Hello Everyone,
I hope all of you had a great weekend and hopefully stayed away from all of the crazy weather that went on in the Midwest. Team Kalitta made our annual trek to Topeka, Kansas for the NHRA Summer Nationals, and of course, the weather was interesting to say the least. I attached a picture from our pit area on Saturday evening of a funnel cloud trying to form over the racetrack. Like the bunch of dopes that us racers can sometimes be, we thought it was a great idea to all sit there and potentially watch a tornado form right over us. I sent my wife Tammy this picture at the time this was all going on, and of course she thought we were all stupid, she was pretty much right when you think about it. A few people from other teams that were staying at the hotel we use to stay at in Topeka, got hit with a hail storm that knocked out windows in their rental cars. I guess it was a good thing we were staying at the Holiday Inn on the other side of town!
Ok, enough about weather. Going into Topeka, we felt like we were starting to make some good progress with Doug’s Kalitta Air dragster. On Friday we ran a 3.88 right out of the box, and then followed that up with a 3.84 at 320 mph on Friday evening. The 3.84 landed us in the number six spot in qualifying, which put Doug up against Morgan Lucas for first round. The only problem that we continued to have with Doug’s car is that it just won’t 60 foot as quick as we would like. On Sunday morning, our weather program that we have, indicated that the water grains were much higher and the barometer was much lower, which meant the air was much worse than the previous days. So with that being said, I did what anyone else would do, I tuned the motor up. At the time it was a good move, but about 30 minutes before first round, things started to change, and change drastically! The water grains dropped by almost 30 grains, and the barometer changed almost 20 points, which meant we had way to much compression in the motor, which meant we needed to change head gaskets. Since there wasn’t time to change head gaskets, we left the motor alone, adjusted in other areas, and hoped for the best. It turned out to be a good move, because we ran a 3.87 while Morgan smoked the tires. The good news was that our 60 foot time was our best of the weekend up until that point.
In the second round, Doug was up against Larry Dixon and the Al-Anabi Team. With the track being about 18 degrees warmer than it was in the first round, we knew we needed to be careful with our clutch application, but we also knew that we couldn’t be to cautious against the Al-Anabi Team. Again, our 60 foot time improved and the Kalitta Air car made a nice lap, running a 3.90 at 306 mph which beat Larry’s cylinder dropping 3.99. In the semi-finals, Doug was up against Bob Vandergriff, who was having one of those lucky days that you need to have every now and then. Our plan was to not beat ourselves and try and duplicate our 3.90 run from the second round. Our plan didn’t work as the Kalitta Air Car again had its best 60 foot of the weekend, but spun the tires at about 150 feet, giving Bob the win. Overall, we are excited about the direction that Doug’s car is going in, and we feel a win is coming!
Jeff and Grubby struggled all weekend with their hot rods, but as with any race, you learn something. Grubby and his Kalitta Air Team hurried back to the shop after Atlanta and assembled a new car to race with in Topeka. Unfortunately as with any new car, they had the new car blues that didn’t get worked out until first round. Since Grubby ended up qualifying 16th, he had a first round match-up against number one qualifier Tony Schumacher. Connie and Grubby finally got everything sorted out, and gave Tony a run for his money, but just came up short. Tony ran a real nice 3.84 to Grubbies very respectable 3.90. With all of the bugs worked out, we look for good things out of Grubby in the future!
Jeff actually ran good in qualifying on Friday but his 4.15 wasn’t good enough to land in the Top 12, which meant his run didn’t count going into Saturday. On Saturday Jeff struggle with tire smoke and got stuck in the number 16 spot, which also meant he would run the number one qualifier, which was Jack Beckman. The DHL car gave Jack a good race, but just didn’t have enough to get the win. Jeff’s 4.25 was decent, but just not enough against Beckman’s 4.17. The good news is that Jeff is still in sixth place and the car is becoming more and more consistent at each race.
Well that’s about it from me, I hope all of you have a great Memorial Day weekend and let’s all hope that we all enjoy some nice weather! Take care everyone and I will type at you next week.
Jim O
Jim “O” Oberhofer
Kalitta Motorsports