GRAHAM LIGHT'S TOUGH DAY
NHRA
Senior Vice President, Race Operations Graham Light walked into the
control towerat Virginia Motorsports Park on Saturday morning of the
NHRA Torco Race Fuels Narionals and greeted his staff in the usual
manner. He didn’t say a word, but you could see on his face the desire
for an easier day.
Light hoped the day would be a
smoother day than Friday presented. In one day, Light survived inclement weather
which altered the schedule, a racing surface that refused the adhesive process
and a power failure that left the racers and thousands of race fans in the
dark.
“We’ve had tougher days, trust me,”
Light said. “We are fortunate to have a lot of good people that know what to do
– some of them twenty and thirty years.”
Light said sometimes you just have
to step aside and let those you have in place handle the
situations.
“You immediately try and figure how you can juggle the schedule to make everything fit,” Light explained. “You want it to be as fair as it can be for both the professional and sportsman racers. Darryl Zimmerman and his crew do a great job of making all of that work.”
NHRA Senior Vice
President, Race Operations Graham Light walked into the control towerat Virginia Motorsports Park on Saturday morning of the NHRA Torco Race Fuels Narionals and
greeted his staff in the usual manner. He didn’t say a word, but you could see
on his face the desire for an easier day.
Light hoped the day would be a
smoother day than Friday presented. In one day, Light survived inclement weather
which altered the schedule, a racing surface that refused the adhesive process
and a power failure that left the racers and thousands of race fans in the
dark.
“We’ve had tougher days, trust me,”
Light said. “We are fortunate to have a lot of good people that know what to do
– some of them twenty and thirty years.”
Light said sometimes you just have
to step aside and let those you have in place handle the
situations.
“You immediately try and figure how
you can juggle the schedule to make everything fit,” Light explained. “You want
it to be as fair as it can be for both the professional and sportsman racers.
Darryl Zimmerman and his crew do a great job of making all of that
work.”
Friday’s morning rains created
problems for Light and his crew of officials.
“The concrete looked pretty good
yesterday morning,” Light said. “For some reason, the rain got under it and the
rubber lost its bond. We really had a virgin piece of concrete for about 550
feet. The first process is that you have to get all of that flaky rubber off. We
did that and dried the track.
“We proceeded to try and put the
rubber down with the tire machine that Roger Stull provided us
with.”
Light explained how his crew used
VHT as well as a powdered rosin [gold dust] to the racing surface and then
worked it in until the surface turned black again.
“We had a good racing surface and
the cars might have run even better if it hadn’t have been so humid,” Light
said.
Everything appeared to be going well
and then VMP went pitch black from a power failure. It was later determined the
failure wasn’t limited to the track. An entire power grid in Dinwiddie, Virginia
failed Friday evening.
“I was thankful that it wasn’t in
the midst of two Top Fuel cars making a run,” Light said, a sigh of relief in
his voice. “The concern was to make sure it didn’t happen again because it could
have been catastrophic if two cars were running 300 miles per hour and the
lights went out. Luckily it was between a pair of cars and Virginia Power has
given us a pretty high level of confidence the situation has been resolved. It
is a problem they identified on their grid.”
Friday’s miscues were nothing new to
Light, however having them all piled into one event on a single day was
unexpected.
“Some events go smooth as anything and others are plagued with issue after issue,” Light said. “We’ve had lights go out before. We’ve had rubber wash off before. It’s just we had them all happen in one day.”