[Jim D'Amore]

David, I was standing under the tower when they were running factory shoot out. I watched almost everyone spun. I actually thought you broke your transmision. In my opinion the only way to correct the track would to scraped from the burn out box to the 60ft. Then let some big tire cars go down. I watched P.C Richard's Cobra Jet and Holbrook's have a peddle fest. Lord knows NHRA had enough people on the starting line that they could of scraped and had it done in an hour or they could of done it the day before. On Don Fezell's Cobra Jet he didn't want to run the FS class because the weight really disrupts his clutch but by Q2 he was at the FS weight lowered to leave 600 RPM's and took a full turn of base out of the clutch. Still lost a tenth in the 60ft. His first run of class we took another quarter turn of base out of it because there wasn't enough cool down time and the clutch was still hot. Which makes it grab harder. His 60ft. was a 1.49 from a 1.27 in Maple Grove last week. They strength is in numbers well stock was the largest class there and was the run the hardest in the shortest amount of time on Thursday. In the worst track conditions that was NHRA's choice.

Chris, thank you for the kind words. I have always believed in building and sponsoring classes where everybody feels they have a chance. When we had the classes in Fun Ford Weekend we had one starter for ten years. His name was Sammy, every driver trusted him. He had courtesy staging and he got to know the sound of your engine with the RPM launches. He would shut down the starting line to make the track work. In ten years I probably made a thousand passes down his prep track and to be honest with you I don't know if I ever spun. Most of the cars were low ten second to low nine second and they did not have the half the technology NHRA stockers have for suspension. Sammy use to say "spinning will brake parts, piss people off and ruin the show".