To Bobbie's Surprise: While at the division 7 tech trailer Bobbie was checking the schedule for the days events, and on the bulletin board was a 18"x24" full color poster advertising the up coming race.  The surprise wasn't that the race was being advertised, it was a picture of our car in the lower left corner of the poster. Is that cool or what ? This is just the beginning of what was to take place this weekend.

Race Conditions: Saturday the weather was great, temperatures in the 70's with light wind. Sunday was altogether different, still highs in the 70's but the wind had increased and had turned into a side wind. Paper from the recycling plant was playing havoc with the finish line lights. Mike Rice posted people at the finish line to jump over the wall to retrieve paper after every pair of cars. There was also dust covering the track from the starting line to the end of the track. After a drivers meeting it was decided that in the interest of safety and not having to go into Monday to finish it would be better to change the race to an 1/8 mile format.

History Made: This was to be the first NHRA National event to compete at 1/8 th mile. The Super Gas index was now to be 6.30 and every racer would have one practice run to tune their cars or adjust throttle stops. In our case it was only a throttle stop adjustment, our first adjustment though only got us half way to the 6.30 index. A math problem was able to get us where we needed to be.                                                                         

Round # 1:Hollis was a on the brakes to take a 6.341 win, which qualified him number 14.                                                                                    

Round # 2: was much better Hollis had a near perfect .001 reaction time, coupled up with a right-on 6.300 ET. that earned him the NHRA Perfectly Strange Performance Award and also the best package of the race.                                                                                                                     

Round # 3: Hollis was still on his game with another .001 reaction time, with his opponent having a -.005 red light, giving Hollis the opportunity to run the car all -out netting him a 6.270 ET. This run was pivotal showing that the fluids were warming up and the car was going faster. Now that we know what the car is capable of its time to make adjustments to the throttle stop.

Round # 4: Hollis drew another red light allowing him again to run the car all-out. Hollis ran a 6.297 showing that the adjustment to the throttle stop was almost perfect. His reaction time had slipped to a .038. Thinking that he had just missed the tree, Hollis didn't make any changes to help his light. 

Round # 5: When pulling into the staging lanes there were only three cars remaining. At this point Hollis realized that he could be racing his son-in-law Brad Pierce in the final round. This was no time to think of the final. We have to get past this round first and it turned out to be a tough one. The reaction times were Hollis's .049 to his opponent's .048 separating the starting line by only .001 of a second. The elapse times were almost as close. Hollis's 6.305 to his opponent's 6.310, a difference of .005, leaving a margin of victory of .004 of a second. They don't get much closer than that! It was a this point when Hollis realized he hadn't been missing the tree but something was wrong. It was either the sun was shinning on the bulbs of the Christmas tree or the track was going away. Either way an adjustment would have to be made.                                                                                      

Round # 6 Final Round:  All the bragging rights at the family Thanksgiving dinner are on the line! It will be tough to beat Brad if the best light Hollis can cut is a .049. It was decided to remove the .020 delay from the delay box. The tree came down and the reaction times were almost identical, Brad was .036 to Hollis's .038.  The finish line was also close, Hollis was almost perfect with a 6.308 to Brad's 6.315. The margin of victory for Hollis was .005, or 5 inches.  This win moves Hollis to 12 th in NHRA World Points. A race day doesn't get any better than this!