Mod Nationals Recap:
“This was our very first trip down to Mod Nationals at SGMP, and although we struggled all weekend fighting with the car, we were still able to pull off the win because of our RELENTLESS efforts! Everyone who knows us, knows how dedicated we are…I am proud of my team and what we accomplished this weekend…and of course beyond grateful for all of the support from our friends, families, sponsors and industry leaders…THANK YOU to everyone who has reached out to us as well!
I won’t go into detail with all of the technical stuff and list of issues we fought, but I will say that I think we did what no one has ever done before AT/DURING a race…we showed up with one blower combination and switched to a completely DIFFERENT blower combination…that we not only had to work on quickly in the pits, without errors, late into the night, retune the entire EFI/engine system, retune the suspension, relearn how to drive it (yes they drive so different), and everything in-between…those who are dedicated racers, know how technical and difficult this truly is, and we were working non-stop, from the minute we pulled into SGMP, every second between rounds and through the nights…when most probably would have thrown in the towel and given up, we did not.
Long story short(ish), we showed up Thursday for testing and were able to make 2 passes on a completely new untested setup…we were having issues with the Procharger D1X setup & new Holley Sniper intake manifold (so we thought), so we switched manifolds back to what we know worked with the P1X setup we previously ran, putting the CobraJet intake back on for Friday’s first rounds of qualifying…seeing data/things getting worse, we were out of options regarding the D1X…there was no way throwing any other procharger head unit on would get us very far/fast due to the converter we had in the car…we decided to skip Q3 and begin working on the switch…now when I setup the car, I tried to design it to be able to switch to the top mount/TVS supercharger setup that we use to run quickly, but I never actually tried it. Hoping that I remembered everything needed and that everything would actually fit/work we made the commitment and the swap to the VMP/Magnuson Gen3R 2.65L TVS setup and worked into Friday Night/Saturday morning…on barely any sleep we went out for Q4 with a safe/soft tune up (mind you we never actually ran this Gen3R on this motor/trans/converter setup, and always ran the 2.3L TVS for NMRA races. The 2.65L TVS hasn’t been on the car since Maryland last year (and that was a totally different car from this year). We tried to turn it up a little for Q5 and were bummed to lose out the chance to run Q6 due to cold track temps/safety concerns.
We knew we were running out of time to get the car sorted out fast, we knew we had some engine/power issues somewhere, and furthermore had a limited selection of pulley options with us as well as belt options, so we could not even run the boost levels we wanted, and had to plan out our use of belts as well since we only had a few in the correct sizes. So we went into E1 with a band aided car, sent it and by the top of the run, had melted the belt off of it but was able to take the win…quickly back to the pits we went, scraping mounds of melted rubber off all the ribbed pulleys and getting a new belt on it for the next run…and of course tried to turn up the tune up a little bit. For the semi-finals, the car went into a huge power wheelie, but luckily our opponent red lit and we took the win in that round as well. For the finals we were up against the best, Bill Putnam who took the win against me in the finals in Bowling Green a month ago and he was one of the fastest cars in our class here for this race too…we changed the belts again in the pits before the run just in case, took a little bit out of the tune to keep the front end down, and was going to go out there and give it all our all, as we were by far the underdog. We both let go of the transbrake, and he seemed to be pulling away and I thought it was over, but slowly I was pulling and getting closer and closer and I literally gave the car everything she had and right at the end was able to go around Bill and take the win, in which I thought was impossible with the car in its current state, but we raced our race and the belt gods rained down on us finally after a weekend of belt hell and unfortunately for Bill, his belt broke during the run allowing us to just get around him.
Racing takes skills, dedication, and A LOT of LUCK…and after all of our relentless work, we were able to take home the All Blower Pro Class WIN! I do want to thank Bill, and his whole UPR crew for their support not only all year, but I have the most respect for Bill, his racing program and more importantly his sportsmanship…no matter who wins when we face each other, there is nothing but mutual respect and that makes this friendly rivalry fun!
This Mod Nationals event was truly unforgettable and we had a blast despite all the issues we had with the car. I want to send out a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us this year in our racing program! I have so many awesome Sponsors to thank as well and cannot express into words how grateful I am to have them onboard with us! We are looking forward to next year and the 2022 season! THANK YOU!”
-Samantha Moore
Video Recap:
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