Liquid Quiker - Oklahoma City 2009

Phoenix, AZ - November 2010

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES:
Phoenix World Finals

Well Phoenix finally got here and the whole team was cranked up for it. We had to buy a new/old truck to pull the trailer to make the 1856 mile trip to Phoenix, and we did it with a new set of General Tires on the truck and the tires performed above our expectations. Remember from the past trips we have purchase 14 tires and some new rims for our old trailer to make the trip one way, so we are a tire sensitive team. So we thank General Tire, Firehouse Subs, Pizza Hut and Hampton Inn & Suites –Tempe/Phoenix, AZ for their help. Without them we flat could not afford to make the trip.

Ross and his boys worked hard on the truck to get it ready. I was nervous since it’s a long trip for the first time out but the truck did a great job, more horse power and fewer problems then we have ever had.

Mike, Mary, Sue, Steve and Sam showed up on Wednesday and we got the pit area set up with a lot of enthusiasm. Thursday the rest of the crew showed up and we got everything ready for Friday qualifying. We made one pass on Friday at 3.814 ET at 237.56 mph and qualified 3rd out of 9 boats so we were pleased.

Saturday we planned on 2 qualifying passes and made the first at 3.845 ET at 231.91 mph and our driver Mike Robbins was comfortable on the lights and stayed there the whole weekend. Good job Mike! We managed to kick out a head gasket on the first run Saturday and burned the block and heads. Since this only left us 2 motors for Sunday we decided to sit out the 2nd qualifying pass and save everything for Sunday.

Even though we sat out the 2nd qualifying pass we still managed to hold the #3 spot going into Sunday’s eliminations and knowing that Roger Way has lots more power he can put in the motor so we are still felling pretty good.

Now you have to remember in the 20+ years we’ve been going to Phoenix the only thing we ever excelled at was crashing, bad breaks and malfunctioning clocks so we’re really hoping Sunday goes well, maybe this is our year.

The first round we had Whiskey River in a band new Ellison Hydro, Mike hits the clock and we win first round breaking our own ET and mile per hour records’ running 243.5 mph in 3.708 ET. Second round we have Nitro Chicken, who somehow always show’s up in Phoenix and win’s the deal, but this time we got the 2nd round win, running 231.9 mph in 3.787 ET, but broke a nozzle body in one of the cylinders’ and kicked a rod out of the motor followed by a huge fire that torched the back 3rd of the boat, hoses, wire, coils, parachutes, everything.

Photo by David Cates

Now we’ve got a serious amount of work to complete to get ready for the final, and everyone is hard at it to make the 5 o’clock dead line to be at the ramp.

Sue and Mary looked like 2 burnt oil soaked rags by the time the boat is cleaned and Steve Trew is mumbling “why didn’t I put pistons in the spare motor”. Anyway the motor got fired up, timing set, valves set. All that is left is to run it on Nitro for a minute, check for leaks and we’re ready to head to the ramp. “We made it!”

Then just about 10 minutes before 5 o’clock we heat the announcer says “Here’s the final run of the day and we hear The Problem Child boat fire up and make the final pass. The whole team goes into shock, absolute silence – how can they run without us, it’s not 5 o’clock.

As it turns out there was some unknown communication issues between the race officials, the race promoter and our team which ended with us not having the opportunity to run the final round of competition. The problem has since been addressed with the race officials and hopefully will not happen again in the future.
As disappointing as this was for everyone we still had a good weekend at this years’ World Finals event, and are excited and anxious for the 2011 race season to begin. Thanks all and have a Great Holiday Season.