SOLVING ENGINE WOES WENT LONG WAY TOWARDS HIGHT'S RE-EMERGENCE
Sat, 2009-10-03 13:42
Robert Hight, during his struggles earlier in the season, was exposed to something he hadn’t seen before – 
a crew chief that second-guessed his decisions.
There was no second guessing tonight as Hight’s crew chief, Jimmy Prock, guided their car to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position and dual track records with a 4.074 elapsed time at 310.70 miles hour during first day qualifying at the NHRA Midsouth Nationals in Memphis, Tenn.
“It’s so cool to watch Jimmy because he has some confidence,” said Hight, who picked up six bonus qualifying points for leading both Friday qualifying sessions. “When we were messed up most of the season, he would go back to the [electronic] box 100 times. You could just tell he was second guessing himself.
Robert Hight, during his struggles earlier in the season, was exposed to something he hadn’t seen before –a crew chief that second-guessed his decisions.
There was no second guessing tonight as Hight’s crew chief, Jimmy Prock, guided their car to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position and dual track records with a 4.074 elapsed time at 310.70 miles hour during first day qualifying at the NHRA Midsouth Nationals in Memphis, Tenn.
“It’s so cool to watch Jimmy because he has some confidence,” said Hight, who picked up six bonus qualifying points for leading both Friday qualifying sessions. “When we were messed up most of the season, he would go back to the [electronic] box 100 times. You could just tell he was second guessing himself.
“Not anymore, he leaves the pit area with a pretty good idea of what he’s gonna do. He might make one or two adjustments, but ‘bam’ it goes.”
Confident or not, Prock wasn’t ready to swing for the fences.
“He told me that we weren’t going to go for their throats,” Hight recalled. “He told me that we weren’t going to go anywhere they hadn’t been before recently.”
Hight believes that Prock and the team diagnosed their early season woes and that has worked well for the team. That, and sharing data with teammate Ashley Force-Hood’s team, has gone a long way to righting the journey of the once errant ship.
“The problem went clear back to last year,” said Hight when asked where the car’s decline began. “We won some races and contended for the championship but clearly we didn’t have a good engine combination. It was hurting itself and would drop cylinders. It was not consistent.
“With the new engine, Jimmy has just begun to put a tuneup on it. To run almost 311 miles per hour, that means all the parts are good. It’s happy and marching to the finish line. Jimmy has never had a problem with clutch application. We just needed our engine fixed.”
Hight is running the standard nitro Hemi combination and not the new Ford Boss 500 combination. He expects to have the new combination in the car eventually.
“We have them [Ford blocks] but what are we going to do with the blocks we have now? We can’t throw them away,” he explained. “Our machine shop has been working hard. We need to finish up with what we’ve got and then we’ll switch over to the Ford. It won’t be long.”
a crew chief that second-guessed his decisions. There was no second guessing tonight as Hight’s crew chief, Jimmy Prock, guided their car to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position and dual track records with a 4.074 elapsed time at 310.70 miles hour during first day qualifying at the NHRA Midsouth Nationals in Memphis, Tenn.
“It’s so cool to watch Jimmy because he has some confidence,” said Hight, who picked up six bonus qualifying points for leading both Friday qualifying sessions. “When we were messed up most of the season, he would go back to the [electronic] box 100 times. You could just tell he was second guessing himself.
Robert Hight, during his struggles earlier in the season, was exposed to something he hadn’t seen before –
a crew chief that second-guessed his decisions. There was no second guessing tonight as Hight’s crew chief, Jimmy Prock, guided their car to the provisional No. 1 qualifying position and dual track records with a 4.074 elapsed time at 310.70 miles hour during first day qualifying at the NHRA Midsouth Nationals in Memphis, Tenn.
“It’s so cool to watch Jimmy because he has some confidence,” said Hight, who picked up six bonus qualifying points for leading both Friday qualifying sessions. “When we were messed up most of the season, he would go back to the [electronic] box 100 times. You could just tell he was second guessing himself.
“Not anymore, he leaves the pit area with a pretty good idea of what he’s gonna do. He might make one or two adjustments, but ‘bam’ it goes.”
Confident or not, Prock wasn’t ready to swing for the fences.
“He told me that we weren’t going to go for their throats,” Hight recalled. “He told me that we weren’t going to go anywhere they hadn’t been before recently.”
Hight believes that Prock and the team diagnosed their early season woes and that has worked well for the team. That, and sharing data with teammate Ashley Force-Hood’s team, has gone a long way to righting the journey of the once errant ship.
“The problem went clear back to last year,” said Hight when asked where the car’s decline began. “We won some races and contended for the championship but clearly we didn’t have a good engine combination. It was hurting itself and would drop cylinders. It was not consistent.
“With the new engine, Jimmy has just begun to put a tuneup on it. To run almost 311 miles per hour, that means all the parts are good. It’s happy and marching to the finish line. Jimmy has never had a problem with clutch application. We just needed our engine fixed.”
Hight is running the standard nitro Hemi combination and not the new Ford Boss 500 combination. He expects to have the new combination in the car eventually.
“We have them [Ford blocks] but what are we going to do with the blocks we have now? We can’t throw them away,” he explained. “Our machine shop has been working hard. We need to finish up with what we’ve got and then we’ll switch over to the Ford. It won’t be long.”
Advertisement
Categories:
