TOYOTA SPLINTERS

When the Agent got the heads-up from Del Worsham at the recent March Meet that the CSK team would change the body on Phil Burkhart’s Monte Carlo to a Celica, Worsham knew there weren’t a lot of back-up units available. However, nobody on the team thought they’d shatter one of the last Celicas in captivity on Friday’s Vegas night time session with a top-end explosion. As Worsham put it, “We’ve got one more Toyota body back in the shop, but it’s in worse shape than this one was when we got it.”

The Toyota body that shattered had previously survived supercharger explosions with both Jerry Toliver and Jim Head, and had various stress fractures. Burkhart was unscathed in his top end explosion except for shrapnel marks to his newly painted helmet.

Saturday morning the team dusted off a CSK Monte Carlo from the rafters of the transporter to replace their Toyota body. The blue car headed for the staging lanes as a “Monte-Celica” wearing Toyota and Toyota Racing Development signage for the first session on Saturday where it ran a shut-off 6.845. Immediately after the pass the team was visited by a GM Racing representative who explained that if the Toyota livery remained on a GM product it would be very expensive for the team. The blue Checkers Schucks & Kragen flopper driven by Burkhart returned as a Monte Carlo without Toyota stickers for the final round run of 4.946/310.98. (Zak Hawthorne photos) [4-18-2005]

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IHRA CHANGES SOME DATES

There will be a couple more Sundays in your racing future at IHRA, as they have changed the format on two of their national events. The Torco Race Fuels Northern Nationals at Martin, MI now will be Friday-Sunday, Aug. 12-14, and the World Nationals at Norwalk, OH will be Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 25-28.

The May 26-28 ACDelco Nationals at Richmond, VA will remain a Thurs.-Sat. format, however. [4-18-2005]

TESTING. . .TESTING 1, 2, 3

In an effort to come up with solutions to top end incidents with engines running well past the finish line, NHRA is now testing a remote controlled shutoff to be utilized by the Safety Safari. The mini-receiver unit is designed to interrupt the ignition circuit.

An NHRA tech official handed the device to funny car pilot Jack Wyatt who was picked to test at the Las Vegas POWERade event, but eventually Wyatt decided against the experiment to focus on qualifying the Race Girl/LEM Instruments-sponsored Firebird. Even with help from Chuck Worsham, Wyatt missed the cut by over half a second in the difficult adjusted altitude and hot weather conditions. (Zak Hawthorne photo) [4-18-2005]