August 10, 2007

As we couldn't race today because of our converter problem, we just went to Sunshine to take care of sponsor business, display the car and take some photos. Tonight we announced the Right Trailers' Dead On program for Super Pro and Pro racers at both Sunshine and Bradenton. It's a pretty good program that pays any racer that wins a round of eliminations $50 if they run dead on their dial in with a 0 or has a perfect reaction time. The program was well received by both the track management and racers alike.

I have to say, that from a racer standpoint, there we two things that really impressed me tonight. The first was that the race was won by John Mella, who at age 72 literally drilled the competition and never varied more than.01 from his dial in. On top of that, the crowd at Sunshine is probably the toughest gang of bracket
racers in the country and he beat them all including former national bracket champion Paul Dorn on his way to the final. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I hope I can race like that at 72!!!

The second thing that really got my attention was the Junior Dragsters. There were 17 of them that showed up for first round. That's a good sized field of cars. One car was dialed in at 8.47 and ran over 70 mph. Keep in mind that's with a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine for goodness sakes. Impressive to say the least.

In talking to some of the folks that run these cars, they are spending $9000 plus for the dragsters race ready, which to me is just amazing for kids 8-16 years old to race. The clutches alone cost over $1000. Additionally, these kids are dead serious racers. Just wait until they hit the Super Pro class and most of them will be very, very good adult racers.