Location: Brentwood World's first A6 in the 9's (including N/A, blower, turbo and nitrous cars) 9.950@139.267 CA
Opinions needed – legitimate complain or sour grapes?
I had a bad experience drag racing last night but before I send an e-mail to the track owners, I wanted to make sure that I had a legitimate complaint and wasn’t just being a sore loser.
I’m pretty much a regular at the Wednesday night races in Sacramento and also go to several Test and Tune sessions on the weekends. I drive a modified 2007 Corvette and with the exception of last night, the car is typically very consistent from run to run and even week to week. As a rule it’ll run 11.5 and change on a Wednesday night with a 1.8 60ft and on weekends when they spray the track with VHT, I consistently get high 1.7 60ft times and my ETs will hover right around the 11.5 second mark.
I took home the trophy for my lane on April 3rd and 10th and made it to the final round last week only to break out by .001 seconds (yes, that one did sting quite a bit). Last night however was a completely different story and it’s the reason I’m upset.
For some unknown reason, one of the starters at the track kept on bringing out a small canister of VHT and seemed to be spraying very specific portions of the lanes between several of the runs almost like he was trying to match the spray pattern to the tire path of a certain vehicle or type of vehicle.
At first I didn’t pay much attention to it (figuring that a little VHT would probably be a good thing) but when my ETs and 60ft times started varying wildly between runs (i.e. I ran an 11.56 followed by an 11.63 about 20 minutes later) I started to get concerned. I then noticed that not only was he spraying the VHT in a very uneven pattern, he was also putting down so much at times (and right before some guys were getting ready to run) that I couldn’t help but think that it would most likely hurt someone’s traction instead of helping it. I believe this was confirmed by my timeslips as I ended up with a 1.86 60ft time on my final run of the night. Even with my old, totally worn out drag radials from earlier this season, I was still able to manage a 1.801 with them so there was definitely something up with my only being able to pull off a 1.86 on newer tires.
I know this whole thing is just for fun and I honestly don’t mind losing but if I do lose, I’d like it to be because I did something wrong and not because some guy was using the track as his own little science experiment.
So…do I have a legitimate complaint or am I really just being a sore loser? If I do e-mail the track owners I don’t necessarily want to get the guy in trouble, I just don’t want him spraying the track like that anymore.
Location: I have no tolerence for liberals and fools, but sometimes i repeat myself
every track has good nights and bad night. Something does sound a lil weird with the track prep, but i would give it another shot. If it becomes a pattern, then I would say something
Location: Brentwood World's first A6 in the 9's (including N/A, blower, turbo and nitrous cars) 9.950@139.267 CA
I think I'm going to send the owner an e-mail just to get his take on things. If I didn't already live 80 miles from the track I might be more inclined to let it go but since I do, I'd rather not have to go through that twice in a row.
I would most likely send my concerns to the track owner. If the starter is doing something wrong he needs to know. You might want to check with the other racers to see if their 60' were amiss too. Power of numbers. Putting a car in a little too deep or too shallow will change 60' and ET. Not saying that you mis-staged the car. Like stated might of just been a "bad" track night.
Corvette Store
Opinions needed – legitimate complain or sour grapes?
