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   Our team has been out of competition for the last few seasons. We found ourselves dealing with the Covid “thing”, family illnesses, job and home relocations. I think these last few years in this great country we have all found ourselves in questionable times. But we moved on and that’s a good thing.

   NHRA has released the National and Divisional/Regional schedules for 2022. Not many schedule changes, but unfortunately losing more National event locations while the Divisional/Regional events seem to be in good stable shape.

  The last few years the competition level in the TAD class has been nothing short of remarkable. This class represents the quickest and fastest quarter mile cars NHRA has to offer the spectators. The A/Fuel cars have jumped to the top of the class with impressive low elapsed time numbers and speeds. A few of the blown cars have been able to stay close. For 2022 these quality teams will continue to compete and give stability to the class. I think this performance trend will continue and the only issue I see is the continuing loss of cars, which we have seen over the last 5 or 6 years. Looking back in the NHRA posted achieves over these last few years, the attrition in the class continues to plummet from about 120 cars a few years back to about 60 cars participating in 2021. There are some new teams coming in, which is great, but unfortunately not enough to cover the number of lost teams. The loss of teams I think is due to the financial aspect of staying competitive, while for some of us it’s age, as our time runs out.        

   For our team we will come back out and enjoy some of the 2022 racing season. We fit into the low budget teams and realize the top level of competition is beyond our capabilities, so our goal for 2022 is to get out there and improve our 5.6 sec quarter mile ET at 252 mph from previous years while enjoying the racing year. Our initial plan is to attend 3 regionals and 3 national events, with our first event being the Regional at “No Problem Dragway” at Bella Rose La. and finishing up with Zmax in the fall.  In between those two we hope to go to Regionals at Gainesville and Bowling Green, also attending the Gator Nationals at Gainesville and the ZMAX 4-wide in the spring at Charlotte.

The team is looking forward to the 2022 season.

 

Dan Lucas

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First Race Of The Season:

Gator Nationals, Gainesville, FL

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 Belle Rose Louisiana Regional was to be our first race. It would be the required Regional by NHRA rules that we must attend in order to be eligible to attend National events for the 2022 season, however the winter weather did not let us finish the trailer upgrades in time. So we opted out of the first planned Regional and decided to go to the Division 2 Regional prior to the Gators to fulfill our rules requirements.

  The Gainesville regional was the first time the car had been out in over 2 ½ years and we found ourselves with ignition issues. Randy Meyers helped us out and we got the issues resolved. We DNQ’d for the regional, but still got our rules requirements satisfied. The following week was Gator Nationals week.

 The Gator Nationals week started with rain on Thursday and it gradually got worst. Friday we were to get 2 qualifying shots, but the torrential rains continued thru all of Friday. The whole area was flooded and under water with no letup in site.  Our pit area was above ankle deep in water and we were pitted in the grass (which made it worse). The paved access area adjacent to our pits to staging was also under water. Below are a few pictures of the spectator parking and the pit area around our trailer.

   Saturday around noon, the NHRA tech guy came by and said that there would be a break in the weather around 3 or so for us to run a one shot qualifying for the race. He asked if we were in or out.  At the time I was standing by him in 3” of water and our pit area was still flooded, muddy, saturated with water and we deemed it useless.

  We opted out. So that ended our Gator Nationals. NHRA did the best they could under the circumstances.  Those cars that were parked on the paved pit areas were able to qualify and compete. There were 21 Top Alcohol cars there and 16 qualified and ran in competitions.