[DeTomaso] The Launch....
MikeLDrew at aol.com
MikeLDrew at aol.com
Tue Aug 14 23:46:01 EDT 2012
Hi guys,
Andy May in England sent the following to several of us today:
Dear Friends,
Dawn and I had a great time today at the Santa Pod Drag Strip with our
GT5-S. They have just started allowing passengers in cars doing runs so Dawn
was able to be in the car for the first 4 runs. We were having lots of
traction problems as usual and I could not really get on the power properly until
into 2nd gear. We were still managing 13.4's with terminal speeds of 108mph.
Dawn decided she was then going to take to the grandstand and get some video
of me doing more runs, and I decided to try going a little easier out of
the hole to get a cleaner start. However, this resulted in 13.1137 at
110.72mph and a warning from the track officials that I needed to wear a helmet to
run over 110mph oops!
I bought a helmet but had to adopt a rather strange "hunkered down" and
"cocked head" position due to the restricted headroom. This was not exactly
making it easy to drive well, but whilst I didn't improve my time from the
previous run, I did manage to improve the terminal through the day to a high of
112.38mph. Unfortunately, this meant that Dawn couldn't continue more runs
with me as we were only going to be forced into buying one helmet!
Even though I didn't do any special prep on the car, I was very pleased
with the performance. I'm obviously losing a lot at the start and my hard
old tyres aren't helping that. The exhaust is still the original setup and
whilst it sounds nice, it is very restrictive - especially with the new engine's
power. I might do something about those two things over the winter but I'm
having waaaay too much fun to worry about it now!
Some youtube clips are here and I've attached one of the nicer photos from
the day;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgDm7FRSlQ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLGX7-ogrOg
We hope you are having fun too!
Andy and Dawn
=====
Here's a cropped version of the photo he sent--arguably one of the all-time
best Pantera action shots ever!
http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=37036
This is the small version--click on the 'full size' link above the upper
right corner of the photo to see it in all its glory!
Mike
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