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At end of July, one of the biggest drag racing events took place in Joliet, Illinios. The DiabloSport team had several racers competing at this event! Check out the event recap from Bart Tobener and Domenic DiDonato
Our biggest race of the season is not at the start of the year or the end …It happens in the middle of our season @ Route 66 raceway in Joliet Illinois! The Superbowl of street legal drag racing, where the NMCA and the NMRA battle it out! This is one of the furthest trips away from our home base in Maysville, GA. It is just over 800 miles and the journey takes 13 hours towing an enclosed trailer. We decided to run Xtreme street since we won the last race @ Beech Bend raceway and we are doing much better in points as well. The class has also converted to 1/8th mile racing.
We arrived on Wednesday night so we could take advantage of the test and tune in on Thursday. We made 2 test hits and made several changes to the tune-up in the car and it did not respond. Two almost identical runs 4.91 and 4.92. It was not the result we were looking for. Our best 1/8th mile E.T. before this race was a 4.84. We made more changes to the tune and headed out for Q1. It ran another 4.91@ 148.42mph … we were not happy, we spent a few hours going over the data and finally found the issue. Between the last two races we made a few upgrades and one of them was the inter-cooler (a larger one and it was moved to the passenger seat area ) This change slowed down the boost curve and therefore slowed down the 60′ time. We made the appropriate changes and went out for Q2. The car left strong and then shortly thereafter it broke the gear-set in the transmission and locked up the drive-line, we had to be towed off the track.
When we got back in the pits, we pulled the car apart and started looking for another gear-set. We finally found one and put it back together just in time for the first round of eliminations on Saturday night. Since we did not qualify well we had to run the #4 qualifier Nick Mcgrath. We were hoping the car was right and the changes were going to make a big difference as well. We left together and we were out in front. Fortunately, we were able to beat Nick with our quickest pass to date ….a 4.79 @148 mph. This was the result we were looking for!
Second round of eliminations was on Sunday and we were matched up against Cameron Massingale. He also ran a 4.79 in E1 so we knew we would have a good race. We left the starting line together and ran side by side the whole way down, just to get edged out by .04 seconds at the stripe. His 4.79 against our 4.83 was enough to put us back on the trailer.
I am very proud of our team after having to recover from breaking the transmission and missing 2 qualifying passes to have the result we did. It was not a win, but a really good showing for us!
NMRA Joliet, what can we say. The weekend started a little rough, but with the tuning of Craig from Triangle Speed Shop and some assistance from Matthew at Redline Motorsports, we got the car turned around and qualified 4th in Renegade, with spots 2 through 5 being separated by less than .03 of a second, and number one Frank being only .064 quicker than us! It was a tight field and anyone’s race to win. Round 1 of eliminations pitted us against Bob Cook and his supercharged Fox body Mustang. With the nighttime air and the great track prep of T.j. Bailey and Jake Green, Domenic blasted off a new personal best of 7.43 @ 184.70. Despite the phenomenal performance, we lost the round due to a red light start of -.006, putting us on the trailer.
Despite the set back, we are looking forward to the final race of the season in Bowling Green, as well as the Yellow Bullet Nationals at Cecil, and the always amazing Haltech World Cup Finals – Import vs Domestic – MDIR – Nov 1-5, 2017 at Maryland International Raceway.
