Archive for June, 2009

“Super Pro racer, Nick Good, reckons that the 2009 Main Event was one of the most enjoyable weekends team NG Motorsport have had in their 3 & a half years in the sport!”
“It certainly was our longest weekend at the Pod!”
Nick & Darren arrived at the track mid-afternoon on Wednesday & got the car together along with erecting the awning, ready for an early start on Peak Performance Day.”
“The rest of the crew arrived early on Thursday & we were ready to go.
The main objective of the day was to put crew-chief, Simon Rowland, through his familiarisation runs in the car, in readiness for his entry at The Summer Nationals, & also, to see how we would get on with the larger 34.5″ Hoosiers, that we didnt really get a handle on at the Easter meeting.
I took the first run of the day with the 33″ Goodyears on, & dialled in a 6.96.
We are really on the limit with these tyres, but, an expected 6.98 ET, showed how good & predictable our tune-up had been. Next into the hot seat was Simon, to complete his 2 familiarisation passes under the watchful eye of Darren Prentice. Before the run, i was more nervous about performing my start-line duties correctly than on how Simon would get on in the dragster!
Although more powerful than Simon’s last ride, the layout of the cockpit & the design of the chassis, are nearly identical to The Formula Tanker Rental dragster that he campaigned last year. His first, early shut-off pass, was a 7.63 at 124.39 mph - a new personal best for Simon!
After a short break for rain, Simon came round again for his full-pass - another PB - a 7.02 at 185.08 mph. Not QUITE a 6, but, im sure we can get that at The Summer Nationals! It was great to see the car run from the outside, &, im sure the experience will help both Simon & me in the future.”

“Next, it was on with the Double Beadlock SpinWerkes’ wheels & 34.5″ Hoosiers. These are a very different tyres from what we were used to before. Not only do they launch differently, but also, the gearing was increased by nearly 10%. We set the motor a little richer & were pleased with a 7.10 at 184.44 mph, giving us a good base-line to work from for the rest of the weekend.”

“At the end of the day we bought one of Ian Blackett’s super slow-motion DVD’s. I would recommend any racer to get one! It gives one the opportunity to see exactly whats going on when launching & with that new knowledge, we unearthed a couple of issues that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.”

“We also had a meeting with all the fire crew & the paramedics to demonstrate the new Sfi Leatt Moto R Head & Neck Restraint. Its essential that the safety crews know the ins & outs of ANY new device, & we were very pleased with the feedback from them regarding its protection & accessibility compared to other products available.”

“On Friday we only made 2 qualifiers of the 7 available, as a cylinder leakdown after the first run of the day revealed a leaking head gasket.
The hot weather for our other 5 qualifiers of the weekend, along with the tyres were also something new for us.”

“Although, we only qualified 24th, we were happy to be going into the 1st round of eliminations on Monday, & after getting past Vince Gibbs & Bob Doyle, a red light against John Everitt put us out of the competition.”

“A big THANK YOU to our crew of Simon, Darren, William, Michael, Bob & Hester. Thanks again to our sponsors - Beovax Computer Services, Focal Point Digital, HRG Ltd., Chris Brown Body Repairs, BGC Motorsport Components & Morris Armitage. Fininally, a special thank you to all the staff at Santa Pod for staging a stunning event!”

Nick Good & the NGMotorsport team were pleased with their start to the 2009 season.
“We had missed The Easter Thunderball last year & the 200 point bonus for attending all rounds of the Championship, along with any points we may have gained, really hurt us in the final championship standings. So, we were determined to get off to a good start this year.”
“The rain over the first couple of days, did give us a chance to get the ATI trans casing recertified by Andy Robinson. Well, carrying the box 50 yards to Andy’s pit was better than a 220 mile round trip later in the year!. With the trans out, we discovered that the flex plate had been moving on the crank. Many thanks to Jeff Bull, Geoff Hauser & Jon Webster for getting the necessary parts together to have the car ready for the anticipated sunshine on Sunday. Well, the sun never did appear on Sunday, &, after 2 unsuccessful attempts to get the power down onto a marginal track - we were left qualified in 19th position.”

“Not knowing whether this was down to the track or the changes we had made to the car over the Winter, we decided to revert back to our 2008 tune-up, &, to keep our fingers crossed for a warm(ish?) track.
By the time the 1st round of eliminations came round, the track was behaving itself, &, we had a good idea of how the car would perform. Tight wins against Jack Brewster, Barry Giles & Rod Harrison, took us to a semi-final match against Bob Doyle. Unfortunately, a red light in the dark handed the win to Bob who went on to win the event. Well done to Bob for the win & also to Steve Taylor for reaching the final in his first event!
“There was no time to rest after our return from The Easter Thunderball, as we were honoured to have been asked to display our car, as the prime exhibit, at the opening of the stunning new “Frederick Bremer School” in Walthamstow, London. The Beovax Computer Services dragster had to look its very best! The 25 million pound school, is the first of the Government’s “Building Schools For The Future” program, (BSF), & it is a specialist engineering college. Frederick Bremer built the first petrol powered car in the UK in 1894, &, we were chosen to illustrate the advances made in engineering & performance over the last 115 years!”

“The opening was on the 29th April, so we headed off to London to arrive after the pupils had left for the day & the car was assembled in the main entrance hall of the school. The 150 invited guests, were a whos who of local & Government education departments - architects, suppliers & local dignitaries, along with the press & TV.”

“It was a busy evening. All the guests took a great deal of interest in the car, & the NGMotorsport team amswered,(what seemed like), thousands of questions about the car & the sport of drag racing. After the speeches, the school plaque was unveiled by the BBC Education Correspondent - James Whitehead.”

“We are also pleased to annouce, following discussions with Nigel Bell - (the school’s Director of Specialism), a partnership between “The Frederick Bremer School” & NG Motorsport. A close involvement with the team, race day visits to Santa Pod &, the manufacture of components for our race car, using their specialist facilities, will bring benefits to both parties. I dont think they can wait to see some serious engineering in action!”

Super Pro ET racer Nick Good & the NGMotorsport Race Team’s 2008 season was a mix of highs & lows - the lows being the appalling weather suffered by everyone at all the big events this year, &, the highs being some decent results when the sun DID put in an appearance.

We missed The Easter Thunderball due to parts not arriving in time, although event coverage on Eurodragster.com helped to convince us that this may have been a blessing in disguise!
The FIA Main Event in May was our first chance to try the dragster with its new Steve Schmidt Donovan short motor. After a practise launch on Friday & a careful checkover of everything, the car was ready on Saturday for its first full pass - maybe we could break into the sixes??
We were blown away with the 6.75 timing ticket. This made all the hard work & investment over the Winter worthwhile.
Unfortunately, eliminations were a wash-out, but, we left knowing that we had the speed we wanted.

The SPRC SuperNationals proved to be a landmark event for the NGMotorsport team.
After two & a half seasons of trying, we achieved what we had set out to do - we got our first event win!
The weather was kind to us all weekend, although we nearly missed our opportunity to make the most of the dry conditions & warm track.
Before the first qualifying session, we discovered a rocker had lost a number of needle bearings. We managed to find the last of the needles & to get the motor together just in time to make the last session.
On Sunday, the crew did a great job again, servicing the car between rounds & making sure we were right on our dial-in all day.
A few people had told us that 6 second cars dont win in Super Pro, so it was nice to prove the doubters wrong!

After the long Summer break, we were really looking forward to getting back to the Pod for the European Finals.
Our sponsors were bringing over 30 guests on the Saturday - (some, for their first ever drag racing experience ), & we were feeling pretty confident that we could give them something to cheer about.
BUT, this was a weekend to forget!
Thankfully, Santa Pod’s VIP & Corporate Hospitality really helped, plus, us, firing up the car in the pits along with the fact that they could get close to all the cars & their crews in the pits, left all the invited guests wanting to see more!
They all wanted to come again next year when, hopefully, the weather will be better for them - because, it certainly couldnt have been worse!!

That just left The UK National Finals. We came into this meeting with only 6 full passes on the car, &, we were hoping to carry on where we had left off at The SummerNationals.
Qualifying went well with a 6.85 on a 6.83 dial-in, putting us in 4th place.
We got around Dave Hughes in the first round. Against Steve Green in the 2nd round, luck really was on our side.
There was no way i was going to catch Steve, after out chute cable shook out on the line. Unfortunately for Steve, &, luckily for US, he broke out by 3 thouandths.
In the quarters, we were up against Chris Issacs in Spencer Tramm’s Corrado. Although i had a better reaction time than Chris, we couldnt compete with the super-consistency of the Corrado - losing by less than a metre at the line. It was, however, good to finish the season with such a close race AND the sun was shining!
Well done to Rick Cooke for winning such a tight Super Pro Championship this year, which went down to the last race of the season.