We were called to the start line, Brad started the car and there wasn’t any oil pressure !
We shut the car off and made the decision to tow the car to the start and then just start the car on tick over and break the beams for the run, this is what we did and towed the car back to the pits, but with only 1.5 hours before eliminations 2 the pressure was on to find and fix the issue. Nick Good and Cristiann Carlo stripped the engine to find that the plunger had stuck in the oil pump. This was a real shock to the team because Nick and Cristiann always prepared our car to the highest standards. The guys put the car back together and we just started the car and had oil pressure when we were called for eliminations 2, an absolutely fantastic job by the team!
We were very nervous what to dial because we hadn’t any data for Sunday but the weather was very similar to Saturday so Brad wanted a 7.70 but with low air density I wanted 7.68, Brad won the discussion and we dialled 7.70 but we ran a 7.78 and lost the race to Dan Giles by 0.009, this was the closest race of the day and 9 thousands of a second equated to 27.59 inches at 175 mph !
So we were out, we knew that if we had gone only one more round Brad could have either won or finished runner up, we waited for the class to finish and both Ian Powell and Scott Hauser were also eliminated, this made for a nervous wait to see what Rick Cook and Simon Gough would do.