Ryan Hecox's race weekend started out with a bang, but it wouldn't be classified as good. It was more like the clang of lifter parts rolling around in the Rich Groh Racing-built mill. With wife Shannon out chasing parts, Ryan and fellow JPC Racing stablemate Gary Windsor tore into the engine to get it back into racing shape. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who you ask, yours truly even got his JLT Performance T-shirt dirty by getting into the mix. All told, Ryan had to add new lifters, a new oil pump, and thoroughly clean the rest of the engine to rid it of lifter parts and pieces. All this happened on Thursday, leading a few passersby to question the sanity of doing so much work that early into the event. Ryan wanted to make sure the engine was good to go that night, and it was. We fired it up around midnight over Steak 'n' Shake burgers and fries. To make the work worth it, Ryan made it all the way to the final against Brandon Alsept, just to redlight. Oh well, at least the car made it that far after I worked on it.
The modular Real Street cars...
The modular Real Street cars received a little extra weight from the NMRA prior to the Joliet race. Jim Breese and Tim Matherly showed up anyway, but they each had a spare engine in the trailer, just in case. Both had to push their combos beyond the limit to keep up with their pushrod competition. Jim torched his engine during eliminations, leading to a mad thrash to drop in the spare bullet. However, Jim redlit in the final against Bruce to once again finish in the runnerup spot.
With the extra weight imposed...
With the extra weight imposed on the modular cars, Tim Matherly changed to a 4.88 gear in an attempt to equalize the extra heft on his Two-Valve Real Street car. He qualified second behind Bruce Hemminger with a 9.70/140-mph pass, but he left a couple weeks early against Bruce in the semis. We don't know why, but Tim seems overly joyous after he's redlit at a race. We don't know if that's because he can finally relax or start chowing down on a pastry. Either way, we chastised him profusely for the error, so he should have his act together the rest of the year.
Pure Street
"Joliet was a...
Pure Street
"Joliet was a really good race for us and I couldn't be happier with the end result," Brandon Alsept said. "We had to work on the suspension to get the car to work on such a good track as Joliet." Brandon was able to get the car working fairly well and pull out a win over Ryan Hecox in the final. In the Super Bowl race against Don Baskin's Mean Street '67 Chevy II, Brandon broke a transmission, which cost him the Nitto championship ring. Brandon had nearly a 0.2 holeshot on Don and looked to be well on his way to victory, but as Brandon said, "hey that's racing."
The pushrod cars received...
The pushrod cars received a slight weight break just before Joliet, and Brian McCormick appeared to use the most of that break to run a 9.70 in qualifying, even in the heat. Brian's Vortech-supercharged car has been running well, and he's really found a groove with the car. However, he redlit against Jim Breese in Round 2 with a 0.378 reaction time (0.400 is perfect, so Brian barely missed it). What's worse is that Jim had problems right from the start; Brian would've won handily if not for the redlight start.