Romine’s team was the only one at the event from east of the Mississippi River and they improved their ET on every lap. Romine was recently forced to switch from a Dave Settles dual inlet/exhaust fuel pump to a Mike Kopcheck pump when NHRA adopted a new rule for 2010 placing restrictions on the Settles pump.

The best race of the second round was between Leah Pruett-LeDuc in Steve Plueger’s “Deja vu Showgirls” Mustang and Mark Sanders in his “Mr. Explosive” Nova tuned by his son Jake Sanders. At the hit it was Sanders taking the lead but by 660 feet Plueger’s Mustang was charging on Sanders and just got to the win stripe first by just 7-thousands of a second or about a foot.

Leah Pruett-LeDuc (James Drew photo)

In the semis it was Hentges vs. Pruett-LeDuc and Boychuk vs. Romine.  For the second time in two years, just as it seemed Romine had found his stride, he shot himself in the foot by going -.022 red against the Canadian in the Troy Lee Designs Trans Am. 

Romine said later, “I had a 5.90 car, he (Boychuk) had a 5.80 car. I knew I would have to try and cut the best light I could to have a chance to win. I just got her in a little deeper than I wanted.” 

As for Boychuk, the Roland Leong-tuned flopper seemed to be picking up steam and dipped into the 5.80’s for the first time in the weekend with a solid 5.88 at a touch over 240 mph.

(James Drew photo)

This event was the first time this season that the AA/FC racers were subjected to new NHRA Heritage Series rules regarding rear spoilers, fuel pumps certified by the NHRA and additional safety rules regarding brake lines, “poured” seats, and a belly pan in addition to the already required “diaper”.

Everything went pretty smoothly regarding the new rules except for the spoiler rule. Suffice it to say that the rule was subject to interpretation. implimentation and discussion. After seeing what some of the spoilers looked like when built to the letter of the rules Several teams/drivers were concerned that if they changed the spoiler to the new spec it might make the cars less safe and not handle well.

After expressing their concerns to the NHRA tech folks at Boise it was decided to just leave the spoilers as they were for the Boise event and have the brass back at Glendora in the safety department reconsider. A tip of the hat to the NHRA and the tech department for their handling of the situation.

We thought you might like to see some of the spoilers before and after they were “fixed”. James Drew photos except as noted.    – Jeff Burk

First Romine had to change his spoiler from what you see above to what you see below and then put the original spoiler back. As you can see the “legal” spoiler appeared a lot more like a “Big Show” spoiler and probably made much more downforce. (Brian Losness photo)

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