|
Well the 2009 season saw a lot of progress for the Dayton Performance race team. We finished 6 in points at the end of the season. We held the 5th spot for most of the season, but the points chase wasn't kind, lol. That is the best finish for our program since we started racing.
I had Matt Johnson shoe the car this year because I am deployed. Matt did a really good job driving it, and with Ben and Matt helping with the crew responsibilities, we were able to get the car down into the 9.7's with only a 1.45 60'. If you do the simple math of .1 in 60ft reducion equals .2 in et, with our past 1.30 60ft, the car could have gone as quick as a 9.4X. I believe we have it figured out, the car ran well, but had traction issues, more about that later.
The engine lived through the season, from June until present. It still has a little more in the tune too. We wanted to keep it conservative so that everything would stay together. It is hard to tune and dial in a car when you are replacing the engine or gaskets, etc. We were able to focus on tuning and made great progress.
As for the traction issues. We didn't have any problems at the beginning of the season, the car went a perfect 1.30 and carried the wheels about a foot out to about 50ft. We brought the car back and found some things wrong, broken suspension limiter, loose antiroll bar ends, etc. Fixed those and went to the next race, and no traction. We fought that for the rest of the season. I was sitting here and thinking about the issue and when it occurred, and then remembered looking under the car and in my memory something didn't look right. So I think we have it figured out, the antiroll bar is way out of adjustment, so we will fix that and try it again next year.
I want to thank all the hundreds of fans that came out and threw us props at the different races coplimenting the car and how it ran. I appreciate it a lot! |
