I was dutifully warned of the sandbaggers. But no fear here. I was quite sastified with my runs. Yes, I believe the second pass at 14.05 was due to starting line position. I found it tougher to spot the car with a Pro 0.400 tree. It may have been simply psychological since it was my first date with the new tree.
The humidity and heat kept me from doing any quicker ETs with the street tires on the front and drag radials on the rear. Density altitudes were well into the 3000 feet plus range. I was prepared to play with the weight and tire pressures to slow it down a bit but as it was I had very little options to make it any quicker, especially so with only 3 time trials in the two days prior to the competition. The time trials showed me I was very close to the 14 flat number and the weather never varied enough to matter much. As such all runs were full throttle to the end.
As for the 8-9 second Jeep - he possessed a demon CJ7 with 1100 HP. It was funny as my first time trial had me lined up with him. I knew he was going to win since he had a full cage and a mean sounding engine. I soundly beat him off the line but a second later he blasted past me like I was sitting still on his way to a 9 second/150+ mph pass! I'll give him credit - no way would I ride in a Jeep at 150+ mph.
The dude in the 12 second 'vette had a quarrel with the event director as the 'official' printout showed him UNDER 12 seconds even though his timeslips averaged 12.0001. Seems the girl who tallied the results only used the first 2 significant digits from the slips - dropping the thousandths. Probably used an adding machine to enter the ETs? LOL
The time between the 3 passes was like 45 minutes between rounds 1 & 2 and 20 minutes between 2 & 3. However the time between the cruise and the first pass was over 3 hours! Sort of made the cruise a non event.
All in all, the class was pretty cool to run even though they showed poor organization.