Seattle review -

Oh so close and yet so far away…

Thursday night:

After four weeks on the road we’re home – and it never felt better, oh except for the rain that ran us out of the pits after and hour of down pour. Hopefully the weather turns.

Friday night:

We thought it blew in South Dakota, they’ve got nothing on Seattle. A day of waiting, and waiting and waiting some more for water. No records were being set on the Ted Jones course today, nothing to do but lay back and watch the Blue Angels.

Saturday night:

An up and down day – or was it the other way round. We made a good (not great) start in heat 1 and absolutely pulled away for 2 ^1/3 laps… then a $2.50 ignition part failed and took 400 points away in a heartbeat.

After the crew replaced the distributor, coil and the MSD box to no avail we simply changed out the rev limiter chip and voila – problem solved (although we have nothing but backup parts in the ignition system now). Heat 2 the start was not as good, fortunately Al in the UL-6 and Vinnie in the UL-929 incurred penalties for score-up infractions and we had a cushion. Passed Vinnie on lap two and had Al in our cross-hairs when we backed down to take the 400 points and advance to the final on points. Two finals in a row without climbing through the BMain!

Sunday night:

Our woes returned – something wasn’t right, and then things turned for the worse. The setup combination and power we found in Montana and Tri-Cities just wasn’t there. After failing to secure the lane we wanted during score-up it became apparent we didn’t have the “go” we had enjoyed over the past couple of weekends. Not giving anything away we went through the first two laps - then all hell broke loose. The flex plate disintegrated and the ring gear ripped through the bottom of the hull, fortunately it also cut the oil pressure line so it appeared that the engine lost all pressure and I shut down. This could easily have been a repeat of Valleyfield 2007 when I tore the bottom of the boat out – however since the oil pressure seemingly dropped I shut down and didn’t damage the hull running through the notoriously rough water in Seattle. We’re still in the hunt for Top 5 in National High Points and now we’ll pull the Red Dart and put the Black Dart in to finish the season.