I'll be driving a NASCAR car at Indy Friday

For my 61st B'day the wifey bought me a 15 lap shootout in the Rusty Wallace Experience at Lucas Oil (Indy) raceway. The track is short at .68 miles and the cars can hit 140....Pit Bull has hit the stock 155 mph cut off several times, but never in a circle!

 

There will be several other cars on the track at the same time...I think the lead car has a ride along official and we all follow, not full blown passing type of stuff....but being a .68 mile and all the cars being equal it would be hard to pass anyhow. These cars can reach 140 mph....which is slow compared to my Dodge Neon SRT4 that had a stock mph cut off of 155! (police Hemi Chargers have 144 mph cut off!) BTW, the SRT4 now has no more cut cut off with the S2 computer....my mechanic says 170 easy!!! I have hit the 155 cut off, but never went quicker than that....don't plan too either.

I was misinformed...this is at other tracks, the 140 mph limit is imposed at the 2.5 mile tracks and read by post later for what really goes on...no follow the leader at a certain pace!

 

I swore that after my divorce in 2000 after 27 years I was done. I was 49 and did the dating thing (nothing serious...just CLEAN fun) then I met this great looking YOUNG chick at a fish fry and as soon as she smiled after I asked her out I could feel those super sharpe meat hooks grab my heart....I was hooked. This October will be our 10 year anniversary, our kid turns 6 June 1st and today is the wifeys B'day...she is 39 now, but looks MUCH younger and keeps getting carded. BTW, my other kids are going to be 31 and 29 in June too. If I want to buy something $$$$ I ask and she ALWAYS says its my money and I can do witht what I want as longs as I can still pay half the living costs!

BTW, the old 96 3 banger Geo used to have a top end of 81 mph and that increased to 89 with a grill block, 140 lbs wt removal, and head light covers.

The wifes Prius has hit 110. The 95 slightly modded Neon still has the stock 118 mph cut off in its stock computer, and back in 1994 my 84 Horizon was clocked at 143 mph around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway!

 

The time has been moved up to 6pm, only 4 hours and a bit to go....see ya...I hope!

 

All went well yesterday. All the cars are prepped the same way, all have manuals. Mine was a 3 speed but only 2 and 3 are used...period. The motors are 500 hp crate 350 motors (GM) and the clutches are $700 race pieces....which felt as tame as the one in my 95 Neon! We went a few laps at around 40 behind a pace truck, one car apart and after a couple of laps maintained like that then they had us leave aboiut a 10 car length gap from each other. After a lap like that the truck pulled off and we went at it! No follow the leader BS that some of the NASCAR experiences have....go as fast as you care too. Everyone had the same radio signal. They would tell the slower car by car number to pull to the inside at the next straight and lift...once you were cleared they'd tell you to go on with it. The same thing with passing a slower car...they tell you to pass the slower guy after he's pulled down on the next straight and let you know when you cleared. VERY simple. They used cheap nice person Autogauge tachs that were not even needed since all cars had a rev limit of only 5500 rpm! The only other guages were a oil pressure and water temp from SW...might not have worked since mine only ran 140 temps at the most. My car was the only one without a mirror, but not needed since they told us when to let the faster guy pass. They had pylons set up on where to lift and slightly brake and others on where to start to accelerate. They told us NOT to floor the cars once we clear the acceleration point since with 500 hp they could spin out. The other problem I was running into that two of the others never experienced and one other had happen once was that the rev limiter was being hit just after I cam out of the turn....WAY before the halfway part of the back stretch and also WAY before the middle of the front stretch start/finish line. They could hear it and on the radio told me that they knew of this and the problem was that I was coming out of the corner way faster than the other guys and hitting the rev limit way early on the track.....the other guys were a lot slower coming out of the turns and the one that did hit his finally had enough speed on the straight that he hit it right before the pylon to slow for the turn! They were shocked that an old dude was having this problem and told me that only about 5% would have this much of a problem....most were racers of other oval series and used to maintaining speed through the turns. I never eased into the gas, I used the pedal as an on/off switch. I told them that I drag race right there and also have road raced back in the early 70s with a little Fiat 850 Abarth 600 body (102 ci with 110 hp and ZERO torque) at Road Atlanta. BTW, I only lifted for the turns, never braked and let the car slow itself...scarred the crap out of me every turn that I'd loose it, but it tracked right through the turns like they were on rails. Too bad I'm so old....a LOT more fun than drag racing. We got there and were trained, ran, and were done in 1 hour. Even when I won the IHRA Ohio/Indiana championsip in 1990 in one class and runnered-up in another...14 total rounds....I only spent a total of under 4 minutes on the track...15.8 seconds per round. ABSOLUTE FUN....thanks to the wifey!

 

My Shelby powered (1 of 84 built) 84 Horizon had one of those 85 mph speedos and there is a pin that kept the needle from going past that point. The Shelby/Dodge cars had the same gauges but no pin and a decal overlay that extended the mph up to 125. I have a print company that replicates the plain black 85 mph sets into 145 mph extended decal overlays that are available in blue, white, or black. Soon I will be offering silver ones to match people that have Auto Meter Super Comp gauges happy.