We were lucky that Dragweek wasn't too far from home this year, a little less than 400 miles for me. I had been in contact with Hemi Joel on Saturday and knew that they still had a lot of work to do, so I headed out 1:30pm, just in case I had any issues on the road. This year one of the Dragweek participants had put together a party at their shop in Davenport, Ia at Motion Raceworks so I stopped there on the way to the track at Cordova. I needed a dinner stop anyway and they had a couple food trucks there. They also had a live stream racing radio program broadcasting on location talking about Dragweek with some of the competitors. I arrived kind of at the tail end of the party, but there were still a couple dozen Dragweek cars there. Here's a picture.
I left there and drove to the track at Cordova. They had been having a bracket race at Cordova that night that was over when I arrived, but there were still a few local racers in the pits. Here's one Ford I saw, serious looking Mustang.
A couple participants from Dragweek used the open track to do a little test & tune. One group from Finland, the guys with the '67 Plymouth VIP, ended up with valve issues after making some passes I believe. They ended up going through the Dragweek tech line Sunday with most of the top end of the motor apart. They were able to get the head repaired and back together in time for a pass on Monday.
Jay has covered this subject plenty of times in the past, but I just tell the story again here for anyone thinking of doing Dragweek in the future. I was on the waiting list this year. I registered for the waiting list right away and I was #59. My spot hadn't come up yet before the event and Hot Rod had sent us an email with some instructions for registration day. We were told not to get in the regular tech line, but to check in with the Hot Rod personnel that morning and they would notify us later when to get in line. I checked in with them early and saw on their master list I had moved up 46 positions, so that is how many got notified to register before the event. I think this system worked well, since it gave Hot Rod an idea how many showed up and were waiting before they got the pre-registered people checked in. We were told 300 people had signed up on the waiting list, but no where near that many showed up. Had there been a lot I got the impression Hot Rod was going to call us up to tech in waiting list order, but in the end they just called us all up around 6pm. Since there wasn't anything to do but wait I used the time to wander around, take pictures, and talk to people. I knew Jeff & Joel had left the Twin Cities early early Sunday morning, but I didn't know at that time they had thrown in the towel on the '31 Coupe and had brought the GTX. I was surprised when I found Jeff near the tail end of the tech line just before the cut-off time of 1pm.
By late afternoon they called the waiting list people up to tech and I pulled in with the Mark VIII. One of the big stories of Dragweek this year was NHRA Top Fuel racer Richie Crampton. He and some co-workers, and his dad, had built a '57 Scrub wagon on their own time after work in the race shops around Indy during the last year. In true Dragweek fashion they showed up mostly untested and just a few test launches under their belts. They were right in front of me in Tech, since they were also in the waiting list. I had a chance to talk to both Richie and his friend/trunk monkey, they were both very nice, and I was able to answer a few dragweek questions. Also in typical Dragweek fashion they had issues in tech, their brake lights had quit working sometime before the Hot Rod guys inspected them for the lights & horn portion. All of a sudden they had a scramble as they all started trying to track down the issue, which turned out to be a blown fuse. Because Richie had just been hired to drive one of the Kalitta Top Fuel cars in the last couple weeks they had to leave dragweek after Wednesday to head to the NHRA race in North Carolina this past weekend. The car seemed to run well though, with passes in the mid-8's each day. The chassis in the car is tech'd to 6.50 ET, so it could be an interesting car to watch in the future.
I ended up getting through tech and all the Hot Rod registration around 8:30pm. This was actually quite an improvement compared to how late the waitlist people last year had it, and also considering there were more entrants allowed this year. Nobody who showed up on the waiting list got turned away again this year, and they wound up with just under the 400 cars they planned on. I counted at least 4 people doing the NHRA/IHRA safety portion of the tech inspection this year, better than last years 2 people. Hot Rod does seem to be listening to the feed back each year and working on the process, I thought it went pretty smooth. After I got back to the pits I met up with Joel & Jeff and we took a ride into the town of Port Byron near the track and found a family restaurant still open and had dinner.
