Peter Koning in USA Peter is a long time hot rodder and supporter of Let's Go Cruisin. He's left his business, Hoppers Stoppers in the capable hands of his staff to travel the US for 12 months. Sure makes some interesting reading!

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Winternats Pomona 2011

As previously written I have holed up at the RV park opposite Pomona Fairplex which is walking distance to the Drag Strip. The park put a shuttle bus on in any case, Yanks wont walk if they can drive. The weather late last week was threatening , the agenda was; qualifying Thursday, and Friday with pro eliminations and sportsman finals on Saturday and professional (top fuel and pro stock) finals on Sunday. I will give the weather forecasters their due, they seem to be able to predict things down to the hour and right on schedule rain arrived midday Friday, rained heavily all night and stopped around 7.00 Sat morning. And talk about cold, there was snow on the hills just near here and about 3 degrees Celsius outside. Still the rain seemed to go away and they almost had the track dry when a big hailstorm dropped another 1/2 inch on us. Thus Saturday racing finally underway after lunch. Freezing cold when the sun went behind clouds but at least all happening again. Sunday came out nice and sunny , warmed up well as the day went on. They finished Pro classes on Sunday but we all went back today, Monday, to finish sportsman stuff which took until after lunch. I decided to live it up and paid extra to sit in the Top Eliminator Club, which gives reserved seats on the startline, and breakfast and fancy lunch each day, free drinks etc.

Photos will follow, I had a few highlights. One of the guys staying in the RV Park was on the crew of a Top Fuel Funny Car team and he offered to let me watch the guys preparing the car. This was the Brian Thiel Case IH team. They went reasonably but didnt quite make the top 16 needed to make the finals. Around 25 entries each in Top Fuel Funny Car and Top Fuel Dragster teams means they had to be within 0.15 seconds of the fastest guy to make the cut. Fastest run of the day was around 3.77 seconds at 320 MPH. The track used to be 1/4 mile (1320 ft) but the speeds were getting dangerous so these guys now run 1000 feet. The Aussies were well represented by the Santo Rapisarto Team driven by Terry Sainty, they also had a good try but got bumped out of the 16 at the last second.

These are all big dollar outfits, millions of dollars to run one top fuel car. Don Shumaker team had driven down from Chicago with a whole bunch of entries, a total of 15 Big Rigs just for him and maybe 10 cars in various classes and all their paraphenalia. John Force had at least 8 rigs that I counted, the US Army threw a few million in and have big recruiting tents, sponsorship is so important.

Out in the paddocks they had a display honouring Don Prudholm, all his old race cars and a few out of the NHRA Museum, plus the Hot Rod Club that he belongs to showed as well. He was present to sign stuff and on Sunday morning before racing he led a tour of spectators to walk the track, which I joined. This is a super smooth 1/4 mile, full concrete and covered in VHT the whole length. Sticky to walk on under the shoes. The drag slicks were sticking that hard that the rubber was being pulled out of the tyre surface in chunks before they would get wheel spin.

As usual made a few new friends in the Rv park, the Chevy always has them interested, but it didn't get driven much the last few days.

That will change later this week, as there is a Nascar Meet in Vegas next weekend. So The RV is going into storage here in Pomona for a week or so. and I will drive to Vegas and get a hotel for the weekend, they are so cheap its no worth driving the RV all that way. From there its another 5 hour drive the next weekend, south to the next Goodguys Show in Scottsdale (Phoenix AZ), a rerun of the event I did last year.

The NHRA museum is well worth a look, I quickly went through it last week but as I have a day or so to kill I reckon I will take my camera and shoot you guys a couple of dozen shots, the history in there is amazing if you follow these things. Will send that stuff tomorrow, OK? Be good Peter