Check Your Dial

[art leong]

Originally Posted by Stock4106

A strange situation happened to me at a S/SS combo race a few years back. I was racing a super stock car that was about 2 seconds faster than me, but his dial was in wrong making him leave first. My tree is coming down and I see him leave which totally distracts me. I quickly look back at my tree, leave, go red by a ton, he wins. I argued that his dial should have never been accepted due to it being over his index, and that him unexpectedly leaving first would be a natural distraction to anyone in my situation. I was told I went red, so I lost. No rerun. I was not happy about it, but I did understand and went home.

Now I check both dails before I stage.

I had a similar situation at the Belle Rose race this year. It was for the combo class final.
No dial ins just index to index. I ran a SS/AM car my index is 13.85. They had taken down the dial in boards because it was late and they were looking to get out as quick as they could. From inside the car I could not see the et boards at the end of the track. I left and went green. The other car roared by me before the 1/8 mile. The win light in my lane was not on, so he didn't red light. When he got to the finish line his light came on. I thought I might have had something going away, so I stayed into it almost to the finish line (when I noticed my rpms were way up there). When I got my time slip. I saw they had me on a 11.40 index. I was willing to accept the loss but I didn't want the run to count (it was .002 away from an instant hit) .
They looked up the rules (racers are responsible for checking dial in's, the tower is responsible for index's) and made us rerun the next day and the first run didn't count.

[Pete Beau]

Having a crew guy also checking for the proper dial helps. Drivers have alot on their minds at times.