Hey Steve,
Thanks for some
great racing! You couldn't ask for two better-matched yet totally different cars. I had a blast, and am looking forward to running with you some more!
All,
It was a very interesting contest. Steve's car clearly had a small power advantage (best traps 118.9 vs my 117.5), while mine had a substantial traction advantage on launch. That, combined with a better R/T from yours truly, allowed me to take this Viper vs Supra round in a clean sweep. As Steve says, most of the races were so close that they could easily have gone the other way, as you can see from the timeslips:
Race 1, Steve made a couple driver errors which hurt his launch and his mid-track drive. I had a clean run, although I bogged a bit on the launch:
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Race 2 the sun had set, and Steve and I both spun heavily on the launch as traction went away. I started shifting to 4th because my speeds were increasing...
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Race 3 was the closest of the night. I tried a wet burnout to improve my launch traction, but apparently needed to go several seconds longer than I did -- my 60' was quite poor, and Steve almost nipped me on ET. Fortunately, ET streets are very forgiving
As you can see on the timeslip, although Steve was ahead through the 60, right after that the ETs hooked and catapulted me forward, giving me a lead by I2 which I carried the rest of the way down the track:
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Race 4 it all came together for both of us. I went back to no-burnout launches, and Steve finally got a good burnout and a good 60' Unfortunately for him, a good launch on ETs is better than a good launch on drag radials, and I clinched our friendly match in the narrowest of fashions while scoring my first 11-sec timeslip on a stock-engined Viper
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All in all, a great night of racing, and I'm really looking forward to the next round!