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Halloween
Bonfire Burn Up, Shakespeare County Raceway
October 25th -26th 2008
Oxford English Dictionary,
Test:
Critical examination or trial of a person's or thing's qualities…….
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just one opportunity to test the NH Racing Houndog Nitro Funny
Car at a race track before the 2008 season closed, Nobby and
Crew took the car to Shakespear County Raceway for the Halloween
Bonfire Burn Up at the end of October. With Simon still not licensed and other issues still to be addressed, this was going to be a test, and as per the definition above, it was a test for both Simon and the car.
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Saturday saw the team prepare the car and warm it up in the
pits. All was well and the car and clutch looked and sounded to
be in good shape. A scrutineer inspected a few things that
required attention associated with the brake lever. Once fixed,
the time had unfortunately slipped by and the hoped for trip
down the strip was not going to be able to be completed. |
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| On
Sunday the car was again warmed up in the pits and all seemed
well. Later in the day, the car was towed to the start. As the
car was started and manoeuvred to the line, Simon encountered
some problems with the clutch starting to drag quite badly and
some time (and nitro !) was used up while positioning the car
and moving the support truck. It was quickly decided not to do a
burnout as it would not have been possible to select reverse, so
a stage and a soft launch and squirt off the line was to be the
order of the day. |
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Simon carefully staged the car and on the green just as he was
about to hit the loud pedal, the blower burst plate did its job
when things go wrong and the panel burst and that was that !
Unfortunately the tank had run dry of nitro.
The car was running very rich and the time lost due to the
manoeuvring and waiting had used up more fuel than expected.
Annoying, but one of those things. |
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Despite this, from a testing perspective, the weekend was still
a success with numerous things learnt and no serious damage was
encountered. As it says above: Test: Critical examination or trial of a person's or thing's qualities…….
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Peter Donaldson took some excellent pictures and has kindly
allowed us to use them, full size versions can be found on his
website
http://peterdonaldson5305.fotopic.net/
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