2007 March Meet - Paso Posse

Bakersfield, CA - March 09-11, 2007: The 49th edition of the March Meet was, by all accounts, one of the best ever! John and Blake Bowser - with a lot of help from their staff - put on a drag race for the ages. From the full pits on Thursday to the Winners Circle shots on Sunday this was an event blessed with Chamber of Commerce weather, an accommodating facility, incredible racing surface, friendly staff, full bore fans and upbeat attitudes throughout.

The 35,000+ fans that packed the facility over the three-day event were treated to over 500 race cars including 20 of the countries best Top Fuel dragsters. As always, the Nitro Thunder team traveled from Utah with one thought in mind - winning. Although Jack (Harris) has won the prestigious March Meet twice, the Big One had eluded Brett. Not this time and Brett's first stepping stone to the money was a first round defeat of Dad in the 1st round of racing on Sunday.

Sporting a new Brett & Bruno paint job and sleeker body parts, John Rodeck's "Paso Posse" fueler made its debut as an official Nitro Thunder "Team Car" at the March Meet. And although Harris did go out first round, the team was able to start accumulating data for future events.

Photos, story and Henry's Notes below.

Jack started his weekend out with a fun exhibition run in "Flathead Jack" twin nitro powered - you guessed it - flathead dragster.

After the burnout and back up, Flathead Jack himself brings Jack into the staging beams.

Off on another 180 MPH pass in the worlds fastest flathead dragster.

First Qualifying Session - Friday

Under sunny skies and ideal track conditions the first session of Top Fuel qualifying went off at 2:30 p.m. Friday afternoon. Jack Harris was paired with Adam Sorokin.

Both drivers did long burnouts and backed up together.

The car left good but had some tire shake and throttle problems down track netting Harris a 6.111 at 213.32. See Henry's Notes below.

Session Notes by Henry Walther:

As with most cars we went out with a somewhat conservative tune up. We didn't want to overpower the track, but we also didn't want to be too far off. In hindsight our call was pretty close, but the track had more teeth than we thought it would. We encountered some tire shake from 20' to 80'. Right after that Jack noticed that his foot was not fully depressed on the throttle, so he corrected it, but then after careful consideration (which probably took all of a millisecond), he stepped off of the throttle early (1,035' @ 5.32 seconds). Jack later explained the early shut off to me as a 'senior moment'. No one had a problem with that as we all needed to see the car go to the other end without basting Jack with BBQ sauce, which was something we had done at the last couple of races last year. It appeared we had found the cause for that over the winter and cured it.

The crew doing full maintenance on the car Friday after the session.

Qualifying Session Two - Saturday
Running 2 hours behind schedule, 1:41 p.m. Weather conditions: air temperature 68 degrees, relative humidity 33 percent, barometer 30.14 inches, track temperature 84 degrees... nearly perfect.

Moving to the left lane for the second stanza Harris was paired with Adam Sorokin.

Harris and Sorokin back up nearly together.

Harris is one of the few drivers who doesn't have a crew member guide him back from the burnout.

When he gets close to the starting line Henry Walther just makes sure he's in his tracks prior to staging.

Harris just a heart beat before the hit.

The car left good again...

and this time stayed hooked up to an improved 5.986 at 250.48.

Session Notes by Henry Walther:

We made a small correction to the tune up and went back out. We felt a full run would yield a good number. Unfortunately Jack accidentally made a driver activated tuning change that was planned for half track just after the 60 foot clocks. That scrubbed off some performance , but the results were still enough to land us in the #10 position.

Standard maintenance prior to the third and last qualifying session.

As he did so many times for himself, Gary Beck packs the chutes for Harris.

Qualifying Session Three - Saturday
Scheduled to run at 3:30 the final qualifying session kicked off at 5:45. The air and track were still very good.

Back in the right lane and paired with Jim Murphy, Harris and the Paso Posse were looking to move up in the field.

Shortly after a decent leave the rear tires went up in smoke and Harris immediately shut it off coasting to a 20.885 at just 48.55.

Session Notes by Henry Walther:

Again the plan was for a small change in tune up as we knew there was more performance in the car without getting silly. But then a strange thing happened after the burnout had been completed. The spark plug gap in #4 cylinder closed up and the cylinder started spraying raw fuel out on the ground in front of the right tire. At the hit the car move two feet and blazed the tires. We could find no trace of anything being in that cylinder so our post-mortem conclusion was that the core electrode was loose in the plug.

Top Fuel Qualifying after 3rd Session

1. Brad Thompson - 5.746 @ 247.11
2. Rick White - 5.822 @ 250.69
3. Shannon Stuart - 5.841 @ 225.22
4. Pete Kaiser  - 5.842 @ 257.51
5. Jim Murphy - 5.869 @ 229.70
6. Denver Schutz - 5.897 @ 249.16
7. Brett Harris - 5.911 @ 256.04
8. Troy Green - 5.927 @ 244.10 9.   Jason Richey - 5.964 @ 228.25
10. Jack Harris - 5.986 @ 250.48
11. Rick McGee - 5.992 @ 250.00
12. Howard Haight - 6.003 @ 230.71
13. Adam Sorokin - 6.013 @ 225.79
14. Bill Dunlap - 6.029 @ 251.46
15. Rick Rogers -  6.122 @ 211.46
16. Brendan Murry - 6.136 @ 239.55

DNQ

17. Mark Malde - 6.136 @ 239.55
18. John Shoemaker -  6.283 @ 207.80
19. Ron Maroney -  8.367 @ 130.05

Top Fuel Eliminations - Round One
Sunday, 10:59 a.m. Weather conditions: air temperature 67 degrees, relative humidity 38 percent, barometer 30.18 inches, track temperature 78 degrees.

This was not the way the Nitro Thunder team wanted to start eliminations... the ladder had Jack racing son Brett in the other team car, Nitro Thunder. This would be the first time they would meet in competition.

At the flick of the switch Jack got caught napping as Brett left first by a bunch and never looked back.

By 70 feet Brett started pulling away big time.

With Big Red on the move Jack gave up the battle and shut off early to a 8.722 at 99.30 while Brett stopped the clocks with a nice 5.941 at 253.02 to move into the next round.

Round Notes by Henry Walther:

We went into the first round with the same tune up from the previous run (and 8 good spark plugs). By the time we ran the Density Altitude was 200' higher then we had projected, and the alone probably accounted for the car rattling the tires from the hit to 60', where Jack pedaled it once to clean it up, but then threw in the towel and shut off at 331 feet. Brett was too far gone.

Out of the race but not done for sure. Over the course of eliminations Jack and the Paso Posse made two test runs on a brand new M&H tire (run by Brett in the 3rd qualifying session) that will hopefully solve all the chunking problems encounter on previous tires.

They did nice burnout but...

shortly after the leave they went up in smoke and Harris coasted through.

Test #1 Notes by Henry Walther:

We went out with the same tire set up that they used on Brett's car the day before, and they said it pulled the engine down. We hopped the engine up a bit in preparation for that, but on our car it just squirted out 8/10th of a second (27') and then blew the tires off. There was no shake before they let go. The tire spin was came so quick that the engine RPM went over 10,000, but no parts were damaged, and not a drop of BBQ sauce was applied to Jack.

The second test following the final round of Top Fuel.

It yielded no palpable information as within 60 feet the leave looked a lot like the burnout. With the jury still out these tires are going to have to get some runs to the other end before they can be deemed "The Cure".

Test #2 Notes by Henry Walther:

For this run we took 6 grams off of the clutch and per the request of M&H we lowered the tire pressure three pound. This time the car went out 20' where it started shaking the right side tire, and then at 40' the left side tire started shaking too. Jack wisely shut the car off. The March Meet was over.

We will continue testing the same tires at Fontana, as they looked good. No chunking or odd patterns after the runs.

When all was said and done, team owner John Rodeck still had a smile on his face. There's always another drag race - somewhere.

2007 March Meet - Brett Harris