Our team made our way up to Sacramento Raceway for the Governors Cup on September 21st. This was the first time any of us had been to race a Sacramento. On Friday, our first qualifying attempt was set for 6 pm. We put a mild tune up in it and went to the starting line. The car left ok and was on probably a low 6.0 run. At 3.8 seconds the car had a change of plans! Number 1 and 2 rods broke, shoving a piston into an intake valve, blowing the supercharger off and starting a fire! I coasted through the lights with a 7.11 at 111. After the safety crew put the fire out we headed back to the pits to begin a thrash. After swapping short blocks out, we decided to sit out the next session to go over things and try to determine what went wrong. With only 14 cars on hand for a 16 car field, we knew we would be in the show. After looking over all the broken parts, we come to the conclusion that it was just a parts failure.

Saturday morning brought rain and postponement until Sunday morning. Our guys loaded up and headed for the indoor cart track for some friendly competition. Several other teams also had the same idea so there were a lot of us drag racers out turning the steering wheels of these carts and trying not to get kicked out!

The Sunday schedule was to be first round of eliminations at 11 am. As we arrived at the track we learned that we ended up in the 11th spot and would face points leader, Jim Murphy in round one. This would be my first time to race Murphy. Brett put a tune up in the car that normally runs mid 5.90s pretty easily. As the light turned green, I was away first and never saw Murphy. our 5.95 237 beat his 6.04 243. I really enjoyed racing Jim, he is a very good, straight forward racer.

Round 2 paired us with Mike McClennan in Fullers car. I definitely owed him one from our final round meeting at Boise when he beat me back in May. Our 5.96 240 took care of his 6.17 to put us in round three. We would face Number 1 qualifier Rick White next. We went up to the line trying to run a low 5.90. At the Green, Rick was pulling away and I drove the car to about 900 ft before shutting it off. Rick ran a nice 5.83 to my 6.20.

All in all it was a good weekend for our team. We came to the race 6th in points and left 3rd in points and only 28 points behind the leader right now. The guys are working hard back in Anaheim preparing our car for the final points race of the year, The California Hot Rod Reunion, October 12,13 and 14.

I am really looking froward to the reunion for lots of reasons, one is that I will have a new firesuit from Design500. I have been working with James and Katie on the design and fitting of my new suit over the last couple of weeks, and I can not say enough for how they have treated me. They are very concerned with getting the right fit for the driver to better protect him in the case of a fire. They have taken an incredible amount of time with me to insure every detail is 100% correct. I look forward to continuing working with them in the future for all of my safety needs.

Stop by and say Hi if you attend the CHRR this year!

Til next time, Troy & Lara

E-mail: Top Fuel Troy