ADRL at the Texas Motorplex this weekend....

Went to the ADRL event at the Texas Motorplex Friday & Saturday. Made up for not having a race car there by having 2 rented Margarita machines in tow . We left one Margarita machine in Gaylen Smith's P/M pit as a "thank you" cuz Gaylen let my friend's "ugly Willys" get in and take T&T laps behind the P/M qualifying at a number of shows this past month all free of charge (Mr Smith & his crew are a great bunch). So I got my fill of sunburn (from deceptively "cold" sunny days) & alcohol this week end.

I still don't like the fact that real-time automated traction control is allowed in the ADRL, I still say let the driver "drive" the car 100%. But aside from that, their "no minimum weight /no maximum cubic inch" rules really make for a great show. And it really opens up a lot of imaginative thinking toward car building. No field of boring "cookie cutter" built car's here all designed 100% to the same specs. The blown & nitrous Extreme P/M classes had engine height & setback placements all over the map, as were the 4-link settings. Saw some cars with all Titanium bolt-in rear chassis sections & Titanium front end trees, these guys are serious about removing weight. Along with the blown, nitrous, & turbo cars you also had an injected-nitro setup. Also got to see some of Induction-Solutions work up close on Dave Pierce's camaro with a beautiful mulit stage system setup.

They had to cut qualifying short Friday night because of 2 back to back crashes. First crash Scruggs shook the car loose & got sideways showing the starting line both sides of the car a few times as he sawed on the steering wheel. The car repeatedly reached that point of sideways slide "no return". But he did a great job driving & pulled it back each time keeping the slicks from digging in & rolling the car. The car ended up with a number of guardrail tags, but they had the damage patched up by pretty good by Saturday morning. The second crash was a bad one. Jason Hamsta (sp?) started to get loose in the right lane about half track, turned left at the finish line & crossed in front of Joshua Hernandez hitting the opposite guardrail hard. They airlifted him out, but luckily he only ended up banged & bruised. They decided to cut qualifying at that point because of how late it was getting vs the clean up time & the weather getting colder.

So with qualifying cut short Friday, the teams were only allowed one last ditch qualifying shot early Saturday. That's about the time walking around some of the blown alcohol pits that you started to noticed on top of the normal smell of alcohol, there was also a growing hint of nitro in the air as well...........