West Coast TAFC

Economy aside:

A few years ago, the West Coast featured the best TAFC racing in the country. What happened? 13 cars for Q1 in Seattle?

 

My driver spent his life savings and is now trying to recoup. Costs a lot of money to run these cars, and people are being careful considering the poor economy.

 

I can think of several cars that arent running the event

Jay Payne
Daniel Oliver
Dennis Taylor
John Patton ( economy )
Ron August Jr ( injured )
Brian Thiel ( move up to Fuel Funny Car )
Brian Smith
Jason Rupert

just to name a few

Like him or not, with all of Bob Freys mentioning of him lately on DRC, you cant help but think of Pat Austin. Would be nice to see him back out racing again

 

Hey Frankie:

I was taking my '54 Corvette on an open trailer to get it painted yesterday and was on the 57 Freeway around the 10 Freeway in Pomona. Out of nowhere this guy goes blasting by me in a white Tahoe and slams on the brakes and slows back down and gets beside me. I look over and it's Jay Payne. I think he was motioning for me to get off the phone or flipping me the bird or something. Then he took off. I was a little surprised because I figured he'd be in Seattle. Maybe he was surprised, too, because he thought we'd be in Seattle.

RG

 

What kind of injury does Ron August have?

 

Randy, Ronnie tour a tendon or something like that in his leg and he wasnt gonna be cleared to drive the car for a while ( if I am recalling correctly )

 

Ronnie is all better. He's parked the car for a while...

 

Only 12 TADs as well. Is everyone waiting for Jan 2013?

 

You got that right!

 

Seattle has always had fewer cars than Sonoma, Vegas or Pomona!

 

And since this will be the second year in a row that NHRA will not allow TA/FC and TAD to run the Sonoma National Event I suppose it's safe to say Sonoma will have fewer alky cars than Seattle.

 

Randy- on this sad day you brought a smile to my face- thanks!

 

schedule

ONe of the problems is the change in schedule the past two years. Before California racers could come up, run Woodburn Divisional, go to seattle and sonoma nationals so made for a sportsman "swing" and you got three races for one travel expense. With seattle being on it's own now I suspect doesn't make the finacial sense to go. That said, there are a lot of teams that are just down because of the economy.

 

Seattle

Clint's got a good point. We Northwesterners also, if we didn't want to go the California way, use to have a the Canadian Open at Mission Raceway Park the weekend after Seattle. We'd hang out in BC the week in between and make it a great holiday while getting to race on two great race tracks. I believe there were also a couple of years where we had the AHRA World Finals in Spokane mixed in with the other two races as well.

 

car counts decreasing

With the latest rules changes there will be even fewer cars. Pretty soon drag racing will be like unlimited hydroplane racing. A half dozen touring cars and thats it. I wonder what the latest rule changes would have done to the car counts at Seattle? Dave Germain

 

Ok BUsted, I was referring to the last 3 races where they did have Alky cars.

 

Hey Dave, maybe all us poor guys could order together and get a volume discount? lol...

 

Some good news....Ron August Jr. is racing at the Divisional in Sonoma next weekend... the foot is all better

Good lucky Ronnie