APIRA Springspeed Nationals 2016

We arrived at Shakespeare County Raceway with a little apprehension following the car trouble we experienced at the Festival of Power, Nick and Cristiann had checked the whole  car and found a swollen “O” ring in the injection system and also a couple of a new set of spark plugs were a little bit weak.

The crew were confident that the car was back to normal but due to my work commitments we hadn’t had time to test the car.

Brad won this event last year so we were confident of a strong result and looking forward to qualifying, the car sounded strong and on the first burnout we could tell the car was fixed.

The track was cold and had been wet, Brad lost traction at mid track but still ran 8.34 @ 165 mph with 1.1 seconds to 60 foot we knew the car was back on form, Brad also pulled an 0.04 second reaction time so the team were buoyant.

Monday’s 1st round of eliminations we were racing Joe Stevens, a real tough opponent, especially at his home track, Brad overcame Joe to take the first round win.

Round 2 of eliminations we faced Jack Brewster, Brad had lane choice and we took the left lane, Brad pulled a great 0.02 light but at 330 ft the car turned sharp right, here’s the quote from journalist Tog from Eurodragster.com ;-

Good driving job by Brad Jackson in his race against Jack Brewster, the Lucas Oil dragster made a hard right about 300 feet out but Brad kept a hold of it.

Brad had to correct the car and made a valiant attempt to catch Jack but although he still ran a 9.02 @ 161 mph Jack took the win.

We were eliminated, but we were thankful that Brad did a fantastic driving job having his biggest “moment” of his 6 year career and brought him and the car home safely.