Post by Niko L on Jul 31, 2016 15:52:11 GMT
FHRA Nitro Nationals at Alastaro was the third race in Finnish Championship series and also the 3rd round of European Championship. This was the first FHRA race for us this summer. As usual the event started on Thursday and ended to Sunday's Eliminations. Our plan was to arrive to the pits in Wednesday evening, and I'm glad we made it even though finding a hauler for our Malibu wasn't easy. Luckily a VW Van was found at dad's workplace. Only modifications we did for the car were new QA1 shocks in front.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday Mika went to our garage and loaded the car on trailer, packed up everything we needed from there and started driving to Alastaro. When my workingday ended, I started heading towards Alastaro as well and I tried to catch Mika on my way too. As we arrived to Alastaro, I stopped by at the Race Office as usual. We had a good place at the pits so we unloaded the car from the trailer and I started removing my 612 race numbers that were used at Pori West Coast Street Cup earlier. While I was doing that, Mika decided to drive the trailer to the sand... As a result the VW Van got stuck in that "soft" sand so we had to push him back.....
I also cleaned up the car as it was a bit dirty.
No Tech Inspectors were seen on Wednesday so we had to do that in the morning then... We just pushed the car inside Hassinen's tent for the night.
Thursday:
Thursday morning it was a bit cloudy but while it wasn't raining, it looked like a decent race day. Though air pressure was low and humidity was pretty high, so the weather wasn't very "fast". First thing to do was the tech inspection. There had been no information about it, but usually it has been on upper pit area where are the motorcycles. We drove there in the morning, but saw zero Race officials there. Luckily on our way back to our pit area, a couple of tech inspectors were doing their job and we were able to get our car inspected before racing started, too.
First Qualifying Round happened at 10:39 AM.
I had to pump the gas quite a lot on the first burnout, as otherwise I'd been hitting the rev limiter. Tires were warmed up anyway and I staged the car as always. Launch felt decent, but I had a feeling the engine didn't run quite perfectly during the whole 1/4 Mile. I wonder if it was a bit too cold as we had to wait a while at Staging Lanes since one of the bikes before us laid some oil on the track. My RT was decent, .070 but I ran only 12.499 with 166.47 KM/H Top Speed.
Well, it wasn't a catastrophe, back to the pits and waiting for another try. While looking at our Qualifying Results after round 1, I was surprised to see Mika in there! He had ran almost a second under J/SA index even if he wasn't driving at all! For some reason computers had mixed up Markus Svensson's 519 number with Mika's 599 number, but luckily that was fixed really fast.
A bit after this first round it rained a little. Luckily the rain stopped, and we could continue racing, but it was already afternoon at this point...
Second round wasn't very succesful either. Now I did better at the Burnout box and my RT was .073, but ET was even worse than on previous run... Now it ran 12.551 and 166.11 KM/H. Only modifications we did between these two rounds were minor adjustments with those new front shocks. So, something had to be done for the next round...
Third round resulted another good burnout and a red light, -.104. My 60 FT was a bit better than on Round 2, but still there was a lot of room for improvement. ET was better though, 12.474 with 167.74 KM/H top speed. Carburetor tuning was definitely a good idea, as the car ran better. Still I was slower than my 12.45 index, so not good...
This third round was also the last one on Thursday. It was already pretty late, thanks to the little rain in middle of the day, plus that a nasty accident happened at Super Pro Street Qualifying Round so it was called a day at that point. We fired up our grill and ate some stakes then.
Friday:
On Friday there were planned two Pro Qualifying Rounds, which of course meant that Sportsman racers like us were not able to run that much. Luckily the weather looked really good in the morning, and in fact the sun was shining very hot during the whole day.
We warmed up the car as we hoped to run our fourth Qualifying Round already in the morning before first Pro Round, but unfortunately it didn't happen. So we headed to watch the Pro Round which had a couple of minor clean ups and one Pro Mod went to the sand as well since his chutes didn't open. Because of those things, we couldn't run our Qualifying Round between these two Pro Rounds either, but luckily after the 2nd Pro Round we were called to the staging lanes as well.
Our Fourth Round took place at 5:02 PM. I took .149 RT on this one, so I was a bit sleepy at the tree. It felt like tires spun just a little at the launch, and when looking at my 60FT time it possibly did just that. Anyway I ran 12.478 with 168.28 KM/H top speed, so there was hope for a better ET on future rounds as well.
This was our one and only run on Friday, there was no more time to do another round. So we moved on to wait what happens on Saturday.
Saturday:
On Saturday the schedule was identical to Friday's, so there were two Pro Rounds again. The weather was just as good as it had been on Friday so there was no fear of rain.
Luckily we were able to run our 5th Qualifying Round in the morning before Pro Rounds. We did some carburetor tuning, but already in the burnout I noticed that the engine didn't run properly, when I left the waterbox and hammered the throttle, engine didn't sound right as usually it revved up to 7000 RPM with rear tires smoking, this time tires just stopped spinning. When the green light showed up and I hammered the throttle I noticed immediately that something was wrong, engine didn't run properly and car moved as fast as my daily driver Chevy S10... Horrible ET, 13.383 with 156.64 KM/H top speed proved that there was definitely something wrong.
At the pits we started checking what could be the problem. Everything else looked good except a couple of spark plugs that had melted quite badly during that run. After searching for a while and for example seeing how it looks inside the cylinder pipes, on top of pistons, we found out the engine had ran way too lean resulting those melted plugs. Well that was an easy fix, new plugs were installed and carburetor was tuned so that the engine runs a bit richer...
Luckily we were able to run another Qualifying Round on Saturday, too. It was at 5:34 PM and now it was super interesting to see how the car runs. Plus that I was still on top of my index so I was really hoping to run under on this final try. Now everything felt normal, burnout and all. I got a -.101 red light, but I ran 12.425 with 168.99 KM/H top speed! So definitely the best run of the weekend so far, even though it's of course nowhere near where a J/SA car should be. I was just so happy that I was able to go under index.
This was also our last Qualifying Round and now everything was ready for Eliminations to start on Sunday.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday Mika went to our garage and loaded the car on trailer, packed up everything we needed from there and started driving to Alastaro. When my workingday ended, I started heading towards Alastaro as well and I tried to catch Mika on my way too. As we arrived to Alastaro, I stopped by at the Race Office as usual. We had a good place at the pits so we unloaded the car from the trailer and I started removing my 612 race numbers that were used at Pori West Coast Street Cup earlier. While I was doing that, Mika decided to drive the trailer to the sand... As a result the VW Van got stuck in that "soft" sand so we had to push him back.....
I also cleaned up the car as it was a bit dirty.
No Tech Inspectors were seen on Wednesday so we had to do that in the morning then... We just pushed the car inside Hassinen's tent for the night.
Thursday:
Thursday morning it was a bit cloudy but while it wasn't raining, it looked like a decent race day. Though air pressure was low and humidity was pretty high, so the weather wasn't very "fast". First thing to do was the tech inspection. There had been no information about it, but usually it has been on upper pit area where are the motorcycles. We drove there in the morning, but saw zero Race officials there. Luckily on our way back to our pit area, a couple of tech inspectors were doing their job and we were able to get our car inspected before racing started, too.
First Qualifying Round happened at 10:39 AM.
I had to pump the gas quite a lot on the first burnout, as otherwise I'd been hitting the rev limiter. Tires were warmed up anyway and I staged the car as always. Launch felt decent, but I had a feeling the engine didn't run quite perfectly during the whole 1/4 Mile. I wonder if it was a bit too cold as we had to wait a while at Staging Lanes since one of the bikes before us laid some oil on the track. My RT was decent, .070 but I ran only 12.499 with 166.47 KM/H Top Speed.
Well, it wasn't a catastrophe, back to the pits and waiting for another try. While looking at our Qualifying Results after round 1, I was surprised to see Mika in there! He had ran almost a second under J/SA index even if he wasn't driving at all! For some reason computers had mixed up Markus Svensson's 519 number with Mika's 599 number, but luckily that was fixed really fast.
A bit after this first round it rained a little. Luckily the rain stopped, and we could continue racing, but it was already afternoon at this point...
Second round wasn't very succesful either. Now I did better at the Burnout box and my RT was .073, but ET was even worse than on previous run... Now it ran 12.551 and 166.11 KM/H. Only modifications we did between these two rounds were minor adjustments with those new front shocks. So, something had to be done for the next round...
Third round resulted another good burnout and a red light, -.104. My 60 FT was a bit better than on Round 2, but still there was a lot of room for improvement. ET was better though, 12.474 with 167.74 KM/H top speed. Carburetor tuning was definitely a good idea, as the car ran better. Still I was slower than my 12.45 index, so not good...
This third round was also the last one on Thursday. It was already pretty late, thanks to the little rain in middle of the day, plus that a nasty accident happened at Super Pro Street Qualifying Round so it was called a day at that point. We fired up our grill and ate some stakes then.
Friday:
On Friday there were planned two Pro Qualifying Rounds, which of course meant that Sportsman racers like us were not able to run that much. Luckily the weather looked really good in the morning, and in fact the sun was shining very hot during the whole day.
We warmed up the car as we hoped to run our fourth Qualifying Round already in the morning before first Pro Round, but unfortunately it didn't happen. So we headed to watch the Pro Round which had a couple of minor clean ups and one Pro Mod went to the sand as well since his chutes didn't open. Because of those things, we couldn't run our Qualifying Round between these two Pro Rounds either, but luckily after the 2nd Pro Round we were called to the staging lanes as well.
Our Fourth Round took place at 5:02 PM. I took .149 RT on this one, so I was a bit sleepy at the tree. It felt like tires spun just a little at the launch, and when looking at my 60FT time it possibly did just that. Anyway I ran 12.478 with 168.28 KM/H top speed, so there was hope for a better ET on future rounds as well.
This was our one and only run on Friday, there was no more time to do another round. So we moved on to wait what happens on Saturday.
Saturday:
On Saturday the schedule was identical to Friday's, so there were two Pro Rounds again. The weather was just as good as it had been on Friday so there was no fear of rain.
Luckily we were able to run our 5th Qualifying Round in the morning before Pro Rounds. We did some carburetor tuning, but already in the burnout I noticed that the engine didn't run properly, when I left the waterbox and hammered the throttle, engine didn't sound right as usually it revved up to 7000 RPM with rear tires smoking, this time tires just stopped spinning. When the green light showed up and I hammered the throttle I noticed immediately that something was wrong, engine didn't run properly and car moved as fast as my daily driver Chevy S10... Horrible ET, 13.383 with 156.64 KM/H top speed proved that there was definitely something wrong.
At the pits we started checking what could be the problem. Everything else looked good except a couple of spark plugs that had melted quite badly during that run. After searching for a while and for example seeing how it looks inside the cylinder pipes, on top of pistons, we found out the engine had ran way too lean resulting those melted plugs. Well that was an easy fix, new plugs were installed and carburetor was tuned so that the engine runs a bit richer...
Luckily we were able to run another Qualifying Round on Saturday, too. It was at 5:34 PM and now it was super interesting to see how the car runs. Plus that I was still on top of my index so I was really hoping to run under on this final try. Now everything felt normal, burnout and all. I got a -.101 red light, but I ran 12.425 with 168.99 KM/H top speed! So definitely the best run of the weekend so far, even though it's of course nowhere near where a J/SA car should be. I was just so happy that I was able to go under index.
This was also our last Qualifying Round and now everything was ready for Eliminations to start on Sunday.