Paolo Castellano
Enthusiast
This competition semed strange to me as I have been doing nothing but trying NOT to spin the tires with the awesome Heffner power I now have.....
I told the Scott(The man in charge of the whole ball of wax) I was planning to get the car up to 90+ MPH and spin the living [******] out of the car and burn the tires off the [******] car!.........
He did not like the idea and told me not to do it. I asked him why and he started yelling that he was responsible for me....... (In my mind, I could not understand exactly why he was so worried.....I have had this fantasy to spin the car at high speed in a huge parking lot ever since I saw the picture of the parking lot they used for Mumford's win in the GDH..... Maybe next time...)
There is this guy named Mani who is a Burnout specailist who drove three of the cars......
As I watched him, he seemed to be so smooth making beautiful transitions keeping the car in constant motion. He even was able to powerslide the car within several feet of the crowd as he went by.
He was not even seat belted into the car and was moving around and leaning and making funny facial expressions as he went by.....I was wondering how I could possibly beat this guy...
One of the executives told me how Mani had come in backwards last year and flipped the car around James Garner style from "The Rockford Files"
I had 70 seconds to defend the honor of every single Viper owner and
to prove the Viper is the baddest ass street car on the planet for the Gross Display of Horsepower............
{One sidenote here would be that Dave Blankenbaker, eager to give me all the confidence I needed and even more ammunition to kick some ass, told me not to worry about his rims if the tire was destroyed and came off the rim. He told me to destroy his rims if necessary. This kind of support is indicative to what I had all the way through! I think everyone here should give Dave a big thumbs up because he took off work for a week and selflessly helped me with whatever needed to be done!}
Back to the Gross Display of Horsepower........
So I started out in reverse and tried to do the same thing James Garner did, but those [******] 315 front Hoosiers were so sticky the front wheels would not slide around.........
I have never done a burnout in reverse before but I did here. Different to say the least........
Since Mani did not strap himself in, I figured I would have better agility and visibility(with the cage and all) if I just had the lap belt on.
This was definitely a mistake.......
When people do continuous 360 degree burnout circles, there is a point in the rotation where you have to crank the wheels all the way the other way to keep it on axis and doing a circle.
Well, I can tell you this: Jason Heffner kind of screwed me for this part of the contest because that ************* ENZO WHO whipped the whole ass end of the car around so violently and quickly I did not have time to do the opposite lock to maintain a circle==> Not to mention I could barely hold onto the [******] steering wheel as the car was whipping my ass all over the place.... I felt like I was on a bucking bronco out of control......Thanks a heap Jason! LOL!
I also remembered Scott telling me I had to stay in a certain area for the cameras.....
By the time I got the car doing a continuous left hand circle, making more smoke than all the other cars put together(so it seemed) I could not really see where I was except I knew I was farther away that where I was supposed to be by this point. I was also busy watching the oil temp, coolant temp and EGT's......
I just kept thinking when are these [******] tire going to explode???????????
Finally they made a huge BOOM! and the crowd went even more crazy. I did a few more circles and came back with the rear of the car thumping and all uneven.
I got out and did a bow and bit the shredded left rear tire tread for the cameras and realized BOTH rear tires now looked like they had elephantitis of the nuts!
The crazy thing is that the coolant temperature shot up to 270 degrees and I could not even drive the car to cool it down...
The Mighty Heffner Viper cooled down and is fine.
This is my story exactly how it happened.
I have some awesome ideas for what I will do if I get in next year........I will show those boys something they have never seen!
I told the Scott(The man in charge of the whole ball of wax) I was planning to get the car up to 90+ MPH and spin the living [******] out of the car and burn the tires off the [******] car!.........
He did not like the idea and told me not to do it. I asked him why and he started yelling that he was responsible for me....... (In my mind, I could not understand exactly why he was so worried.....I have had this fantasy to spin the car at high speed in a huge parking lot ever since I saw the picture of the parking lot they used for Mumford's win in the GDH..... Maybe next time...)
There is this guy named Mani who is a Burnout specailist who drove three of the cars......
As I watched him, he seemed to be so smooth making beautiful transitions keeping the car in constant motion. He even was able to powerslide the car within several feet of the crowd as he went by.
He was not even seat belted into the car and was moving around and leaning and making funny facial expressions as he went by.....I was wondering how I could possibly beat this guy...
One of the executives told me how Mani had come in backwards last year and flipped the car around James Garner style from "The Rockford Files"
I had 70 seconds to defend the honor of every single Viper owner and
to prove the Viper is the baddest ass street car on the planet for the Gross Display of Horsepower............
{One sidenote here would be that Dave Blankenbaker, eager to give me all the confidence I needed and even more ammunition to kick some ass, told me not to worry about his rims if the tire was destroyed and came off the rim. He told me to destroy his rims if necessary. This kind of support is indicative to what I had all the way through! I think everyone here should give Dave a big thumbs up because he took off work for a week and selflessly helped me with whatever needed to be done!}
Back to the Gross Display of Horsepower........
So I started out in reverse and tried to do the same thing James Garner did, but those [******] 315 front Hoosiers were so sticky the front wheels would not slide around.........
I have never done a burnout in reverse before but I did here. Different to say the least........
Since Mani did not strap himself in, I figured I would have better agility and visibility(with the cage and all) if I just had the lap belt on.
This was definitely a mistake.......
When people do continuous 360 degree burnout circles, there is a point in the rotation where you have to crank the wheels all the way the other way to keep it on axis and doing a circle.
Well, I can tell you this: Jason Heffner kind of screwed me for this part of the contest because that ************* ENZO WHO whipped the whole ass end of the car around so violently and quickly I did not have time to do the opposite lock to maintain a circle==> Not to mention I could barely hold onto the [******] steering wheel as the car was whipping my ass all over the place.... I felt like I was on a bucking bronco out of control......Thanks a heap Jason! LOL!
I also remembered Scott telling me I had to stay in a certain area for the cameras.....
By the time I got the car doing a continuous left hand circle, making more smoke than all the other cars put together(so it seemed) I could not really see where I was except I knew I was farther away that where I was supposed to be by this point. I was also busy watching the oil temp, coolant temp and EGT's......
I just kept thinking when are these [******] tire going to explode???????????
Finally they made a huge BOOM! and the crowd went even more crazy. I did a few more circles and came back with the rear of the car thumping and all uneven.
I got out and did a bow and bit the shredded left rear tire tread for the cameras and realized BOTH rear tires now looked like they had elephantitis of the nuts!
The crazy thing is that the coolant temperature shot up to 270 degrees and I could not even drive the car to cool it down...
The Mighty Heffner Viper cooled down and is fine.
This is my story exactly how it happened.
I have some awesome ideas for what I will do if I get in next year........I will show those boys something they have never seen!
