Sorry for not getting this written up any sooner but things are a bit busy these days.
The 2nd Annual Vettes vs. Vipers Shootout at New England Dragway last Saturday was a complete success, though the Vettes won again (as expected). The previous year, we only had 4 or 5 Vipers attend, so this year’s 10 competing Vipers gave us a better than 100% increase in Viper participation! Unfortunately, there were probably somewhere around 80 or 90 Vettes running, so things were mildly lopsided but still an awful lot of fun. The ‘Snake Pit’ across from the Tech Inspection area was our operational center, marked by the VCA banners and some multicolored balloons (thanks Victoria). This area was continually buzzing with activities such as run preparation (“OK, who’s got a helmet for rent?”), tire changing (“Anyone see that missing lug nut? I know it’s here someplace!”), strategizing (“When the light turns green, go fast. Got it?”) and general NE-VCA activities like providing cools gifts for everyone. Thanks go out to Chef Paul for his efforts towards keeping the participant fed.
Things started out pretty slowly when the majority of the Vipers got stuck in tech inspection. You might say this was my doing, as I had this inspector trying to convince me that I lacked some safety equipment and I was arguing that I was fully IHRA-compliant in every respect. Since they only had two inspectors, this held up things for a good while. When we finally got through inspection, we were notified that we had just missed the first of our two ‘allotted’ timed runs. What’s that? Allotted? Well, it turned out that this was an extremely busy race day due to other rescheduled activities, so the Vipers were only allotted two passes each prior to eliminations! And most of us just missed the first one because I was sitting with the tech inspector going through the rule book (Sorry about that).
Anyway, pretty much everyone had the chance to get down the track for their first time when the Vettes and Vipers were called for their ‘second’ timed run. Upon returning to the Snake Pit to strategize about dial ins and such, we heard the unfortunate news that the Twin Turbo GTS had just toasted 2nd gear so it was done for the day. This was very disappointing for everyone, but especially for Dave who had driven his car over from Maine to participate in this event. I sure hope he makes it back next year as his car was quite impressive (to say the least). We had at least four Viper drivers who were driving down the track for their very first time, so in general the ET’s weren’t so great. Everyone was running in the 12’s with 60 foot times of 2 seconds or more. It seems everyone had a problem/excuse of some sort, including my own lack on nitrous (though I DID remember to get the propane tank filled for the barbecue grill.).
Now, we expected to have a nice barbecued lunch ahead of the 1PM elimination rounds but that was not to be. We were told by the track manager that the eliminations would be starting early and that we’d better be ready to go at noontime, so lunch would be delayed. Well, after sitting in the staging area from 12:00 until 1:15, our two lanes of Vettes and Vipers was finally pulled. Many of the Vettes were weekend track regulars, making their runs within a few hundredths of their dial ins. In the case of our Vipers, most dial in numbers were just WAGs (Wild A$$ Guesses). In fact, we had one really nice Saphire RT/10 arrive at 12:45 ready to make his very first pass down a dragstrip, so I put a 12:70 dial in on his windshield. Too bad, because he ran a 12:65 and broke out. After the first elimination round, we only had one Viper still in the competition, and he got knock out next round.
So, did we win the competition? Well, no, not really. Did we have a GREAT TIME? You bet! We had a bunch of people try drag racing their Vipers for their very first time! We had some good conversation, good food, good gifts, smiles, laughs, good weather…what more could we ask for.
Here is a link to some pictures that have been posted on the New England VCA website. Enjoy.
NED Vettes vs Vipers Shootout Pictures
