A Few Bumps in the Road

By Susan Wade
DRO file photos by Jeff Burk

he road to Hell is paved with noble intentions. But the left lane presumably is wide and smooth and too tantalizingly easy to drive -- unlike at Pacific Raceways.

The Seattle stop has made the National Hot Rod Association's Western Swing diabolically difficult. And drag racers are losing patience with the Fiorito family's promises that they're going to transform the facility into a postcard-pretty palace.

The left lane was the tail that wagged the pooch at the July 25-27 CARQUEST Auto Parts NHRA Nationals. In the pro classes, 35 of 45 winners came from the right lane, which by consensus was the lesser of two evils.

"Ain't neither one of them stellar, trust me," Funny Car driver Scotty Cannon said. And that was about the most positive comment Cannon could muster.

"It's beating our cars to death. It's so bad it broke the bolts out of the back end of the car," he said "Ray Charles could see there's speed bumps."

Pro Stock veteran Warren Johnson called them moguls. But Cannon wasn't in the mood for diplomacy.

"It's got to be a damn nightmare for the crew chiefs. They've got to be pulling their hair out. It's ridiculous," Cannon said. "How do you tune for speed bumps? You hope you get lucky and it makes it over one bump and don't hit the other bumps. You just hope and pray. You got too many other things to worry about than 10 durn speed bumps."

Cannon said he understands that at every track, each lane has subtle differences. But he said both drivers should have an equal chance to win. "Good gracious, you can't put one guy in the dirt and one guy on a good track," he said.

"They ought to fix it like they've said they were going to fix it the last four or five years," he said. "All I ever hear is how many improvements we've done to Seattle. I hear that two weeks in a month. I come in here and I don't see nothin'. Well, maybe they've cut a few trees down. I'd like to have a good, sweet race track out there to race on."

He also wanted the answer to a Catch-22 question.

"Usually when fuel cars drop a hole, the car starts misfiring. And they're prone and known to throw the rods out of it. Then we get fined or penalized for oiling the track down," he said, setting up the problem. "They talk about 'First is worst.' Now, hold on a minute. . . . Who was worse? Them guys for having the speed bumps for us to run over and then us dropping the hole and oiling the track down? Or just because we're dumb-ass drag racers, we shouldn't do that? Is that the way it works? I ain't so sure. That's the question I'd like to ask.

"If I was NHRA, I couldn't even justify charging a man for oiling down the track here, unless he just left his oil pan off or something. It's stupid. It's frickin' ridiculous," he said.

Want to make Cannon really angry? Remind him that NHRA enlists the help of drivers in the name of entertainment.

"Until the tracks, especially this one, get up to equal," Cannon said, "I don't think NHRA or none of the track owners should say one damn word to none of us about how we can make the show better. Because the way I think the show should be made better is for our cars to go out there and run good. Give us something."

OWNERS PLEAD THEIR CASE

They got little more than reassurances from Pacific Raceways President Jason Fiorito that his family, who owns the property, has a terrific master plan. The perturbing reality is that it won't be completed until 2007 or 2008. These drivers can be placated by dining at Salty's on Alki Beach or gawking at majestic Mount Rainier only so many times.

Fiorito said his family has repaved part of the concrete launch pad in an effort to make a smoother transition to the asphalt portion of the track. Bazemore said he hopes he'll still be racing by the time improvements are finished, and his crew chief, Lee Beard, likened the nickel-and-dime spiffs to whitening one's smile by bleaching one tooth at a time.