Everyone always yaps about how much they want our jobs at Super Street; how they envy us for having such a kick-back job; that they would love to get paid to travel around the world and go to events. Well, let me tell you, it's not as easy as you think. There are deadlines to meet, red-eye flights to catch, and sleep to be lost. If features don't get done, there isn't a story fairy that comes and makes everything better by sprinkling some magic dust over the 6420 Wilshire building. When Jonny and I get sent to events, we usually end up getting really lost because we got our directions off the Internet. The last couple times we stopped to ask for directions, Jonny got punched in the stomach and some dude tricked me into playing a game of craps with him. I ended up losing my left shoe, Jonny's wallet, and the contents of my suitcase, which mainly consists of wrinkled Pacific Rim T-shirts.
After driving around for about two hours and spending our lunch money at toll booths, we found ourselves in New York City. Along the side of the street we saw some bum that looked like former editor Dan Morris. It ended up really being him. We noticed he was down on his luck since moving to the Big Apple, so we offered him handfuls of change to do stupid pranks through Times Square. Time really flies when you're having fun. We made our rounds back to Englishtown, New Jersey, to see what the dilly was at the second Nitto-sponsored NHRA race of the year. More national records were broken than Jasmine St. Clair and Annabelle Chong put together. The races were sick, the flight was good, and the city was awesome. Maybe you do want this job. Sorry, it's not in our budget.
Pro Class
The original intent for bringing out the HKS drag 180SX was to make a couple of exhibition passes. Since the car hasn't run for a few years now, the HKS crew wasn't sure of its capabilities on the track. After driver Tetsuya Kawasaki made a record-setting 7.184 pass, the HKS quickly changed their minds and entered the car into Pro Class competition. Tetsuya continued to break out low 7-second passes with trap speeds of over 190 mph. During eliminations, it didn't seem like any car could stand a chance, but that didn't mean a truck couldn't. The Summit Racing Sonoma, driven by John Ligenfelter, had no problems laying down mid 7-second runs throughout qualifyings and eliminations. After Tetsuya got the holeshot in the final round at the light, John slowed the truck at half-track. Unfortunately, Tetsuya's winning-pass mph didn't make the record books since none of his previous trap speeds were within the one percent rule.
Pro V-8 Class
Since the debut of the car in Gainesville, Matt Scranton has continuously teased the crowd with 198- and 199-mph trap speeds in the Turbonetics Celica. But now there was money to be won. Matt's 7.159 e.t. at 202.55 mph was not only crazy enough to take out Craig Paisley's Tundra in the finals, but also fast enough to collect $25,000 from Summit Racing for being the first sport compact to break the 200-mph barrier. Even though Craig got out of the hole first, he couldn't maintain the lead and Matt soared by him like a bat out of hell. Craig did, however, hit his best e.t. of 7.96.