National Records

[Robin Lawrence]

Originally Posted by MikeMoller

Kinda off the subject, but I think anyone who goes 'too fast' and gets torn down by NHRA, if you have gone faster than the current record for the class you should get the record if/when you pass teardown.

I was in a situation very similar but not really. At Indy last year I was #2 and was asked to make a visit to the barn. I had been helping a buddy who runs COMP so I was on the east side of the track most of the afternoon. I had a fellow racer friend tell me that tech was looking for me. I laughed and said I drove by them pulling Mark Kirkman's A/DA across the scales and for fuel check.
It was after 3:00 if I remember and Pete said the wanted to look at my cylinder head. Knowing that it was going to be a time crunch I agreed and went through the teardown.

We passed the teardown and with the help of Jimmy Ronzello and Mark Kirkman worked to get it back together for eliminations on Friday morning. At Midnight with about 3 hours of work remaining I pulled the plug and decided I wasn't going to continue.
In the morning I asked NHRA Tech if they would seal the engine. I had planned to set another record in FS/G since my old record and combination in FS/I was going to expire in October. I wanted to avoid needing to tear the engine down again at the Fall Classic after running record a record attempt.
After some discussion with other NHRA officials they agreed to seal the engine for the Fall Classic record runs. Typically this doesn't happen. One of the benefits is that the same tech team would be working the Fall Classic as worked my teardown at Indy.

I was going to run the car in Super Stock at St Louis. I changed the transmission to my clutchless and removed 40 pounds for Super Stock. After St Louis I re installed the clutch assisted transmission and added the required weight.

Pete and Dave had both put seals on the critical bolts at Indy. They both had the cell phone pictures of the seals. After the record runs they verified the seals and checked many other items that didn't require removing a head. They did check my transmission and wheelbase as well.

I think that like many have said earlier, the benefit's are not there to go through the process. I consider setting record and passing teardown a validation of the level of performance. I'm old school.


Robin