What a year!

Wow!  We just got back on Saturday night from the World Finals event put on by the SCTA as the last salt flats event for 2012.  The event overall was a success for us.  We however were not able to take the record back.  We ended up making quite a few changes on the car at the event as we went for it to try to get the I/DS record back.  At the World of Speed event put on by the USFRA we only got to hold the record for a little longer than 24 hours before our record of 64.396 mph was between with a new average of 72.102 mph.  After many changes and practice runs at the WF event we were able to run a 73.318 mph pass with us being the last car down the course for Friday night.  Early Saturday morning (the last day of the event) we were able to finally get the car warmed up in the mega cold and go up with all the other vehicles going for their record return runs.  We needed to make a pass of just 70.889 mph in order to be able to retake the record.  There was a stout headwind of 12 mph as our turn came up to make our record return run.  We came in at 70.160 mph putting us .363 mph shy of the record and .364 mph shy of setting a new record.  We ran two more times hot lapping the car trying again to retake the record but the wind never let down much with an 8 mph headwind being the least we were able to make a run against that last morning.  Our next pass ended up coming in at 71.9 mph which would have been enough to give the record to us and was almost enough to allow us to qualify again to try to back up the record.  Our final pass was 71.2 mph.  We gave it our best shot and we will be back next year.  We were able to pass Tech in both the USFRA and SCTA which left most people dumbfounded as apparently most cars never pass tech their first time or few times in some cases.  We would like to profoundly thank Chuck Whiteman the chief technical inspector for the USFRA as he worked with us and came and looked at the car and answered questions for us before building the car as well as while we were building it which ended up being extremely helpful in having us prepared for tech inspection at each event.  For our first event there were some changes that they did want us to make before the next event which with the help of Utah Chassis and Machine we were able to make so that we could run at the World Finals event.  As Dan Warner (person in charge of record certifications for both sanctioning bodies) said as we left the WF event, records are only for rent and none will stand forever!  We are looking forward to making drastic changes to the car and we will see what we can do at Speed Week 2013!!  We will keep updating the blog throughout the winter so keep your eyes peeled and we will keep you guys up to date!