Sometimes luck happens
By
Jeffrey Fazio
Special Sections Writer
Summer
Slam is a national sport compact drag racing event that is held
annually at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J. This
year the event took place July Fourth weekend and it was the first
time I had entered it.
I
entered the heads up competition, which means I was going to be racing
other cars in my class straight from the green light to the finish
line, what is traditionally considered drag racing. This differs from
bracket racing (in which more people participate) which is
handicap-racing, giving a slower car a head start.
I
entered my turbocharged 1991 Toyota MR2 into the Street Tire Class.
This class is reserved for all-wheel-drive (AWD) and rear-wheel-drive
street-legal cars running on department of transportation-approved
tires (no racing slicks allowed). This sport compact event is limited
to 4-cylinder cars and 6-cylinder cars with overhead cams.
The first part of the weekend was spent taking qualifying runs. Each
driver got three chances to qualify for the race and the eight fastest
drivers proceeded to the actual race.
Once
qualifying was over, the racing ladder was determined. The ladder is
the pairing of the cars into individual races. The winner of each race
advances to the next round. The loser goes home. I've been home early
many times this year.
The
actual rounds of racing are ominously called the elimination rounds.
To accelerate this process, the top qualifiers beat up on the bottom
qualifiers in the first round. Assuming no upsets, the bottom
qualifiers will be the first ones home.
At
Summer Slam, I qualified fifth, which means I was scheduled to be the
first one home. My best qualifying run was 12.0 seconds. The first
round I was pitted against Ricardo Bailey in his 1992 AWD Eagle Talon.
Bailey had qualified fourth with a very low 11-second pass.
When the light turned green, I managed to out-launch the AWD Talon and
maintain a slight lead to half-track. Then, as luck would have it,
Bailey, for some reason, slowed down and I won the race with a time of
11.9 seconds.
In
the four other national events I have entered, I have never advanced
beyond the first round, so this was truly exciting. Throw in the fact
that the 11.9-second pass was only the fourth time I have ever done
the 1/4 mile in under 12 seconds, and it was no surprise that I was
smiling. Winning that round put me into the semifinal round, which
meant that I had earned at least $100.
In
the semifinals I was up against the No. 1 qualifier, Albert Diaz. Diaz
had qualified with a blistering 9.4-second pass in his 1997 Toyota
Supra. The difference between his 9.4-second qualifying run and my
12.0-second qualifying is a distance greater than 20 car lengths. I
wasn't even close enough to him to respectably be called an
underdog. I was truly out of my league.
I
roll up next to Diaz. It was truly a pleasure just to be there, next
to such a fast car.
I managed to pull a significantly faster reaction time than Diaz and I
beat him to the 330-foot mark. As he came breathing down my back to
the 1/8-mile mark he blew his timing belt.
With
his Supra putting down so much more power than I was, the race was
still not over. As silly as it may sound, I found myself racing
against a broken car that was still potentially much faster than me.
So I raced on and somewhere beyond the 1,000-foot mark, he was losing
serious ground and I started screaming for joy as I completed an
11.8-second run. I beat the odds and won my race against the No. 1
qualifier.
This
allowed me to enter my first final-round appearance, on any level, of
drag racing. In the finals, I faced Keith Loforte in his 1992 AWD
Eagle Talon and that is where my luck ran out. I had an awesome
reaction time and launch against Loforte, but I missed the crucial
second-gear shift. Loforte pulled away from me faster than a scorned
wife leaving divorce court.
He
ended up running an 11.1-second pass which was significantly faster
than I could have ever gone, even without missing that shift. Loforte
took first place and a $1,000 prize. I took the runner-up spot, $500
in cash and a very nice 2-foot-tall trophy.
I
have since had many debates with friends and foes as to whether or not
I am correct in saying that I won those first two rounds. Some say I
did not win those races, but rather my opponents lost them. A friend
said the first two rounds were merely a war of attrition. So be it, I
won them.
They
say I got lucky, I agree. "Luck is what happens when preparation
meets opportunity," wrote Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a Roman
playwright and philosopher.
So I got lucky at Summer Slam.
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