By Jok Nicholson

Part 3
Last week when I raced at Mid-Michigan Motorplex I got "educated" on just how tough 1/8-mile Big Bucks bracket racing is. I also learned that the bracket racers who travel to these races are one big family tied together by the sport they enjoy so much. The new friends I have made in just the short amount of time I have been traveling amazes me. I think it speaks very highly of the people in this sport in general. I know on the local level almost every racer can borrow parts from any other racer and I have found out that the same is true at the National level, too.

On to the racing stuff now. The drought conditions have continued in central Michigan and when we arrived at the track everything was brown and the grass was about down to nothing. The pits were already getting filled up with racers and thanks to Mike and Tami Eggleston they had already parked our trailer. I really look forward to the IHRA National Events. Even though the pits are jammed it seems like a friendly local event.

Just in case Bill Bader reads this I do have one small complaint, though. The guy parking the cars Thursday had a real "bug up his butt." He was trying to act real official and was measuring spaces and telling racers if they didn't like the spot they could go home and stuff like that. Funny how one guy who is having a bad day can spoil a lot of other people's day. I agree that saving parking spots is difficult but, when racers tow 700 miles to an event, it would be nice if they could hold a spot for a couple hours for their friend. If they aren't there by a certain time then that spot gets filled. Seems easy to do but it must be more complicated than I think it is.

I should include a picture here of the favorite campsite we use when we are on the road. THANKS to the people of Wal-Mart across the country you can park there overnight and they usually have security too. If you do park overnight in a Wal-Mart please don't leave a mess behind and if you need some "stuff" for the races maybe you can buy it at Wal-Mart before you pull out.

The Northern Nationals went very well for Drag Racing Online's "Project 4-Link." After the second qualifying round we were number 1 with an 8.901. We almost ended up there, but Slate Cummings matched our ET of 8.901 but his speed of 169.40 was higher than mine so I ended up number 2.

We were the only Mopar in the Top 20 so Indy Cylinder Heads' Bracket Master 540" is doing the job for us. We also switched to Sunoco fuels and immediately ended our overheating problems. I am not sure why changing from Phillips B-33 to Sunoco 116 can make such a difference but it did.

The weather started getting hot and humid by Saturday afternoon and our first round of eliminations. I went with a timer setting I used at the Cedar Falls HCS race and took a close win in the first round with an 8.957, rubbing the brakes pretty good at the finish line. The weather had really changed and a lot of racers missed their indexes by almost a tenth of a second. The crowd for the Saturday Night of Fire was incredible. Running first round and looking up into packed grandstands still gets my old heart pounding.

We lined up for the second round Sunday morning and the air had made another radical change for the worse. I took a stab at the timer and won another close race with an 8.917 to the other racer's 8.95. It was almost five hours before they got back to Quick Rod and the weather station showed the air had gone from bad to terrible. The corrected altitude was 4300 feet.