the car or engine and not be able to show for the elimination rounds on Saturday! Only 1 run was quicker than us on Friday evening being zap he pulled a 6.28sec.

The qualifying / seeding round was spectacular. An almost perfect run saw a new personal best of 6.208sec against Brett Gillespie in his BHE Chevy, who aborted after an uncontrollable wheelie. My run was quick off the start, nervously and against my will I short shifted again (only this time, not so bad!) i also had to muscle the wheel at around mid track.

In the Semi final against Victor I pulled a good light and ran through with a smooth 6.37sec beating Vic’s 6.80sec much to the huge crowds delight (the underdog phenomenon I reckon). This put me into the final against Sutton. After a 1 ½ hour delay in the staging lanes things were cooling off quickly. After the rest of the group 1 finals it was our turn. The clutch was set to “make or break”, with the dew setting in I swapped feet with .03 reaction, it immediately turned the tyres, and then shook violently (breaking my wheelie bars). A quick pedal and we were off again, it went like a rocket ship. Silly old me forgot to shift into top gear, (my mind was still on the start line) it wasn’t too bad though; she ran through with a huge amount of revs, but it was enough to nab us a hole shot win. 6.71sec beats a 6.67sec.

Thanks and congrats to my team for an awesome weekend!
And once again thanks to dad for having the faith and allowing me to pilot his pride and joy!!!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 7:46 am and is filed under Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, bookmark the Permalink in your Browser, leave a response, or trackback from your own site.