~By Ed Evans
The weekend was predicted to be overcast on Saturday and Sunday for the 15th Annual Houston Drags. On the trip up from Rupert Friday, it rained all the way to Smithers, after that we didn’t see any rain in the daytime for the rest of the weekend.
The Friday races and burnout contest clicked off with no problems, with Harley Bell winning the Burnout Contest with his shop truck. I think that the flashing lights won it for him though.
Saturday’s action started off a little slower with a slick track. The cars ran time trials as it was too slick yet for the fast feature cars.
After the time trials, the West Coast Door Slammers made their first appearance. The cars put on quite a show, doing long, loud, smoky burnout’s, some of them a full 1/8 mile in length. But it was hard for them to get traction past the 60 foot mark. Wade Sjostrom in his 1957 Chevy Bel-air seemed to have it figured out first and after tuning out 300 horsepower, he ran a blistering pass, but was running on the 1/8 mile timer not the ¼ mile timer. It was still a quick pass of 4.88 seconds in the 1/8th mile. The other cars like Reg Deforest and his 1923 blown altered also seemed to find traction later in the day, but he did spin through most of the ¼ mile track.
However it did rain hard Sunday morning and there were concerns that the Sunday race might be cancelled. But it was decided to wait until 10 am to make the call. At 9:30 the skies cleared up and even though it was overcast, the full slate of racing was run. The West Coast Door Slammers had to call it a weekend though as the rain took off whatever rubber that there was for a sticky track.
Next up: Is this weekend as the final race of the 2011 season in Terrace. The Bike/sled drag race is called Bike Wars. So if you have a bike or a track ready sled this is your opportunity to make some runs down the track for bragging rights. There will be all of the other exciting class racing, as racers compete for the year long points series.