The smell of burning rubber and nitro!

[SlammaDingdong]

Edited 7/1/2005: See my follow up post below for final thoughts about this event.

To go directly to some photos from all three days:

2005 Craftsman Nationals - Days 1 and 2

2005 Craftsman Nationals - Day 3

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Ahhhh, sitting at home here in the A/C I can still smell the NITRO!

The book is closed on the first two days of the Craftsman NHRA Nationals here at Gateway. I was over there about 10 hours Friday, it was hot as hell but well worth it. The track temp mid-day was like 140*, so you can imagine how dicey it was.

Today my brother-in-law and I spent another full day watching the final qualifying for the Pros and Comps, and also saw a couple good hours of Sportsman class racing early. Good runs tonight for the Pro Stock and Top Fuel guys. Doug Kalitta ran 4.564s in his rail to qualify for the top spot there. Sceizi ran a top 4.797s in his funny. The Pro Stock ladder should be a serious dog fight, since only 0.067s separates 1st from 16th. We'll see.

Tomorrow I "have to" take my wife, so will miss most of the Sportsman class eliminations which kind of sucks. That's the price for being able to do this all three days, and it's the same way every year, so I'm used to it

I'm gonna cheat and post some pretty nice pictures on my CarDomain page next week. Will post a link at that time.

The other day in a post about an axle tube brace RedHeartbeat was joking w/ me about getting a mountain motor, so here's a couple I was thinking about swapping for my 4.8L. What you think RedHeartbeat!

The economy model...



A few more bucks...



Slightly more radical...





Will post a link to some decent racing pics and pit stuff next week over at CarDomain. Gotta go get some sleep now.

[bud8fan]

man the drags are great...7 of us go to the orielly spring natl at houston every year in april...we have a blast also

[RedHeartbeat]

Sign me up for the ZZ572 720hp version!

[SlammaDingdong]

The final day of the Craftsman Nationals was fantastic. No doubt the NHRA knows how put on a show.

My favorite cars of the entire event were a couple of Pro Mods. The first was Glen Kerunsky's yellow '57 Bel Air, the eventual 1st place winner. The other was Doug Palmer's '63 Voodoo Corvette that made it to the semis, and then blew it when he threw a red light. The Voodoo Corvette gets my vote as the overall sweetest ride of the event. The sound of the superchargers on these sleds was absolutely sick!

To see pictures of these cars and a bunch of others, check out these links:

2005 Craftsman Nationals - Days 1 and 2

2005 Craftsman Nationals - Day 3

There's about 90 shots I felt were presentable. Some came out very nice, others just so so. I'll add some captions this weekend, but check them out now if you like.

Have a good holiday everyone!

[SlammaDingdong]

TTT

[stssilverado]

pick motor #3!

[SlammaDingdong]

Originally posted by stssilverado@Jul 1 2005, 06:28 PM
pick motor #3!

Time to pull out Sawzall and start making room then!