Joey Bridge: Milan, Michigan 2008 Joey Bridge, an up and coming Modular Drag Radial racer, is our first StangTV Blogging racer. The best part is that Bridge did his blogging about the NMRA Milan 2008 event, which was a big win for the team.
For once we left early for a race. We usually leave at the last minute drive all night and feel horrible when we get to the track. We left early Thursday morning and got to Michigan Thursday night. Friday morning waiting to get into the track, a huge storm came through and we figured that the whole day would be wasted. Luckily it cleared up long enough to get a couple of test hits in. During those test hits we found there was a problem with the transmission, she was pushing fluid out. Enough to fill the puke tank which is a worry because it could easily get under the tires. We had Sonny coming from Memphis with a spare trans so we had to wait until Saturday to change them out...
The Friday night qualify session ended up getting rained out. By the time Sonny showed at the track Saturday we missed the Second qualify session due to changing transmissions. It all came down to the final and 3rd qualify session to see where we could get ourselves on the ladder.
Went a 8.24 which put us number 2 out of the 13 cars that showed. That was well worth celebrating so we ended up at Red Lobster. With our back up transmission in the car we were very confident, but not 100%.
Sunday Eliminations: First round we had Jason Lee. It was a rematch from the World Street Challenge finals a few weeks before. Our 8.20 took the win over his peddling 8.60.
Second round we had a Bye run where we tried a little something in the suspension which didn’t respond as we would have liked to, so we put the old girl back the way she was.
Semis we had Tony Akins. Out a bit she started to shake and rattle the tires. I knew if I peddled the car that Tony would drive around me so I tried saving it by short shifting. Sure enough it worked and our 8.29 beat his 8.37.
The finals came down to the Champ John Kolivas and me. He had lane choice and he stuck me in the right lane. If your not going to stand up to him, there is no point in even being there. I added a couple pounds to the boost controller and played with the tune up some. It was well worth it. Our 8.17 took the win over his 8.20.
Talk about a happy moment. We have other wins but none of them mean what an NMRA event win means. Thirteen hours later and we were back at the shop and back in the grind. Only a month until Joliet. The scary part is there will be a rules change for this race and we are truly hoping that they are not going to get carried away with them.
I suppose time will tell.
Joey Bridge
NMRA Drag Radial #5