Frankie “Mad Man” Taylor has already put his brand-spanking-new, Larry Jeffers-built  ’05 Corvette through the spin cycle after adding it to his racing stable just a week ago.

The ADRL Pro Extreme ET record holder found an ignition problem in the car that surfaced only during the hard acceleration of a launch, so yesterday, just one day prior to the big double-race weekend at Houston Raceway Park, Taylor and crew visited nearby Houston Motorsports Park for a quick shakedown. Trouble was, the track was soaked with rain.

Frankie “Mad Man” Taylor has already put his brand-spanking-new, Larry Jeffers-built  ’05 Corvette through the spin cycle after adding it to his racing stable just a week ago.

The ADRL Pro Extreme ET record holder found an ignition problem in the car that surfaced only during the hard acceleration of a launch, so yesterday, just one day prior to the big double-race weekend at Houston Raceway Park, Taylor and crew visited nearby Houston Motorsports Park for a quick shakedown. Trouble was, the track was soaked with rain.

No matter, a quick drying job on the left lane allowed the opportunity for a safe ignition test—or so the Taylor team believed—at least until Taylor let off 1.02 seconds into the run, the car wiggled a little as it unloaded the suspension, and the big Hoosiers out back suddenly swapped ends and the car started spinning around in the still very wet right lane.

Fortunately, the car’s wheelie bars took the brunt of a relatively light bump against the right guardwall and after repairs were made, Taylor planned to debut the flat-black-primered piece today in weather-delayed ADRL action from the season’s opening event.

Not so fast. With the chassis yet to be certified, ADRL officials put the kibosh on that plan, so Taylor is scrambling today, trying to get a local NHRA inspector out to the track to perform a chassis inspection and issue a new certification sticker. Until and unless that happens, though, he’ll resort back to the same Jeffers-built Vette in which he lowered the ET standard to 3.60 seconds at the Richmond, Virginia, race in May.

If the new car can be certified in time and depending on how well his current car performs today, Taylor may actually race two cars in two days this weekend.