Pomona NHRA Friday Chevy Notes
31 January 1998
FUNNY CAR -- CHEVROLET CAMARO Z28RON CAPPS, COPENHAGEN CAMARO Z28 FUNNY CAR, second place, 4.965/309.06 mph. Ron is awaiting the arrival of his new 1998 Camaro body, which is expected tomorrow. "Everybody was a little behind. We got caught behind the 8-ball. Chuck Etchells was in dire need for a body because he had no bodies because he switched from the Dodge this year. 'Snake' (team owner Don Prudhomme) felt it was the right thing for him to step up and give Chuck the first body, now that we're teammates. The second body came only a few days ago. It's been a mad dash to get ready. We figure the '97 body we have on this car is good, it's run as low as 4.92 and as fast as 315 mph, so with the chance of rain on Saturday we're going to bring out the '98 body on Saturday, with the plan to run it the rest of the year (but not here). Having it here it will give us time to get the body ready, mounted and teched." ON THIS RUN: "It was a great run. It was kind of encouraging to have (Al) Hoffman run the 4.86 in the pair before us because it let us know that the track was good enough. Roland (Leong, crew chief) had it set up pretty soft to make sure we got into the show and that's what it did. Roland's been known for his savviness and it showed."
CHUCK ETCHELLS, KENDALL/MA MA ROSA'S PIZZA/SUPERWINCH CAMARO Z28 FUNNY CAR, third qualifier, 5.027/308.43. Etchells is sporting the all-new 1998 Camaro Z28 body: "We ran the car soft. We were just trying to get it down the track safely. We didn't want to go out and smoke the tires. I got a little lost out there, I shut it down early, we probably would have run a 310 (mph). You don't lose e.t. when you shut it off that far down the track, but you lose a little speed. The Camaro was nice and straight, I hardly had to steer it at all. It just went right down the track. I can see so much better than before, it's like I'm in a different world. The windshield extends a lot lower down the hood. Before, I was looking at the track 300 ft. out. And now it's right in front, I can see the groove. You can see the front of the car and you're able to drive it better that way."
PRO STOCK -- Chevrolet Camaro Z28
LARRY MORGAN, RAYBESTOS CAMARO Z28 FUNNY CAR, 12th qualifier, 7.019/196.24. "We're happy with the new body. It slipped the clutch too much and I shifted one gear a little too high and we think we had too much spoiler on it. We're not sure about it because we haven't been in the wind tunnel. We think we can run three, four hundredths quicker tomorrow. We are real pleased to get in (the field)." ON THE NEW CAMARO BODY: "It feels good. It feels like a new Z28. We are really pleased with it. We were real soft, we didn't want to take any chances. We need to stay in the program in case it rains tomorrow. We were real concerned about that. So, tomorrow we will put a little more clutch in it and try to fine tune it. I figure we can run a 6.98 in the morning at least. We're looking forward to it. We just need more time to test all the little things that we changed on it."
KURT JOHNSON, ACDELCO CAMARO Z28, 19th qualifier, 7.047/196.93. "We're spinning and shaking out there. We had to change the suspension around to adapt to this bodystyle as to height of suspension. It's kind of thrown us off as in our setup. It doesn't have enough traction right now, so we have to compensate with the 4-link setup. The clutch is slipping, but we are still spinning tires. It starts shaking really bad, we're off five, six hukndredths in the first 300 feet. If we got that back we could run with the front runners up there. We haven't got computer data from the last two runs. We have to guess at it a little bit. We have a glitch in the computer. When you take these things apart and put them back together again the electrons are not happy. They're probably moving, but not all in the right direction. We just hope Mother Nature cooperates with us and we can get at least one run tomorrow with the right setup."
