Francois, it was a real pleasure meeting you.
(sorry about the oil in the trunk
)
Yes, we were running the 2.4 again - but believe it or not, until that run, we were having a pretty frustrating day.
We arrived at Sanair with a number of set-up and mechanical issues. The engine block was cracked, we were running a stock head, and the new clutch was just nasty. Plus we were "experimenting" with wheelie bars on an AWD.
After looking everything over, I asked Marco to drive (instead of me) in the hope that he could sort out some of our problems.
He did three terrible runs (a 13, a 12 and even an 18!). Previously this car has run numerous 10 second passes with our best being a 10.05 @ 148mph with 100 shot of nitrous.
Eventually (with the wheely bars taken off), Marco realized the problem was the nitrous. It was cutting in and out during each pass.
So we disabled the bottle and decided to run with pure boost. Of course we didn't have a boost controller (just plumbing), so your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway he ran two passes - a 10.8 and a 10.6 - and then because of a bad draw in the eliminations, ended up facing the Altech nine second Honda in the semi's, while an 11 second car got the bye into the finals.
We manually cranked up the boost (we think) by playing with the lines and Marco had a tremendous run. The Honda just barely caught him at the finish line. It took a 9.7 to beat us.
As for engines, yes Marco put the 2 litre back in for the Shoot-Out, but blew it up while taking second place in the Quick 8. That's why we were running the 2.4 that had been damaged in New Jersey.
Meanwhile on Sunday, teammate , Jeffrey Chan blew the clutch on his RX-7 - but Ian Currie with his 95 Red Talon won the Pro-Street class and ran a personal best of 11.9 something.
No nitrous!!!
