I visited the local drag strip last night, Friday, June 20, 2003, to see how well I could motivate The Shuttle down the 1/4 mile...  Cutting to the chase... my best run was 12.5 @ 110 mph... Suffice to say, I'm still learning how to get The Shuttle to consistently hook-up and always pull a 1.7 (or better!) 60' time.  Sometimes, I launch at too low of rpms and induce a bit of a bog, and sometimes, I broil all four tires through 1st gear only to bog in 2nd.  All in all, it's tough to launch just right...  <sigh> 

I will tell you it is *very* fun, though... This night, I was amid a sea of Mustangs and Cameros all running mid/low-13s.... I'd slowly crawl to the line and stage while they're doing their smokey burnout (although most don't realize burnouts on street tires is usually counter productive).  I'd then activate the data-logger on my laptop and wait for them to stage.  Then, on the green, I launch like a bat out of h*ll.  The *only* race I lost was when I ran a 13.3 with a sickening 2.35 60' time due to a really bad launch.  So he pulled a 3 - 4 length hole shot on me at the light, but I chased him down to the point where my front bumper was about even with his door.  Even though I lost that race, it was pretty exciting to pull so hard on the mid- and top-end like that.  This other driver even commented to me that he thought I was going to catch and beat him.  The next time we paired-up, Lady Luck wouldn't be on his side.  :-)

I was the only import NOT running 15s or 16s...  But, they all cheered me on as I kept beating each Mustang and Camero.   In fact, people were trying to talk to me while I'm in the car with my helmet on during the slow trek through the staging lanes.. which was kind of awkward... I'm almost half-sorry I got this Sparco steering wheel with the horn buttons.. Too many people have seen F&F and now simply ass-ume that I'm running nitrous... I wish I had a dollar for every time I was asked whether I was running "nawsss".  it kinda of makes me want to put a sticker on my car saying "all turbo, no NOS"...  (And, for the record, I don't dislike Mustangs or Cameros..  As a muscle car owner myself many years ago, it's simply twisted fun to out-run those V8 muscle cars... one of the Mustangs last night was even Vortec-powered.)

Now for the bad news.. The Shuttle weighed-in at 3630 with a half-tank of gas and me (190 lbs). Can you say "fat pig"? (not me, the car!)

It's interesting to review the data-log of the entire run.  For each gear-shift, there is a period of time of about .75 - .8 seconds when I'm not putting much, if any, power to the ground due to shifting and then waiting for boost to rebuilt after the shift... Hello flat-shift - my ECU goes in for upgrade next week... :-)

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