We showed up at the track on Saturday morning, around 10:00 a.m. and the waiting began. We waited...and waited...and waited for what seemed like hours...hey wait a minute...It was hours!! and hours...and hours.

By the time we had our one and only time trial pass, it was almost 4:00 in the afternoon! We rolled into the staging lanes, did a good burnout and laid down an 11.89 @ 114.14 mph. The car was working and the fact that I broke out was ok because it was just time trials. Now we were going to go into first round eliminations/first qualifier for Sunday.

Just before 6:00 p.m. we lined up for first round and really, that's where things went completely crazy! I have absolutly no idea why, but I was so focused on the other car, I completely messed up the run. We both left hard but the car in the other lane was out in front by at least 2 cars right from the git go!! I couldn't believe it because I know that the car runs mid 12's on the motor, then it hit me...He must have sprayed it out of the hole. He was so far out in front by the eighth mile, he slowed down, then I got out in front and started thinking I was going to break out, so I slowed down..and we continued to trade places, each of us slowing down some more until he crossed the finish line ahead of me and when I got my time slip, it read: 12.89 @ 86.69 m.p.h.!! That was really embarassing, I was so ticked off at my stupidity, but that's racing.

We were getting ready to load up the car and go home when I caught a really lucky break. Apparantly what had happened was that a spectator noticed that the drivers reaction times were being shown on the scoreboards as we left the line and by the rules of our sanctioning body, the OSCA, the race had to be re-run!!! By the time they figured this out, it was getting too late so we were scheduled to re-do eliminations for the July race the next morning.

Sunday came and we showed up at the track at around 9:30 a.m. There was to be no time trials, we were about 2 hours from re-running our first round eliminations. I made a mental note - DONT THINK ABOUT ANY OTHER CAR, JUST CONCENTRATE ON YOUR LIGHT AND YOUR RACE.

That's exactly what I did and it turned out great! We lined up again and I cut a .577 light (not too bad) and ran a 12.21 slowing down at 97.61 mph to the other cars 12.30.

Next round would be awsome. We lined up against our opponent and right out of the hole, we were side by side all the way down the track until I crossed the line ahead of the other guy (even though he ran quicker by 2 one hundreth of a second!!) I went 11.986 to his 11.984, WOW, WHAT A RACE!

That put me in the final round where my opponent broke on the line, handing me the win! Boy was I a happy camper.

That's it for 2002, we will see you next year!