March 12^th, IDRC Lonestar Shootout at Houston Raceway Park.

This was my first time in the track so I didn’t expect to do well but you have to start somewhere. My first 2 runs where kind of a joke. 16.482 (ok first time down the ¼ mile but not bad, at least I didn’t end up in the wall), then 16.523 (oops, let off the NOS in 5^th gear), and then 15.908 (now that’s better, the bottle heater REALLY makes a difference). I could have gone home happy and not done anything more. I figured lets do it again. 15.694 (ok, I’m hooked, by the way, the other lane was a ’98 Eclipse GS-T that did a 15.693 battling the Turbo charged Eclipses in a SOHC was a major power trip). Ok round 1, a RS with full-gutted interior. I dialed in a 15.6 he dialed it at 16.4 (ok, I thought, he’s sandbagging) he did a 16.495 to my 15.670. He won because of his Dial in and r/t but talking to him afterwards he was nervous, this is his recollection: From the line he’s looking in his rear view mirror he sees my front end lift up and thinks “Oh shit he just hit the NOS”. Looked in the mirror again “He’s really moving, gaining very quickly”. Looked again “Where’d he go” (I was right beside him in his blind spot). We finished shortly afterwards and he was .095 over his dial in with a .584 r/t to my .070 over with a .763 r/t. And all of this with the stock headers, 3 chamber FlowMaster, and a few hundred pounds of speakers in the trunk (Hey it was my first race). Now I have HS Headers, DynoMax UltraFlow and yes I will remove the speakers for the April race in Ennis. I am hoping to get closer to the 14’s.

Real Video of 15.67 Run ~420K

Timeslips - below are the car numbers

I am car# 186

Car 13 was a 92-93 Eclipse GS-X (Turbo, AWD) All stock except blow off valve and clutch running 12.9.

Car 275 was a 98 Eclipse GS-T (Turbo) Mostly stock, only lost by .001.

Car 30 was a 97 Eclipse RS striped interior, I had the faster car but I lost because of reaction time.