Vegas again, and it gets very interesting...

Here we are at the Las Vegas Divisonal race. Stock, (our class) was not sheduled first as usual. In fact, we finally got our first run in today (Friday) somewhere around 5 pm ish, and we ran pretty good. We were top qualifier for the first round, with two Mustangs right behind us. Then we waited and waited for our second run.

If our top qualifing position held up, this would be three consecutuve races where we ran "Stock" where we were also top qualifier. But before we become too overconfident, we still have to survive two more qualifying runs.

OK, second qualifying run is finally here. The three cars right behind us in qualifying came up before we did. The Orange truck who had qualified fourth ran good, but dint better his time a lot.
A lot of other folks then ran, and their times were all over the board, as many were between .006 and .010 faster than thier first run. Another group of cars ran about the same times as before, and a few did actually better their earlier times. There were a couple of cars who had not run the earlier qualifying run, and they put down some respectable numbers, but were all still behind us.

Then came the first of the two Mustangs, (this was the one directly behind us). He ran a 10.00 which moved him into the number one qualifying spot, moving us to number two. Then the second Mustang ran, and it ran a 9.99 taking over the number one spot, while dropping us still more into number three.

Then it was our turn. Our previous run was 10.3x I forget exactly what it was, and that really doesn't matter now, since before we even ran again, we had already been dropped from first, down into the number three spot.

We had a good start, and ran good all the way to the finish line where we posted a 10.18 which was good enough to move us back past the two mustangs and back into the number one qualifier spot.

But as we crossed the finish line, we had quite an interesting development. Our $1000 carbon fiber hood, held on by twelve to fourteen dzus fasteners, somehow broke loose and went went flying up about 18 feet into the air, flipped several times and came down in multiple pieces over the wall, away from the track.

I was filming from the starting line, and was already moving the camera since we had crossed the finish, but I did manage to catch albeit a bit blurry, the hood flying into the air. I didn't see it happen until I much later replayed the run.

The first I knew that anything had happened, I heard the track announcer say "we have a hood over the wall". I thought, and probably said out loud, "that can't be our hood, we have more than a dozen fasteners, and I had just checked them all right before we ran". But you never know.. So we buzzed down the return road to encounter Jim and Pam Marshall coming towards us, who said the hood came off your car!

What a sinking feeling. Something I never imagined could happen, had just happened. I was told that the hood was in two pieces, and the safety crew had the pieces on their truck. We met up with the truck, and sure enough, the hood was in two pieces. The main flat hood was one piece, and although it had some damage, it was basically complete,but broken behind the scoop location.. The other peice was the scoop itself. And although it showed that it had been poorly bonded to the hood, it was also reasonably undamaged.

I grabbed hold of the large flat piece, and hopped on our pit vehicle, and Jim Marshall grabbed the scoop and hopped on his pit vehicle, and we sped back to our pit area. Where the car had already arrived.

Several of many dzus fasteners, all of which always seemed like a bad idea to me, tore holes through the carbon fiber hood, and almost all of the brackets were badly bent, with one so badly bent, that it bent the metal on the edge of the fender. This one appeared to be the last fastener to let loose, and apparently it didn't want to let go. All of these brackets were made of a pretty light gauge of metal and had always concerned me, as even bumping them as you put the hood in place often bent them, making the challenging hood alignment an ever bigger problem.

Based on the poor construction of the hood, and the overall bad design of the entire attaching system, I think someone surely owes me a new hood!!

And I would also anticipate that although we were the first, we will not be the last Challenger Drag Pak to lose a hood. Regardless, we were extremely lucky on at least two fronts: First, Keith, the driver was unhurt, secondly, the car was mostly unhurt as the hood flew over car instead of possibly hitting the windshield, putting the driver and car in jeopardy, hitting the roof, etc..

Now, we have one more qualifying run tomorrow, and one run of eliminations. So, we need to get a functional hood in place on the car, before we run again. These hoods are not in stock at your local auto parts store, and who knows where we might ever find one. We could have ordered an extra hood when we ordered the car, but quite frankly, the idea of a hood coming loose and flying through the air to its own destruction, just never occurred to me. And since my local Chrysler/Dodge dealer had already ripped me for an extra $8000 over sticker price on this car, I was hardly in the mood to stock up on replacement parts to his profit.

And now, I certainly can't afford to buy one even if one were available, but I also don't think I should have to buy another one. So what can we do now? Could this be the end of our West coast adventure? What next?

Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of the "Hood-less Challenger"....

David