[Rich Biebel]

I raced S/ST in the early 80's locally and at a few NHRA races......I had different engines for my 1969 Camaro. One could run 10.40's One could run 10.80's. I went to the final at one of the $1000 to win races at E-Town getting pasted by Jim Harrington for the $$$......That was with my 10.80 motor and I used weight and was foot braking on a .4 tree. I ran S/ST and S/G in my next car a Vega. Small block power for a couple seasons then a big block. I won the 1988 Summernationls in S/G using a Dedenbaer plate stop.....9.90's at 136 or so. We had extremely close races and your competitior was usually within a car length of you all the way down track with a pretty hard launch and lots of cars did big wheelstands. Racing was fun for sure then.....You could hit your T-Stop overide switch as the plates were on after the gear change...I should have on a few occasions but never did.......Around 1989 or 1990 timers came onto the scene. I got one of those and immediately was able to run 9.90 at over 140. I hated it and also hated the automated shifters. All the stuff in the car was more things to go wrong. I got burned by it more than once and really hated it. It was usually my fault when something was wrong. The event that started todays big MPH deal in the .90 classes was Troy Coughlin at Indy in the early 90's. He ran 9.90's at 170+ and won the event......Even experienced guys were intimidated by his big speed. I have used timers, no timers, delay boxes, no delay boxes.....trans brakes, no trans brakes.........I like to race and try to be competitive no matter what gizmo's we have. I like the bigger speeds we run today and presently have a mid 160's MPH S/C car and I can and have won in the modern era with that kind of speed. Would I like the 180 MPH speed for S/C.....NO but 170-175 would be a little better than what I have now.....Plain and simple.....NOBODY likes looking over their shoulder and racing when your out front is a lot more difficult. OH but lots of guys with bigger speed than me like to go for that stripe and I am only to happy to feed it to them......sometimes it works out in my favor and sometimes it don't...dats racin......As an Old School guy I see no reason to go back to the old, no timer days......