It’s
been a while since I’ve written a blog, so I will try and fill you
all in since I left off in June when I had just completed my cross
grade requirements from Top Alcohol Funny Car to Top Alcohol
Dragster. We knew this year would be a learning curve as we had been
a funny car team for many, many years. We just weren’t prepared
for just how steep that curve would be.
Early
in our season we fought the tune up and clutch settings and had
difficulties in keeping the blower belt on the car. We sent our fuel
system stuff to Randy Anderson to be checked out and also bought a
duel idler pulley set up which seemed to help. I must also say a
big thank you to our fellow TAD drivers, owners, and tuners, who came
over to offer their help and input on what was causing our
performance issues. We were kind of at our rope's end and having new
sets of eyes with more TAD experience than us offering advice was a
huge help, and we are very grateful.
The
camaraderie in the alcohol pits is second to none and we are very
grateful for all who answered our questions and steered us in the
right direction. We may be competitors on the track, but we are
still a tight knit community. Once we got a baseline tune up, we
wanted to see what we could do with it.
We
decided last minute to head to Las Vegas for the national and
divisional event, as well as Pomona. We’ve done this trio of races
before in 2010, but didn’t have a lot of success. We were hoping
to improve on that. This might not be huge to some teams but we were
super pleased to have qualified for both the Vegas and Pomona
national events. There were around 23 cars entered. Just making the
show was a big accomplishment to us.
We
didn’t qualify at the Vegas divisional, but we knew it would be
tough to qualify with so many good cars in attendance and only 8
spots. We were also happy that we didn’t hurt any parts and with
small tuning changes, we were able to consistently improve on our
elapsed times on every run. I ran my personal best of 5.50 at over
258 mph in Pomona.
Next
year we just want to go out and improve on this year and to be more
competitive. You have to be able to run 30’s and 40’s to be
competitive and have a chance on race day. We want to qualify for
every race we attend and hopefully win some rounds. As we approach
Thanksgiving, I know I’ve been blessed to be able to drive this top
alcohol dragster and have a great group of guys with me. I have my
Dad, Greg, and my brother, Todd. Isaac Bese and Scott McDonald have
been with us a very long time also, and we are all looking forward to
our sophomore season next year. I just want to thank all our friends
and the great fans that have supported our team this year. Thank you
to our sponsors, Walery’s Pizza and Wilson’s NAPA Auto Parts.
Happy Holidays and see you all in 2014.
Jeff Ashwell is the driver of the Wilson's Napa/Walery's Pizza Top Alcohol Dragster. Find Ashwell Racing on Facebook and Twitter.
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