11/8/06
Time for a change
i everyone and welcome back! We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get to it! First off, on a personal note, my wife Amy and I are going to become first time parents next April! So, according to all of my friends and “well wisher’s” I will have to sell Project Muscrate, all the support equipment and parts, and figure on not racing again for at least 15 years. WRONG! Luckily for me I have a wife who actually enjoys going racing and complains more lately that we have not gone racing enough the last couple of years! Hey, what can I tell you I got lucky for once!
However, I do not live in a dream world and we both realize things are gonna’ change. But, that’s ok. I have decided to put a “racer math” spin on the situation so to speak and now I figure that considering I most likely will not be doing any racing in April or most of May it gives me more time to get things done. More on that later, for now let’s take a look back at the last couple of years of the development of Project Muscrate.
When I first decided to build an IHRA crate motor combination I basically wanted to go faster, do big wheelies, and run for the Div.5 Championship. I also didn’t want to spend the big bucks it would take to convert to Super Stock and I was pretty disgusted with all of the NHRA “enhancements” for the Sportsman racer at the time. The IHRA was seemingly trying to build Div.5 at the time and all indications were that they would be around for years to come. So, armed with what I thought were the facts I made the bold move of building a car that could only compete in the IHRA. BAD decision.
The following Spring my father, John, passed away and it threw my world into a spin. I was instantly in charge of closing down his body shop and even finished up a few of the cars. Not that I’m complaining, I was glad that I had been taught the skills by my dad to be able to
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The new weasels in charge decided that there would in fact not be a Div.5 for ‘05. I still am not sure what happened to the stuff IHRA was talking about trying to “build” IHRA towards this area of the country, but obviously things had gone sour. So, after throwing a fit and getting myself banned from IHRA’s “Racers Forum” for not shutting up about it, I was left to run some local Stock/Super Stock races and some brackets. I tried some different things along the way and hoped that maybe IHRA would come back in 2006. They did, but I didn’t. This was the first year for the two races in one weekend format and the first race scheduled for Cordova got rained out and postponed. The next race was at CFR and I actually managed a decent showing with a semi-final on Sunday. I was really looking forward to going to the rain dated Cordova race but as luck would have it I couldn’t go due to some other obligations. That was the end of it for me because by missing those two races at Cordova I had no chance of finishing high in the points and the last race was at Byron which I don’t like anyway.
 Here is Muscrate about to dust off a pesky Mopar at the S/SS USA Shootout. |
That’s the problem I have with the two race/one weekend concept. I understood why they were trying it but it cost me two races instead of one. I know, WWAAAAA!! Deal with it. So, I raced some more at some Heartland S/SS association races and even managed to WIN one of them and R/U at another. I found out recently that I even managed to finish tied 5th in the points! Cool beans!