Rt. 66 Race Your Ride #11 - Another Beautiful Night!

Friday night's, Race Your Ride #11 at Route 66 was a beautiful night of racing with a few surprises.  I have repeatedly said, that you never know who is going to show up at a Race Your Ride.  When I arrived, I saw some rather large car haulers and soon realized, John Lawson was here with both his nostalgia nitro funny cars, Runaway and Quick Draw. I first noticed that Quick Draw was sporting the older, new style Firebird body. When I talked to John, he related that last week in Michigan, they had an engine explosion that blew the body off, destroying it. They had to do a complete rebuild of the car. This is the second time in a year, he has had a problem in Michigan. If you remember last year, Runaway crashed on the burnout and burned.

Friday they had better success with good runs with both Runaway and Quick Draw.

Apparently, they didn't have time to put the driver name on Quick Draw, however I am pretty sure it was Joe Haas and John driving Runaway.

The Tiffen & Hess car showed up to run, however after unloading they found a broken starter. They loaded the car back up and in their words, "Going to kick back, drink a couple of beers and watch everyone else run!".

After posting pictures of the Lawson cars on Facebook, Bob Malloy posted he was loading up his car for its first run on the new motor. I have been following the motor change on Facebook.

Dave Brown, the driver, gave an update on the run on Facebook:

"This was the first time out with basically a new complete combination. New block new piston and rod combination and cam. A fresh new clutch with new facings and new tires. As with anything there were several bumps a long the road and also at the track. All we wanted was an A to B pass nothing special just figure stuff out. It was up to me to determine how hard to run it. This was one run take it home and check things over. Last year was all oil pressure issues so wanted to make sure all this new stuff survives. It shook all the way down and never cleared up so clicked around a 1000ft. Hopefully all looks well and step on it with a couple small changes at the rt66 classic in 2 weeks."

I was talking to Dave Kocher, driver of the Plane Insane II. He has been having staging problems with the car, it has been surging and rolling back. He diagnosed a converter problem and while it was out, had the transmission worked on. He also made some recommended adjustments. This was his test run night before Sunday's ET Bracket Race.

There were several cars that I had not seen run at Route 66. One was the AMC Rambler of Mike Pena. Mike was licensing in the car. He completed his licensing on the last pass of the night.

We also had some of our regulars testing. I spoke with Morgan Hixon and she stated that this is probably her last outing this year due to her returning to college in Florida for her junior year. Morgan has been working with NMRA/NMCA this past year. I kidded with her about leaving the driver's seat and coming to the dark side!

We also had some of our Juniors testing.

We also had a cadre of street cars driving down the track that the NHRA stars run.

To see all the images from the night, please click here.

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