Hello Everyone,
I hope everyone had a great weekend and started off this week on a good note. Team Kalitta didn’t have the weekend we were looking for in Gainesville, Florida but I can say that we did enjoy some of the nicest weather we have ever seen there.
With the near perfect weather conditions it made it very easy for our Team Kalitta Race-cars to make more than enough horsepower at the Gainesville track. Now when you already make over 8000 horsepower and then you add maybe around another 500 or so by accident, it tends to make a nitromethane powered race-car even more unpredictable.
Jeff Arend and the DHL Funny Car made a nice run right out of the box on Friday running a 4.12 which ended up being their best run of the weekend. That 4.12 run was good enough for the number 8 spot in qualifying which set up a first round race with Tim Wilkerson. On Sunday the track warmed up a little bit which made for some tricky conditions. The good news for the DHL Team in 2011 is it seems they are starting to have a little luck on their side which they haven’t had in the past. Tim smoked the tires early and Jeff was on a good run until about 500 feet when the DHL Car started spinning the tires, the good news was that Jeff was already far enough ahead that he was able to light the win light with some pretty wild driving! In the second round Jeff was up against Matt Hagan who has had Jeff and the DHL Team’s number the last year. Since the track warmed up another 10 degrees from first round, Jon O and Nicky backed up the clutch settings and hoped that they would slide on down the track and Matt would smoke the tires. They were right about Matt spinning the tires but they didn’t expect Jeff to do the same. Unfortunately, Matt spun a little further down track and got the win. The good news is that Jeff moved up one position to the number 7 spot in points.
The Kalitta Top Fuel cars struggled in Gainesville but I believe we figured out our problems with both Doug’s car and Grubbies as we get ready for our next race in Vegas. Doug qualified in the number 9 spot with a 3.87 at 320 mph and Grubby held onto the number 16 spot with a 3.92 at 306 mph.
Now when you end up 9th, that usually means you are the first pair out on race-day, which Doug was. Doug was matched up against Doug Foley who was number 8. After making some pretty big changes to Doug’s car for that matchup we really didn’t know what to expect. Of course the one thing we can always rely on is Doug as he did a great job cutting an .058 light against Foley’s .105. With .047 in the bank you would think we would have a good shot to win, but it wasn’t meant to be. Doug ran a nice 3.872 but Foley ran a 3.821, a difference of .004 once you figure in the reaction times. All in all we made a good run with Doug’s car and I am confident that we are moving in the right direction now!
Connie and Grubby made some pretty big changes to the fuel system on their race-car going into Gainesville and it finally paid off. In the first round Grubby was matched up against Tony Schumacher which is never an easy draw. At the start Grubbies car ran on all eight cylinders and gave Tony Shoe a run for his money by running a very nice 3.86 to Tony’s 3.83. I know Connie wanted that round win but I also know he is happy that his hot rod is running on all eight cylinders now which will allow him to actually tune the race car and be more competitive.
My thinking is that I would rather start the year a little slow and then become hot at the end of the year. It also would be nice if we were just hot all year, that would make us all very happy! Since Vegas is not until April 1st, we have a couple of weekends off which will give us an opportunity to re-engineer the wheel and overthink our tuneup which is always fun to do. Sometimes I wish that we could just go run the very next day and see what we can do but as I have learned, you have to just be patient.
Anyway, thanks as always for everything you do and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Jim O
Jim “O” Oberhofer
Kalitta Motorsports