RIPS FED wins the nationals and NZDRA championship
Winner, 2012 NZDRA Nationals, Supercharged Outlaws
What a day!!
A few ups and downs but we got there in the end and sealed the championship for the 2nd year running, broke our own track record and claimed a new NZDRA record for CC/D.
The last round was at Taupo which is a circuit where we use the back straight. Its not a proper drag strip and at quite high altitude compared to the other tracks in NZ, its common for everyone to be 2-3 10ths slower than we'd usually be at say Meremere, which is at sea level.
We qualified quickest in Supercharged Outlaws against blown V8 front and rear engined dragsters and Altereds.
Supercharged Outlaws is run on DYO (dial your own) so we had to find a nice safe, reliable tune to give a chance against these experienced DYO old school racers.
We'd had severe tyre shake in qualifying and also found 2 broken chassis tubes towards the front of the chassis. This flex/vibration was giving us trigger errors on the ecu. Its really hard to put into words how violent the shake is, but lets put it this way - when it gets real bad, its not un-common to smash your teeth out! So much so, the top guys wear mouth guards.
We settled on a 7.35 dial in but due to being No1 qualifier, we got a bye in the first round. We decided to wind her up some more (still under 1.9 bar), got tyre shake again and ran an incredible 7.23 @ 178mph with trigger errors and a slight miss all the way and a complete cut out of the engine at 9400rpm just before the finish line. Once backed off and at a lower speed the motor returned to a smooth idle again, no damage done.
A 7.23 at Taupo is almost on for a 6 at Meremere and to do it with plenty of boost to spare, trigger errors all the way and an early shut down was awesome, we were very happy indeed.
We made it through to the final and were still getting trigger errors. We tried to fix it but the broken chassis, tyre shake vibration and sensor mount was obviously still allowing the sensor to flex/vibrate freaking it out. But I told the guy I was racing in the final, that all was well and we were going to give him a good run for his money.
I couldn't even do a burnout properly the trigger errors were so bad and coming up to the start line, I knew it wasn't going to run well and thought I was history.
The lights came down, he took off like a rocket, my motor just popped and banged and limped off the line with him dissapearing into the distance. I limped down the track and watched my competitor cross the finish line then go into a massive slide one way then the next. He went off the track and all I saw was dust and smoke and him up on his side. Its so lucky I wasn't right beside him, it could have been very nasty indeed.
I came past him slowly and saw he looked "ok" so coasted around to the chute packers area, gutted that we had lost that race.
My crew came roaring down and my disapointment turned to joy when they told me he had broken out (gone too fast for his dial in time). The pressure must have got to him, he didn't lift when he could have and we had in fact won the race!!!!
I went to make sure my competitor was OK. He was but his car was not so he has some body and chassis work to do and wheels to replace before the next meeting in 2 weeks.
We had to get weighed and fill out the paperwork to claim the NZDRA CC/D record and all went well. Everything passed and we were stll 227kg over minimum weight for the class so that's an area I'll have to look at working on.
I had 2 video cameras on my car all meeting so hopefully I'll have some good footage. I'll post links to videos when they are done.
Once again I need to thank Link Engine Management, RSS, Turbosmart, Jason from Infomotive (poor guy coped well under pressure but was seen pulling his already thinning hair out trying to sort out the trigger errors, lol), Spook, Brad, Dan, all the girls, Dodsons, Regal Automotive, Morbark, B.O.P Polishers, Ross Dampers, GSS, Nitto, Argo and all my other sponsers and supporters.
I'll sort out the broken chassis tubes and fix the sensor problems and next meeting is at Meremere in 2 weeks where we hope to seal up the IHRA championship series we currently lead.
Robbie
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