WDMS - Chapter 298 - March 2022

TX2K22

The Last Year In Houston? Nope...

Just a bikiniracer and one of her Supras....

One of the biggest stories of the year is the sale and closing of Houston Raceway Park (HRP), however the buyer is not in a rush to build (considering the financial market and the interest rates driven by the current administration, it is understandable) and so the folks that run HRP negotiated to keep the track operating till March (TX2K) or April (big NHRA event) of next year.....so we'll be back at HRP at least one more time.

This is only ONE of three boxes of numbers, some of those rolls are 20' long! Fam sorting, counting, cutting, checking....

(not pictured = the 700+ class designators....oooof!)

And, as is typical, I'll mostly put up a lot of the cooler snaps we took. This is a huge event now, covering five days and both the roll racing and drag racing saw some records fall and fantastic passes happen. Most of us remember the earlier days of 2K when a decently fast street car could do well, but those days are long gone. Now it is the cream of the national-level crop folks bringing SRS BZNS hardware and dialing it up to 11. Miller does a phenomenal job on track prep and we frequently get negative DA and a tailwind with cool temps. A racer's dream combo. Anna (bikiniracer.com) ran her drag Supra and ran a PB, only .1 off the absolute stock twins record. We're getting there. 

StockTwins getting the air/water intercooler upgrade. Love it!!! Louis is a pro and we're lucky he helps!!

For us, 2K starts about a month after the last 2K event when Peter (the owner/organizer) and I (operations/safety) do a debrief from the previous event. We hit the highs and lows, share what needs to be changed or dropped for next year, improvement ideas, etc. Think about the stickers alone: After plotting, our crew hand cuts over two-thousand-six-hundred individual stickers for this event. We have 3 sets of numbers for each car, and then for the drag classes we have class identifiers that go on the front and right side. Then those 2600+ stickers must be organized and filed and triple counted to ensure we're not missing a single one. Lights and controls and cords must be checked, forms updated and sent out, and checklists and entry lists (forms, pens, extras, etc etc) setup and then followed up on as we hit the 6 months away, 3 months away and then weekly countdowns. Peter has his own lists as well, and we sync up a lot...an event this size HAS to be well prepared and we do our best. A lot of the racers have become good friends and we certainly don't want to let them down.  

TWENTY YEARS between these two pics!!!! Anna and Vinny!!

Above: Mr Calvo and his builds....

Anna ran her car as well, and set a personal best. She got one shakedown pass, then spun a bit on the second launch, and then set the best on the third. She was still a bit slow to get it out of the hole and due to a cleanup we didn't get the intercooler going quick enough before the run. We think we have the combo to take the record back (gotta beat 10.59), but it'll have to wait for another day. We were certainly blessed to have skilled hands close by when the factory alternator took a dump and they also pulled some more weight out of the car. We're getting there!!! Only 0.1 to go!

  10.68 on stock twins, factory auto, TRD diff, Hoosiers.