Keith Egan of Hartford, WI came away as the clear winner on Friday at Norwalk with a string of 10.70s in what may have been the cleanest GN of the whole event. Keith's 10.71 defeated Hank Terry's 11.5 pass in the final. BTW, Lonnie and I had to talk Hank into competing in TSM...he didn't think he was fast enough to play with the big boys! Just goes to show ya, you don't have to be the fastest car to take home some of the purse.
Jason White made the 14 hour trek from Mississippi with a fresh rebuild that had not been tested prior to his departure for Ohio. Unfortunately, the new injectors/chip combination was out of tune and the car was blowing black smoke all the way down the track. Still good enough for 3rd place. Incidently, Keith and Jason were the two racers that were registered for the Points Series so they divy'd up the series payout.
But breakage was the mainstay of the day. Dave Bamford ran a blistering 10.35 at 128 but the launched/squatted so hard, he cut up a brand new slick to the point that he was done for the day. Dave Levey qualified with a 10.9 before he pumped a pushrod through a rocker arm. Dave Stinson finally got the bugs out for pass #3 (10.9) but something didn't sound right afterwards so he missed the call to eliminations.
Ron Joseph - our #1 points series sponsor showed up after qualifying had ended, so he wasn't eligible. But the 11.04 on a new motor he made on one pass (the only one I saw), would have easily put him in the TSM hunt.
Lots of new combinations going through testing and several that were not ready yet (me, Lonnie Diers, Dave England, etc., etc.) This is gonna be fun at Bowling Green!
BTW, the TSM website has been updated with the points earned at Norwalk for the points series. It is available at http://www.gnttype.org/tsm/standings.htm