GSS Performance

Wild Bunch Wars, Masterton Motorplex. January 25th & 26th
It was a very depleted team that set out from Auckland on the long trek to Masterton.
Steve ‘The Glove’ and Sandra, the original (and best) TB drove down leaving Trevor ‘The Legend’ to fly in on one of Air New Zealand’s finest.
Day 1 (Saturday) it was hot. Very hot. So hot that even the chickens were laying ready-fried eggs.
Q1, We paired up next to Dean Scott in his amazingly fast Ute. Two strong burnouts and two straight runs. Dean ran over 200mph and crossed the stripe first, but thanks to an amazing reaction from Steve we weren’t too far behind, taking 7.3 seconds at a slower than usual 180 mph.
Q2, Paired with David Tynan in the massive Impala. Two strong burnouts and a virtually identical 7.3 at 180 for us, with David having problems in the other lane.
Q3 next to Kurt Goodin. Kurt did a ¾ track burnout and just stopped. Apparently a shifter cable broke but we think he was really scared. Chaos did it’s thing all alone and another 7.3. I’d say ‘another 7.3 flashed up on the boards’ but the board in the left lane wasn’t working all weekend making it a bit frustrating for those watching from the start line, and the spectators in general.
Q4 and ‘The Glove’ said there was nothing to lose so he really concentrated on the lights. The timing ticket showed ‘LB3’ (or it could have been LBGT…..) which apparently means he left before the third amber went out. Great concentration there Stevo……..

At the end of the day Wild Bunch put on a great barbecue feed and Ryan entertained us all with a somewhat irreverent overview of the days events and various humorous trophies distributed including a ‘poo’ trophy for his boss........ It was suggested to Steve that he cut Ryan’s wages, but have you ever tried to take a banana from a monkey?

Sunday dawned and the weather forecast wasn’t great. Fortunately for us the car was still running. We’d had one of the MSD ignition boxes fail during qualifying but we’d mounted a ‘spare’ next to it on the dashboard which made swapping them over really easy.
Round 1 saw us in the lane next to Dean Scott again. Was he going to run another 200mph quarter? Would the extra bit of tuning we’d done make Chaos quicker? Would Steve actually wait for the green light? Would Ryan stop pairing us up with one of the quickest cars in the field? Would the weather hold? Unfortunately neither Dean or us would ever know the answers to the above as both of us failed to start with ignition problems. However, as we failed to start first I’m claiming that as a win. Shame no-one else saw it that way……
Back in the pits it was evident that the second MSD box had gone to the great transistor graveyard in the sky. We were out of competition but there was enough time (and weather!) for another run, so ‘The Glove’ was dispatched with his begging bowl to see if he could find another MSD box. Fortunately a couple of the other racers came good and we ended up with one other box and the promise of another.

One last run. The weather was coming in but it was still hot. A 7.5 wasn’t what we were looking for, but at least the car is still in one piece.
Thanks to Ryan and The Wild Bunch for organising this amazing meeting. This was the rain date for the earlier washed out meeting and happened on a weekend that had a load of other car stuff happening so the crowds were down a bit, but even so the reception from the public and the atmosphere in the pits was fantastic.
Thanks to Masterton Motorplex for a good track, and as always to their safety crew for keeping everyone racing safely.

I’m going for a lie down.

Meremere Dragway 'Wellington Invasion' 11th January

This time Steve 'The Glove' and Trevor 'The Legend' were joined by an unusually large crew: There was Sandra 'TB1', Mallory 'MJ', Carl 'Nacho' and a guest appearance from Memphis 'Randall' Driver on 'chute duty. Even 'Egg with eyes' wandered past and offered his help but the sun's glare reflected from his head was too much to take....

It was hot, and there were literally hundreds of cars in attendance. Our first qualifier came at around midday, and after the fire up and warm-up we pulled to the line for run No1. Unfortunately our MSD box didn't want to play anymore so we were pushed back and Q1 missed. At this time 'The Glove' did a very passable Tasmanian Devil impersonation causing Nisa and Derek to give him a damn good talking to (down boy, bad boy....)

After a sizeable wait, and with 'The Glove' calmed down and a replacement MSD box installed we lined up for Q2. Strong burnout and a straight 7.3. All good. Back to the pits for another couple of chapters of 'War and Peace'.

Eventually round one came around and we wiped the sleep from our eyes and towed out. Paired against 'Mustang' Murray we dialled 7.25 and ran 7.31. Win light in our lane. We didn't realise at the time that Murray had a bad misfire which essentially handed us the win.

As daytime turned to night-time the air started to cool, and the vivid array of colourful team shirts were gradually replaced by a motley collection of coats, jackets, sweatshirts and hoodies making Meremere look like an impromptu op-shop fashion show.

After another chapter, sleep etc, we got a bye in round 2. Just as well as Steve found the pedal on the right and ran 7.24 on a 7.25 dial in.

It was gone 10pm by the time we lined up against Nick Bogart in the final. We ran 7.21 on a 7.20 dial in, but unfortunately a red light replaced the win light in our lane handing Nick the win.

A great day all round, and after the luck we've had recently a second place felt like a win.

Thanks to everyone involved, particularly the safety crew who were kept busy digging people out of the sand pit.

Next time out is the rescheduled Wild Bunch meeting at Masterton in a scant couple of weeks. See you there!

Meremere Dragway 23rd/24th November.
Test & Tune and Outlaw 71 Round 1

Saturday 23rd saw Steve (The Glove) and Trevor (The Legend) wending their weary way to Meremere Dragway for Test & Tune. It was our first outing of the season and due to the amount of changes we’d made since our awful season last year we were understandably apprehensive. Mrs Glove (the original TB) was on towing duty for the day and our latest crew member, Mallory ‘MJ’ Johnson took over back-up duties. Grant ‘Egg With Eyes’ Hannah couldn’t make it on the Saturday as he was washing his hair. 4,000 grit and Farecla G3 we suspect.
Lining the car up for the first run of the day, The Glove was on strict instruction to “Just launch and make sure it goes through the gears,” and for once he listened. The car sounded strong and, pleased to report no issues.
Then the Meremere gremlins attacked. There was Timing computer drop-outs, rain, timing computer, rain, timing computer, oil down, rain. We did manage one more run and everything worked well, but there were no times so nothing learned, but better still, nothing broken.

Sunday dawned, and we were shocked that Steve, a happily married man, had stayed at Meremere overnight and slept with a member of another team 😲. But hey, we’re a progressive team and won’t judge so we’d like to congratulate Steve and Jim Patterson on their upcoming nuptuals…..

Two qualifiers on Saturday morning. The first was a 7.25ET at 190mph which brought us back to where we were the season before last and also gave us top qualifier, the second was a very out of shape 7.7 at 130 with Steve taking in the scenery on both sides of the track….
Round 1 we were paired with Ian Deboo. We ran 7.24 on a 7.20 dial-in, but Ian ran a near perfect 7.051 on a 7.05 dial in.
Fortunately Outlaw 71 gets all of the cars out at every round, so we lined up for round 2. Side-by-side byes with Ian Deboo (again). This time we had the winning ticket with a 7.27 on a 7.2 dial in, Ian running 7.9 on a 7.2 dial in. Why couldn’t he have done that in round 1?
The last run of the day was a bye. Steve looked at Trevor with a steely stare and said ‘Do something’. There was a blur of spanners and ‘something’ was done. That something netted a 7.1 at 193 and those 3 little letters we all want to see: S*M. No, sorry: NPB!
Thanks as always to the guys at Meremere, the track prep was awesome and the safety guys kept everyone safe.
Thanks to the Outlaw 71 organisers and admin, and thanks to the weather Gods for making Sunday the best race day we’ve had in ages.

See you in a few weeks at Masterton!

Just got the new uniforms for the GSS Race Team.
Can't wait to try them out!