FFW Richmond would mark my 2nd event in Pro 5.0 this season. We arrived in Richmond in the wee hours of Saturday morning after driving through pouring rain across 3 states. The forecast didn’t look good, with rain predicted at 50-60% chance for the rest of the weekend. Still, we showed up to the track when the gates opened to unload and get ready to rumble.
Because I wasn’t arriving until Saturday morning, I had only two qualifying shots remaining. My first qualifying pass resulted in a 7.56 @ 183 mph. The car made a slight move at the 1/8th mile, but I was able to salvage the run and drive it through the finish. Many of the other PRO cars were having difficulties with that piece of the track.
2nd round, the car experienced problems cranking in the burnout box. The negative g’s of the parachute deploying from the round before had sloshed the fuel to the front of the cell, and caused the mechanical fuel pump to loose prime. Since we towed the car to the lanes, we were not aware of this until I tried starting the car in the burnout box. Dan & Josh Kuhn raced to get the hood off and manually added fuel to the throttle body to force the pump to regain prime. They buttoned me back up, but since I was now running out of order, the run would not count towards qualifying. Still, I staged and ran a 7.33 @ 185 mph.
That paired me going into eliminations with David Schorr. David is a regular of FFW Pro 5.0, and although he wasn’t able to make a clean hit in qualifying, we knew the car was capable of mid 6’s on race day. That point was further evident with the Schorr’s Sunday test pass, where he ran deep into the 6’s prior to the start of 1st round.I knew that I didn’t have enough muscle (horsepower… my engine has a stock 460 4 bolt block and cast steel crank), so my shot was to stay consistent and cut a good light to stay ahead. That would backfire, as I ended up pushing through the beams Sunday to a redlight 7.30 @ 186 performance.
Now that we are home, we’re hard at work preparing for the FFW Norwalk event July 7th-9th. The converter needed desperately to be sent back to Neal Chance Racing Converters to be tightened up, as it was only dropping 300 RPM on the gear shifts. Marty Chance predicts that the car will be squarely in the 6’s with just the changes made to the converter. Wish me luck as I shoot to be the first female in the 6’s in FFW Pro 5.0!
