Our Sacramento Race Report

Sacramento Bugorama, August 31, 2008
The crew of Bugorama, the fans, show car crowd and racers could not have asked for a better weekend weatherwise. With Friday temps over the century mark, the cool delta breezes kicked up and dropped tems to just over 90 on Saturday and 80 on Sunday. Absolutely perfect! Promoter Bob Hole told me they paid extra for that!
Coming off of a win at Famoso just the weekend before and with the car running really well, we had some confidence heading into Bugorama. Since we had run it pretty much all out at Famoso, I elected not to do a full pass before qualifying over Cindy's objections. I think there were also some wheelie expectations after our exhibit the weekend prior. However, the track wasn't quite as grippy as Famoso and the wheelies were controlled to just a few inches. Oh well. At least my header didn't take another beating!
After setting up base camp, we visited with friends and fellow racers while we waited for the 5pm call to the lanes. There was a lot on the line for a couple of the Super Gas racers. Points leader Marcus Palmquist wanted to protect and extend his lead to "seal the deal," while John Schuerger wanted to close the 60 point gap. For those of us too far back to have a shot, our goal was to climb in the standings the best we could.
Our first run, which was not a qualifier but just a TnT run, netted a tire spinning 11.77 running how I typically do to hit 11.90. Looking at the ET slip, the 1/8th mile time showed 7.22. An all time best. Seems we need to shorten it up even more. Round one of qualifying came at 6pm and already temps were starting to drop. Our first official qualfier was 12.19. A good safe number, but we would need to tighten that up. With only 14 cars showing up, there was no danger of not qualifying, but a better position nets more points and gives lane choice. Round two got us an 11.97. Still safe and still room to improve. We also improved to 7.20 in the 1/8th. This equates out to about 11.37 in the quarter, and trying to hit 11.90 with a car that runs in the 11.30s is not very easy! That wrapped up the evenings runs, and then it was off to dinner with Ken & Susy Jevec, Allen & Sue Wiess, my son Mark and his wife Sarah, and our friend John Hashim. The best of times! While in the restaurant, fellow Super Gas racer Patrick Friel, and former DRKC champ Lee Bushaw and crew came in. After a time, a food fight was narrowly averted!
Sunday morning arrived with a 15mph breeze and very cool. We had one more qualifying shot before eliminations, and this one would be too quick at 11.87. So, we were set in the number 8 position.
A few days before the race, we announced that we would put a $50 cash bonus to the #12 qualifier. Just a little something to make thing more fun. It was funny we chose that number, which was totally random. The number twelve qualifier turned out to be Rick Oliver who was celebrating 12 years since his liver transplant and he had put up a $112 bounty on himself awarded to whoever beat him in eliminations. That turned out to be Scott Bakken.
Our round one guy was our good friend John Schuerger. Dang. I knew he wanted to advance to close the gap on Marcus who had gone out in round one. I didn't want to be one standing in his way, but there I was. I'm not the kind of guy who will take a dive to help a friend. I want to win too. And that's what I did. John missed a shift, and I throttled back to the win. As it turned out, I almost didn't throttle back enough, running a really close 11.90 on the 11.90 index!
Our round two guy was Patrick Friel. A newcomer to Super Gas, Patrick is a DRKC veteran and was there competing back when we were in DRKC. With almost a tenth advantage at the tree, the win was ours, 11.92 to his 12.06. During that run I reset our personal best 1/8th mile time again at 7.16. I reckon I have the bugs worked out of the injection system now! (calculates to 11.31 for the quarter)
In the semi finals we were once again paired with our good friend Scott Bakken. I had lost to Scott at Fontana when I missed the shift to second gear. Scott and I were door to door all the way and approaching the stripe, I knew we were going way too fast. I couldn't scrub off speed fast enough and it was a double breakout, my 11.72 to Scott's 11.74. Being the least amount under the index gave Scott the win.
With our day finished, and being quite happy with our results, we went on to watch our friends in their final round matches. Scott would be up against 2007 SG Champ Troy Palmer. Troy's team had suffered a staging lane accident which resulted in a damaged front fender just before the semi's. It apparently was more of a distraction to his opponent, Rich Grise, who redlit away his chances. Scott went on to win the event and improved his overall points position to third, while we improved from 8th to 6th. A top five finish is what we are working for and we are two rounds away. Allen Wiess also had a runner up finish in Super Comp, putting him back into the points lead.
Vegas is up next and we have historically done very well there. Last year we red lit in round one, but we won there the previous two years. Hopefully, Lady Luck will be my co-pilot once again.