And now for the rest of the story

Words and Photos by Jeff Burk
4/26/05

Continued from IHRA AT ROCKINGHAM

DRO file photo

By now everyone who cares knows that the team of team owner/tuner Jim Oddy and driver Al Billes got their first win for their sponsor Summit Racing Equipment at the just completed IHRA Spring Nationals at Rockingham. But there is much more to this story than the team's rather impressive win. The win was accomplished despite a series of events that resemble a Hollywood script.

First, despite qualifying at the their first two races of the season, the new team of Oddy and Billes was really struggling. They were struggling as in qualifying number one at the NHRA event at Houston and then losing in the first round. Struggling in the fact that since the first race of the team's season at San Antonio they had changed virtually everything on the car except the paint job and the car still shook like a wet dog almost every time Billes let out the clutch.

The team came to the Rockingham event after a marathon test session in the days prior to the race that saw them record a bunch of 4.20 eighth-mile laps. Performances that were good enough to qualify, but not good enough to be a serious threat to win.

They arrived at Rockingham and instead of being parked on the asphalt as is customary for a driver who finished second in Championship points the previous season, they were directed to a spot in the dirt. They took that slight in stride and prepared for the first round of

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qualifying Friday night. While sitting in the lanes, a storm blew in, the rain came down in buckets and qualifying was canceled. So, back to the trailer and a long wait until the following day's qualifying session. That's when things really got strange.

Al Billes had been welding on a part the previous night and injured his finger with a piece of welding rod and the wound became infected. He decided to go to the track medical center and while he was getting the finger worked on complained to the doctor that he was having some bad heartburn. After hearing Al's description of the pain, the Doc decided that just to be safe he would give Al an electrocardiogram. He didn't like what he saw.

The doctor drove Billes back to the team's trailer and informed Oddy and the rest of the crew that he believed that what he saw on the chart was bad enough that Al needed to go to the hospital immediately to be checked. He said that there was a remote possibility that Al could require immediate heart surgery! A stunned crew and Jim Oddy watched Al being driven off to the hospital just as they were called to the lanes for qualifying.

No one could think about the race or the car or qualifying. Two agonizing hours later Al returned from the hospital with a clean bill of health and a bottle of industrial strength Maalox. It was just a bad case of heartburn.

Alright, whew! Now they just had time to prep the car for a one-shot qualifying effort. No pressure on the driver and crew now, right? They changed everything on the car again to compensate for the change in conditions. As they pull into the lanes Dan and Dave Oddy are still mapping the ignition curve.

Almost every pair in front of them is going into tire shake and blowing the tires off. Al drove the car into the lights, staged, let out the clutch and the car went straight down the track with a 6.31 good enough for 11th.

The next day the team shook off the nightmare of the preceding week and put on a professional and dominant performance to win the race convincingly. You knew that, of course, but now you know the rest of the story!

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