Well here is the first report from Grattan. If I hadn't seen it with my
own eyes I wouldn't believe it.
I arrived Friday morning about 9:45 and found Thicko Village about as
usual. (note I avoided the word "normal" because that NEVER applies to
Thickos) I found The Flounder with the bonnet off of "Redrum" and
digging through a parts box looking for a 948 head gasket to replace the
one he had just blown. He introduced me to his current
squeeze,,,,,Thicko name of "Dairy Queen"....The Flounder explained there
were two reasons he gave her that name...A) she is from Wisconsin and B)
you just keep licking her before she melts.....
Over in Elmo's pit he is just cleaning up his car from a good practice
session with no problems....same in Grenade's spot....crew sitting
around with nothing to do.
When the next practice session came around even WST made it out but came
limping back in before the end of the session. Problems with his
clutch.Elmo came in saying that in the first time in his racing career
he had a transmission fail,,,,, fourth gear. Grenade came in fine and by
now his crew was napping.
Grenade had an extra tranny so out comes the collapsible gantry and the
engine comes out of Elmo's car and gets Gary's tranny attached to it.
Over in The Flounder's pit it is the usual fire drill. He is trying to
rebuild the master cylinder and going around scrounging parts. He found
some seals hiding in the bottom of some peoples' junk boxes. On his
first try he installed one of the seals backwards and split it trying to
turn it around. Off he goes scrounging again....again successful. This
time he gets it on right but it won't go back into the cylinder.
Solution? Get out a screw driver and hammer and hammer the SOB in!! Well
at that point I left for the evening.
When I returned near noon on Saturday I found that Elmo was ready and
even The Flounder was too, but a lot had happened since I left the
evening before. His hammer job hadn't worked. (are we surprised? ) He
had a completely replace the master cylinder and discovered he still had
a problem.....he borrowed Grenade's gantry and pulled the engine and
tranny and found that the pressure plate was bad.....Elmo had a new
which WST installed. All this between when I left and when I got
back.....There was probably also a little attention give to "Dairy
Queen" during the intervening hours.
Well somewhere during the first part of Saturday there was qualifying. I
didn't pay a lot of attention to where people were gridded, but
Flounder, Elmo and Grenade were all out there somewhere for the 10 lap
sprint race in the afternoon. For a while Elmo was ahead of The Flounder
but after about the 3rd lap Elmo started to slow down....Flounder was
coming on strong. He would gain on "The Ultimate Cheatin' Dog
Sprite-----a Mark 2 with a fiberglass Bugeye bonnet, a 1380 cc Super A
engine and a 5 speed Datsun tranny). About the 6th lap Flounder got
around him when he spun it on 2. At this point WST was on a tear.. he
was gaining on the leader, an Alfa GT. By about lap 8 The Flounder was
on his tail...he would fall back on the straight but catch him on the
backside of the track. The way he was driving, I turned to somebody
standing next to me and said, "There is no way he is going to make the
full 10 laps without breaking something!"
On lap 9 WST was right on the Alfa's tail and he blocked him on the last
turn before entering the straight. WST caught him again on the backside
and the same strategy was setting up for coming onto the straight, but
WST knew what the Alfa's strategy was going to be so he gathered a
little more steam and went around him on the outside and beat him to the
finish line....
When The Flounder got back to the pits he was wild.....this was his
first ever overall first finish...
Frankly, I was amazed he finished the way he was flogging Redrum around
and his outstanding record for breaking things.
As for Elmo? Well, the reason he dropped back was that his pressure
plate wasn't working right... he had loaned his spare to Flounder but he
didn't want to do a second "pull" during the same race weekend so when I
left Saturday evening he was packing for home.
I didn't go back for events on Sunday so you will have to look to other
posting to find out what happened. But the sprint race on Saturday was
great!
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