Round One of
Eliminations
10:59
a.m. Weather conditions: air temperature 67 degrees, relative
humidity 38 percent, barometer 30.18 inches, track temperature
78 degrees.
The last pair of the round, Murphy was
up against Howard Haight.
This race was over before
it started when Haight uncharacteristically left before the tree
was even activated. That may have been the only racing
luck Murphy had all weekend. He was in fact staging the car with
NO BREAKS. The break handle had literally broken from its mount
on the chassis and Jim wanted this race so bad he staged with
only the clutch - a masterful move in itself when its hanging
on the back of a 3000 horsepower fuel hemi. When Haight had the brain fade Murphy,
then staged, just hit the throttle leaving early as well but
he still got the win under the first or worst rule and shut off
early using only the chutes with a 5.960 at 227.90. Talk about
dodging a bullet.
After full maintenance
the car was warmed up prior to the second round.
Round Two of
Eliminations
In round two Harris would
meet up with Adam Sorokin in the potent RB Entertainment entry.
Both
cars left together and it was obvious to all that Murphy was
off on yet another good run.
At the strip Murphy
carded a stout 5.807 at 250.20 to easily beet Sorokin and take
another step toward an unprecedented 5th March Meet win.
Semi Finals
4:17 p.m. Weather conditions:
air temperature 76 degrees, relative humidity 31 percent, barometer
30.14 inches, track temperature 91 degrees.
To move on to the final Murphy had to get by the
quickest car on the grounds, Brad Thompson.
Murphy
was on his game and strapped a huge holeshot on Thompson (0.062
to a 0.109) and would need every bit of it.
Thomson was slowly reeling
Murphy in but ran out of real estate. Murphy got the win in the
closest Top Fuel race of the weekend with a 5.869 at 253.95 to
Brad's 5.828 at 258.54. Murphy's margin of victory was 0.0062
seconds (approximately 2 feet). This was a great drag race!
Prior to the final it
was all business in the WW2 Racing pit.
In spite of the thrash
Jim still had time to sign autographs.
Final Round
of Top Fuel Eliminations
6:21
PM - Murphy would meet Brett Harris for all the marbles. By virtue
of a quicker ET in the semis, Jim had lane choice.
Murphy
moves into the staging beams.
This
race was over in a heart beat when Murphy inexplicably blazed
the tires at the hit.
Denied
his fifth and record setting 5th March Meet win all Jim Murphy
could do was sit and watch Harris clock a sterling 5.865 at 257.65
(bet run of the weekend) for his 1st March classic victory.
Coasting to the
end Murphy was left to ponder what went wrong and lament a bitter
loss when they were so close to the goal. Then it clicked, it
was simple... what had been going on was they have had a fuel
system problem for the past two seasons that was leaning the
engine out. Over the winter, they had set the engine up to be
much richer. After running well on Friday and Saturday but still
hurting the motor, Jim and Tim finally realized what the problem
was and fixed it Sunday morning.
They fixed the
problem that had been doing the damage to the engine for the
last two years but for the first three rounds on Sunday the engine
was running on seven cylinders for the first four tenths of a
seconds (terrible sixty foot times) and then it would pick up
and run. They were able to correct that for the final but just
had a bit to much clutch for eight cylinders. Despite the dropped
cylinders they did run their third quickest time ever (5.80 flat
in round two) and the two runs that were better were accomplished
three years ago when they set the record that still stands today.
One more thing
is after they discovered their problem they did not burn up anything
on Sunday ( a new trend). A few pinched rings all day and they
will get that taken care of with a few more runs. A silver cloud
for sure.
You can
bet they will be back here in March of 2008 to try again.
Page
One: Qualifying
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