LIGHTS OUT 9, South Georgia Motorsports Park

DiabloSport sponsored racer Bart Tobener took his race car out to the Lights Out 9 event this past weekend. Lights out is a huge race bringing out thousands of race fans and some of the fastest cars on the planet! Bart recounts his experience at the Lights Out 9 event below.

Bart Tobener

Our second race of the year was also the biggest race of the year…. Lights Out 9 @ South Georgia Motorsports Park in Adele, GA. It was the busiest I have ever seen. We got to the track on Wednesday morning in hopes of getting a few test and tune passes, but unfortunately, there was a “mix-up” in the mixture of the traction compound and someone accidentally mixed diesel fuel with the traction compound! It resulted in a greasy track for the next 2 days, so we decided to wait til Q1 to make our first pass. We lowered the rpm and boost level on launch just a little for the run and it netted us a 4.802 @ 146 MPH. For Q2 we turned it back up a little and went a 4.789 @147.28 which had us 5th on the ladder. For Q3 we raised the boost on launch again and went even quicker 4.769 @147.44 but a few other racers stepped up as well and it put us 8th on the ladder for eliminations.

For E1 we got a broken bye run since John Snyder hurt his engine as was not able to make it up. In the second round we had to run a quicker qualified car of Shaun Arnold and knew it was going to be a close race. I left the line first with a .024 to his .052 reaction time and outran him with a 4.748 @ 147.44 to his 4.793 @ 146.18. In the third round we had to run another quick car Scott Kincaid in his 93 Mustang coupe. He left the line first with a .024 to my .035 reaction time, but it was over fairly soon as I went a 1.103 60′ time (our 2nd best ever) and we outran him with a 4.779 @146.75 to his 4.853 @145.34 which gave us a competition bye run to the final! In the final we had to run Rodney Raygan in his beautiful Grey Fox body coupe. I cut another great light (.027 to his .048) and was out on him till about 500′ and he just got around me right before the finish line with his winning 4.736 to my losing 4.818 @146.16. We had a great weekend and just came up a little short in the finals. We are very excited to have run as well as we did and have a few “upgrades” to make before the next race!