Man Cup - Fast by Gast Nationals at Dragway 42
The Man Cup Fast by Gast Nationals was full of ups and downs for us as a team as we attempted to manage 2 bikes in the Hollywood Drag Racing Pro Ultra 4.60 class for the first time. For me Bruce, the extra stress of tuning two bikes was frazzling, compounded by intermittent electrical issues on the new black bike we call "Storm." Luckily we had a full crew and as soon as I was able to let go of control a little, they all stepped up beautifully.
Friday night testing started with Chase on the new black bike to work out any bugs. His first run was a 4.94 with a lot of popping and misfiring but everything seemed to clear up after a few changes and the second pass was a clean 4.64. Feeling like he had done all that he could, Chase went on to test the yellow bike and I hopped on for my first runs. Three runs between 4.66 and 4.63 did a lot for my confidence and helped me to shake the rust off after not having been on a bike for quite a while. The yellow bike struggled to shift so we were in for a late night of shift fork replacement.
Saturday qualifying started out with Chase running a too quick 4.55 but the bike shifted and ran great so all good. My bike sputtered down the track to a 4.73 so back to the drawing board to replace more ignition parts. Q2 Chase went a still too quick 4.58 but the bike popped out of 3rd gear temporarily and re-engaged. We decided that the transmission was hurt but there was nothing we could really do at the track so we would just have to keep our fingers crossed. My bike showed the potential that we had been anticipating and ran a stellar 4.603 @ 153 mph which temporarily qualified us #2!
Third round of qualifying set us up for an interesting Sunday eliminations which we never expected. After changing out more ignition parts on Storm we put in an unknown Firestorm controller which caused the bike to shut off on the starting line keeping me from making a run. With Chase's bike having a wounded transmission we seriously considered not running the final qualifier but since he was under the index his qualifying was low so we decided to give it our best shot to put it right on the number. We took power out again but it was a very smooth run and he ran 4.5901 to put him 19th out of 20 bikes in the field. A quick check of the qualifying ladder confirmed that we were paired up for first round!
We have raced each other plenty of times, previously on our street Hayabusas and have even met in the final round on a few occasions. I would like to say I was able to show the kid a thing or two but unfortunately, the Sunday matchup was rather anti-climatic when I went red pushing a little too hard to beat him. In the end it didn't matter as my electrical gremlins returned and the bike popped and misfired all the way down the track again. Chase was able to lift and ran a respectable 4.63. He then went on to get beat the following round by Jeff Jones who was running strong all day and went on to win the event. Be sure to check out the video below thanks to JT Norton!