Rob Mansfield’s
Rookie IHRA Pro
Stock Season Diary

PART 2

By Rob Mansfield
Photos by Billy Carroll
7/9/04

he IHRA AC Delco Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park have come and gone. Since then, I’ve been thinking about what to write for you, about what someone who is not doing this would find interesting and surprising. My first thought is of the large number of people needed and of how much time and work goes into just one race. The events at Virginia are a perfect example of this.

The first surprise going into this event for our team was that we actually arrived at the races with repair work to do. The car was slated to leave in the truck on Wednesday with Billy and Mike. The rest of us were flying into Richmond on Thursday night with Bob coming in early Friday. Well, on Wednesday morning, during a warm up session at the shop, a piece of linkage fell off the motor into the Jessel belt, damaging it. We didn’t have another belt in the shop so, the car left as is with us knowing we were going to have to fix it on Friday morning (the soonest we could actually get a new belt) before first round qualifying.

Despite this, we were coming in with great expectations. We had known at the previous event that we were down on power and sent the motor to Sonny Leonard to be freshened with great results. In addition, Billy and Mike had just spent two full days at the shop going over every inch of the chassis, setting up the ride height, shocks, weight ratios, etc. and things were looking great.

After landing at the Richmond airport at 10 p.m. Thursday, getting to the track at midnight to sign-in, going to the hotel to check in at 1 a.m., then being back at the track Friday morning at 7 a.m., the weekend was off to a busy start. Surprise number two came when our last crew member’s Friday morning flight, due in at 10:30, got bumped until 2:30 p.m., getting him in during first round qualifying. We are a seven-member team, so it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal for one person to miss a round. But everyone has their own duties and consistency counts. The last minute is not a great time to divide up extra tasks and hope everyone remembers them. And remember, we only get three attempts to qualify.