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Rod/Comp Cams Drag Week - Monday Miles Covered: 310
It’s a team effort – You’ve got to hand it to Comp Cams. They are providing all of the backing for this event and have pulled out all the stops. Quite literally, without them there would be no Drag Week. “We really excited about this event and the whole idea behind it,” said Chris Brown of Comp Cams. “We have the 18 wheeler traveling the event route and we also have factory technicians here to help the racers.” All of Comp Cams properties are well represented. TCI has a technical rep on the grounds, Zex Nitrous also has a representative in attendance and the company is providing free refills of nitrous bottles. In addition, folks from RHS Cylinder Heads are here to help the racers. “Watch this event next year. It is going to grow exponentially and that’s why we’re so glad to be involved at this early stage,” Brown said.
Historical start – Drag week 2005 got its start this morning at a legendary drag racing facility. Kansas City International Dragway in Missouri was chosen as the first of the five stops on this high-intensity tour The track served as the home for Jim Tice’s AHRA and has been run by all the big names in the history of the sport. It is a smaller track with some real character and history. The track is sure to provide the perfect backdrop as a new chapter of drag racing history is written in Missouri today. Since this is the first event and there were barely three months of magazine promotion, the field is filled with truly dedicated racers. This is going to be an interesting week. Where are you from? – Amazingly, there are 14 states represented at the event. Competitors have driven from as far as South Carolina and Montana. Matt Zampino, the racer from South Carolina, was a less than enthusiastic when describing his ride to Missouri behind the wheel of a 1970 Chevy El Camino powered by a tunnel-rammed and dual carburetor-equipped big block. “The ride was awful and it cost $1500.00 in fuel to get here,” Zampino said. “We are happy to be here, though, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the week.” Bob Lash, the man who traveled from Montana, is the oldest driver in the competition at age 69. Lash is driving a screaming yellow Nova in the daily driver 12.00 second index class. His best pass of the week thus far is a 12.46.
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Is this thing on?- During the mandatory morning drivers’ meeting, Hot Rod editor-in-chief David Freiburger went over all the rules for the week. The subject that received the most attention was that of trailers and support vehicles. “The mindset you all have to have is that you are driving with your buddies in the middle of nowhere. If something breaks on your car you need to rely on the people around you and your mechanical skills,” he said. “If you are caught on a trailer or we get suspicious enough of you that you are cheating, we will find out.” At the end of the meeting there was a question and answer period. A racer asked if his friends could ride behind him with a truck and trailer for the entire ride. “Can you all believe this guy is asking me this?” Freiburger said. The crowd chuckled and the offending driver melted back into the crowd. What is your major malfunction? Two racers have already suffered mechanical problems serious enough to prevent them from continuing in competition. Steve Morris’ supercharged Caprice wagon was a fan favorite, at least for a while. Unfortunately, he released a connecting rod back into the wild and its chosen means of escape was into the oil pan. Morris laid a thick strip of oil down the right lane at KCIR. It was too bad, because the big wagon was a sight to see with parachutes hanging off the back and a huge cowl hood protecting all the equipment bristling from the blown big block. The second competitor to fall prey to broken parts was Bill Fowler. He completed his runs at KCIR but his big block Ford motor swallowed a lifter about 80 miles after we left the drag strip.
Low qualifiers – The range of vehicles on this tour is very cool. It is kind of funny, though, that all of the low eight and nine-second passes posted on Monday were made by 1960s-vintage Chevy Novas. Larry Larson ran 8.92 at 153 mph, packed his stuff and took off. Larson is driving a pink Nova with a 14-71 blown big block Chevy, backed by a Lenco transmission. He has to drive this car 1300 miles to Michigan and he is going to do it grabbing Lenco shift rods the whole way. “The Lenco gets hot if it’s run for an extended time,” Larson said. “When it gets hot it rolls the sprag, so we are prepared for that. Basically, I am planning on replacing the sprag every day. We have gotten it down so it can be replaced in about an hour and a half.” How’s that for dedication. Other passes of note were the quickest pass of the day turned in by Carl Scott with an 8.55, 158 mph blast. Scott is in an absolutely wild 1967 Nova. Phil Cooper ran 8.72 at 156.14 miles per hour. He is also driving a Nova, this one a 1966 model.
Give me some of that old time religion – The cars on this trip range from Seymour Pederson’s slant six-powered Plymouth Valiant to Michael Linberg’s 2004 Dodge Neon SRT-4. There is one car that really stands out from the crowd, though. Steve Atwell’s 1968 Hemi-Dart is a legitimate, factory-produced super stocker from an extremely rare production run in 1968. Atwell has absolutely no bones about running his rare and valuable car to the limit, as was evidenced by his 11.04,123 mph lap. We applaud Atwell for actually taking the car out on the road and wringing it out. We could count on one hand the number of owners of such cars that would have the guts to do what he is doing. Atwell is a certified Hemi freak and has a nice collection of Hemi-powered
machinery, including Bill Flynn’s original “Yankee Peddler”. a
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© Competitionplus 2005
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