Shockwave Blog
Well where do we start? I suppose the beginning would be good!
Feb 2007 Gordon and I pretty much decided that this year the Shockwave team would sit this 2007 season out. This was an extremely hard but realistic decision. I decided that I and a couple of my team, Niki Hales my team leader and Neil Titheridge my clutch man would journey across the Atlantic to the USA and see my friend and fellow funny car racer Terry Haddock to watch the season opener at Pomona raceway, CA so I rang Terry and said that we were coming over to which he replied great you won’t be watching much racing because I am really short of crew, he wanted us to give him a bit a hand. To which I said sure thing that would be a really great experience.
We flew into Los Angeles CA and rented a car on the way to our hotel, I got a phone call from Terry saying that a couple of his crew guys were not there yet and could we go straight to the track .So of course I said yes. When we arrived we could see that Terry, Brian and Dondi were struggling to get everything done so me and the guys looked at each other after the formal welcomes and decided to just jump straight in. We worked pretty much half the night before we went back to our hotel, by now we had been up 36 hrs straight, so we were pretty tired.
The next day we arrived at the track to be told by Terry that for certain reasons the other 3 crew guys were not going to be showing up all weekend so could we act as stand in crew, so me and the guys had no problem with this as you could imagine, Well after the first run which did not really go according to plan (we smoked the tyres 60 ft out) we really started to gel as a team!! Run 2 didn’t quite go to plan either. The car drifted out of the groove and scuffed the wall at about 600 ft Terry clicked it and ran 5.7 at 202mph we had made progress, now it was down to terry to try and keep the car in the groove so me, Brian Butler and Terry had to discuss how best to do this. We all agreed that we needed to increase the tyre speed early on in the run which would mean that we would not have to lean on the clutch to hard in the middle of the track therefore making the car a little easier for Terry to drive ( hopefully !!) Qualifying run 3 this run we were against Ashley Force in her debut event in a fuel funny car so there were camara’s flashing, TV crews and god knows who around her car so we just had to concentrate on our game even with all the distractions and we did the burn out then into stage, then Bingo the car goes right down broadway 4.87 @ 311 mph and makes easy work of the lovely Miss Force who gets it all crossed up and on 2 wheel’s . Yes now we know we are a player and with a little more power we can mix it up with the big boys and hopefully qualify, Run 4 against Ashley again but in the bad lane this time.
That’s our excuse and we are sticking to it!!!
Both cars left the line good and as the clutch came in on our car a little to hard, about 600 ft we started to turn the tyres and drift towards the centre line so Terry had to lift and the honey in the left lane laid a 4.79 @ 312 mph on us making our 5.7 @ 175 mph look a little silly, but the good thing was the car was not eating itself up and it was responding to tune up changes that we were making. Well it was nice trying but we were battling to get into the fastest funny car field in history with a bump spot of 4.79 seconds that means there were 15 cars that were quicker than that. Amazing!! It was just nice to be there and now it was time to pack up and go home, Terry said to me that he and his wife would like to take us out for a meal to say thank you for our help and to digest events from the weekend along with some cracking food.
From left to right, Terry, me, Neil and Niki
Then terry said to us that this weekend had gone so well that he would like us to come and be a part of his team, he said that he wanted me to be team leader with Neil on the clutch and Niki as a head man, we finished our meal and said that we would see him in the morning. So me and the boys went back to the hotel had a bit of a chat and Neil and I decided that this was exactly what the doctor ordered and that we would give it a go. Obviously we would have to go home first and make the necessary arrangements so we did. Fortunately, I have an understanding wife who understood what I was trying to achieve (thanks Laura) just that unfortunately we were to return to the states just team leader and clutch man as Niki could not put off previous commitments
We made arrangements to go back after the Phoenix race and meet up in St Louis Missouri at Ty Baumgartner race cars where Terry was having a new race car built and a beautiful one I might add.
So we got to Ty’s place where it was snowing and very cold, one problem lay in front of us the car was still in the jig not quite finished and we had 3 days to get the thing built in the trailer and on our way to our first race of the IHRA season which was in Texas at the San Antonio complex, needless to say after 3 x 20 hr days and the help of one of the for most if not understated chassis builders and all round nice guys Ty baumgartner and his brother we made it, we also had a little more help from a good friend of mine who lived just down the road, Mr Norm Wilding ex UK Pat and Fuel funny car racer turned American he came down and made sure we ate by taking us out to the local food houses and kept us on our feet with good old British humour, many thanks to Norm and his wife for the moral support and Norm if you read this next time I come back we are gonna get you back in the hot seat for a lap !!
Anyway after much slogging away in Ty’s beautiful race shop. We later broke the ice on the shop door and backed the snowy truck up loading 1 finished hot rod into our trailer. Terry has a beautiful state of the art truck and trailer which I very quickly had to learn to drive so we could drive without stopping to San Antonio raceway park in Texas and hopefully much warmer weather.
Well 2 days and nights of driving finally we got the gorgeous Kenworth and 52 foot long feather light trailer to outside the San Antonio raceway where we pulled up in the pro team holding area and had a few hours of well earned sleep When we got to the track we soon got on with the task of setting up. We got the car out, did a few of those last minute jobs and took it for tech which it passed with flying colours we then headed back to the pits for the warm up. Everything checked out great the car looked and sounded great we checked the warm up data on the computer, it was then time for our first qaulifier. Off we went, as we were straping terry in to the car we were all concerned about the extreme lack of testing with the new car (zero to be precise) when 5 days ago it was sat in a chassis jig in missouri!!
So Terry agreed no heroics, he would go as far as the new car told him it wanted to go ! We were the second to last pair to go down the track due to where we finished in the points last year which was 4th. Off we went a good strong burnout, we backed the car up and staged our car next to Del Worshams CSK car the lights went green! holy smoke the brand new car went down the track like it was on rails, straight as a dye 4.93 @ 308 mph.
Putting us right behind Dels 4.89 when we got to the top of the track to collect Terry with some crys of you mad bxxxxxds he said the new hot rod drove like Caddila! Anyway after this everything went like clockwork, the car acted superbly all weekend beating Andy Kelly first round but unfortunately Gary Densham just pipped us in the semi finals !! But hey we were real pleased with the outcome so far.
I am gonna end my blog here for now, it’s taken me 3 months to do this!, but I will write some more as I can and continue my 2007 season with terry haddock.