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| Wednesday, April 14th KOOKS OUTLAW ELIMINATOR. We welcome KOOKS Headers as a new sponsor for HDRA. They are sponsoring the OUTLAW ELIMINATOR for the season. KOOKS makes an absolute first class product, whether it be a catalog item, or custom "one-off" systems. They were a fixture on Long Island for years, but recently made the move down south to North Carolina. KOOKS has been with us since we got our start in 2007, and we look forward to continue working with them in the future. KARL'S EAST COAST. Another new sponsor, this one from Warwick, RI. While specializing in Mustangs, they are a full service Speed Shop for all makes and models. They have VP race fuel for sale, as well as alcohol. They also have a chassis dyno for those looking to get the best tune for their car. FUEL TRUCK TO BE ON HAND RACE NIGHTS. For those who want race fuel at the track, we just learned the Sunoco fuel truck will be manned on Friday nights. While they only supply leaded fuel for the stock cars, they will have 110 unleaded on hand for the Friday night street cars. As most of you know, if you have catalytic convertors, you must run unleaded. 
Monday, April 26th Anybody know this car? We met the owner of this really cool, but we screwed up and didn't get his name & number. If anybody can pass that info along, we'd appreciate it. It's a genuine "Barnfind", as it sat in a California barn for 30 years. This car, according to the owner, did over 150mph at Bonneville decades ago. Anyway, he's on the ever growing list of people excited about the Friday night Drags & Cruise, and plans to down our way on a regular basis. HDRA on the move! We've never made it a secret that we will be expanding our form of racing to other areas & tracks. While we are looking close to home, we will be agressively seeking new markets up and down the coast. We have contacted Oswego Speedway (NY), and have a tentative midweek date of August 18th or 19th (Wed. or Thur.). Nothing is etched in stone right now, but we will be firming things upponce we both get through our openers. Oswego is an absolute first class 5/8 mile paved oval. Their headline class is the Super Modifieds... they are scary fast! Expect more dates and facilities added to the HDRA schedule. Tuesday, March 30th New changes to our home page. Our latest news will be on this page. Older news will be archived to our "HDRA News" page. This is in an effort to simplify and make it more readable for those new to our events. We just had too much for one page. Less than 6 weeks to go! It's gratifying to see the interest continue to build. Every day new people learn that Drag racing is back in Connecticut. For those new to us that are looking to race, go to the "Rules" page to get an idea of the different classes. Very simply, any car can be raced and have a chance to win. Our handicapping system makes all cars, fast or slow, competitive. For those that raced with us in 2007/2008, we are now allowing all-out race cars to compete. Below are pictures of some of the cars that will be showing up. More later. Keep those pictures coming! Friday, March 19th We welcome two new sponsors! ALTERED IMAGE CUSTOMS from Plainfield will be sponsoring 2 nights; the May 28th, "Street Rod & Gasser Shootout", and the June 11th "Diesel Shootout".It's pretty amazing taking a tour of the shop... they do everything from Rods to Lowriders to nosebleed height 4x4's. We also welcome MANCHESTER MOTORSPORTS, a division of Manchester Honda. They will be sponsoring the "Honda-Acura Shootout" on June 25th. We went up to see them Wednesday... the complex is huge! They do a big business on high performance parts for the Hondas and Acuras. June 25th was the date for the "B.O.P. Shootout, which will now be moved. We will announce the new date shortly. GEARS. There are many racers building cars now that a race track is within reasonable driving distance. One of the questions that comes up is what gear to run. Our suggestion is to run 1/4 mile gears. Two reasons. First, cars will launch fine. Second, now that you have a car, perhaps you now have the itch to go racing elsewhere on a Saturday or Sunday... your gearing is already set up for the 1/4 mile, and you don't have to change your car. Now, if you have a rear like the Ford 9" where you can swap out the pumpkin fairly easy, perhaps having an 1/8 mile gear would better suit the car for our venue, but that all depends on what tranny you're running, and how well your car will hook up. Only you can make that determination. The weather is breaking, and the opening day is getting closer. Keep those pics coming! We now have classifieds! Wednesday, March 10th We have now added a "Classified" page on our site, and it's free! We're keeping it car oriented, we prefer mostly high performance stuff (that's a technical term). Newest ads will be placed on top, older ones will drop down. We will do our best to accomodate pictures, but we're not turning your ad into a photo collection. To place an ad, simply email us at sparky@100footdrags.com and we will place it within a day or so. Please do your best to write it as best you can. We're not keen on having to edit other people's ads, nor do we want to be correcting an ad full of spelling errors. Ex: the things that stop your car are "brakes" not "breaks". Craigslist can be very entertaining. Anyway, if needed, we will be making changes as we go along and fine tune it. Make sure you know who you are dealing with, and watch out for the scammers! We found the tree & timing system from CT Dragway! The current owner may part with it, but we're not sure yet. Really enjoyed talking to him about it the other day. Even if he does part with it, we're not sure whether it will suit our needs, nor do we know if it is reliable, and can be fixed if it breaks (or is it "brakes"?) down. Our bet is that it's around 30 years old or better. We've been looking at Portatree for to handle our timing needs, and that is realistically the direction we'll take. They make real nice equipment, and we know if there's a problem, it will absolutely get fixed. Keep spreading the word! Keep sending pictures!  
Friday, March 5th AND THE PHONE CALLS OF NEW RACERS KEEP COMING IN: While we've been concentrating on cars from the Comp, Outlaw, and Nostalgia eliminators, we can't ignore the all important Street Eliminator. Bob Pepe jr., the owner of the Z28 Camaro pictured above, just got added to the list of new people that will part of our Friday night extravaganza. While all types of cars will be found in Street, Bob's Camaro is probably typical of what will be found in that class. Understandably, he can't wait for the May 7th opener. Also, interest in the Street Bike Eliminator is growing as well, as more riders find out we have a place for them in oour 100 foot Drags. Whilwe don't have a specific class for them, we also welcome quads if they wish to make some passes. The quad shown above had one of the fastest times of the day! SPREAD THE WORD! TELL YOUR FRIENDS! SEND EMAILS ABOUT OUR SITE! Tuesday, March 2nd NEW SPONSOR FOR THE PONY CAR SHOOTOUT: We welcome ATOMIC PERFORMANCE to our growing list of HDRA sponsors. Check out their website at www.atomicperformance.com . If you need it, they probably have it. They will be the sponsors for our "Pony Car Shootout" on September 10th. The cars eligible include, of course, Mustangs, Camaros, Firebirds, but also include Barracudas, Challengers, Javelins & AMX's (remember them?). Did we forget any cars? I'm sure we did. Shoot us an email to help fill the list. FEB/MAR NEWSLETTER: We have a new newsletter out which gives an overall view of what the season will look like. It also has a brief description of the classes we will be running. Our last newsletter was used mostly to show sponsor prospects how the newsletter would look. This new edition is more to get information out to the public. We had a small initial printing, and those copies are already gone. This was done on purpose. This author is known to have clumsy fingers on the keyboard, and spelling is not our strong point. Combine that with the fact that some of the work was done at 2am, and well, let's just say we will have new copies available tomorrow. We're still looking for a way to get this on our website in a way that it's readable. This author is still fumbling around learning the ways of the web. Have a shop or business in which having some copies on the counter would get out to new racers or fans? Let us know, and we'll get some out to you. THE OOPS DEPARTMENT: Larry's Auto Machine is one of our good sponsors that signed on, and we screwed up their phone number in their ad. The proper number to reach them is 860-449-9112. The number we put in was their fax. Our apologies. The new printing goes out tomorrow with the correct number. That'll teach me to put these things together at 2am. Monday Feb. 22nd SCHEDULE CHANGES: We've made some changes to the schedule to accomodate our new sponsors, which are now reflected on our schedule page. As we sell more sponsorships, we suspect other changes will come, so keep an eye on that page. One change is the June 4th show, now sponsored by LARRY'S AUTO MACHINE, which replaces the Corvette Shootout. Anyone with an engine from Larry's will be eligible for that event. The Corvette Shootout is moved to August 20th. The Cadillac Shootout is moved to Sunday, July 18th during our Mid-season Championship. The Buick Shootout is now the "B.O.P. Shootout". Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs are all invited to this event. They're all great cars, and we felt they should be accomodated. Sunday, Feruary 21st We welcome new sponsors to our growing list: Larry's Auto Machine out of Groton, CT will be sponsoring "Larry's Auto Machine Shootout night" on June 4th. Anyone with an engine from Larry's is eligible for that additional event. We will be moving the Corvette Shootout to another night. Larry's has a complete machine shop and engine building facility, complete with a dyno room. They have plans to add a chassis dyno. Tires plus Brakes will be sponsoring the Memorial Day Weekend event on May 21st. "Tires Plus" is a full repair shop located in East Lyme, CT, specializing in wheels and tires. They're located right next to the Stop & Shop. Boost Mobile of New London will be sponsoring the June 18th "Mustang Shootout" night. Located on Coleman St., they have become the unofficial phone provider for the HDRA. Great phones, on the Sprint network, unlimited talk and text for 50 bucks. You can't beat it. We will be making some changes to this site, as we will be adding more pages. We will have a "Sponsor's News" page, as well as a page for all the pictures we're collecting. NEWSLETTER TIME: We are putting together a Feb/Mar newsletter together this week. Anyone with a shop or business that needs copies for their customers? Shoot us an email so we can get them to you. NEW PAGES ADDED: We are in the process of adding new pages for the Cruise, pictures, and most important, our sponsors. We will be adding to the pages this week. We have several objectives. First, we need to clean up the home page. It's too cluttered, and we need to make it easier to find information. Second, everybody would be better served with a page just for the pictures. We want to keep the ones we have as well as keep adding new ones as they come in. Third, and most important, we want to get information out there about our sponsors, and what they do. We want to do everything we can to send business their way. They help make racing for you possible. Please return the favor by patronizing them. We'll be adding to these pages this week. Opening day is getting closer...getting exciting, isn't it! More later. Tuesday, Feb. 16th It's been a little while since we posted here. Sorry for the delay. We relocated to a nicer office, but it took longer to get the internet switched over than anticipated. Anyway, the word keeps spreading about the Friday night Drags & Cruise, and the number of hits on this site shows. In the next week, you'll see additional pages to accomodate our growing list of sponsors, as well as the pictures that keep coming in. Keep sending them! More later. Keep in mind, we're less than 3 months away from our opener! Don't forget our speed shop sponsors; Swift Performance (Norwich), Don's Speed Shop (Newington), B & B Performance (Branford). Friday, Feb. 5th We'll be at the Maratta Custom Car Show in Hartford, CT at the EXPO Center this weekend all day Saturday & Sunday. We'd love to meet you all in person. It'd be a great time to get any questions answered. As always, suggestons are always welcome. We'll be at the "Speedbowl" booth, so stop by! While we're there, we have plans to get together with Dennis Tate from the TV show, "Cars & Us". He will be taping enough to fill two shows. We plan on getting together to be interviewed for the upcoming Holeshot Drags season. Dennis is a big supporter of the concept (we've been on two shows already), and he's really big on the old time Gassers. We'll be seeing him throughout the season. We massaged the classes a little bit to alleviate our concerns on tracking points for the season. We originally planned on having 4 indexes, from slow to fast. One possible problem that came up was keeping track of points of cars and/or drivers that are right on the fence between 2 indexes... if a car gets faster as the season progresses, it's possible that they would end up switching to a faster index. We had no way of transfering the points and be fair if they did this. So our solution is to go back to having street legal cars run "Street Eliminator" and modified street cars and all-out race cars run "Competition Eliminator". This will make it easier for a competitor to stay in one eliminator, and therefore retain points. Both run a dial-in, bracket style. At this time we feel the points should go with the driver, so that seems to be consistant with other tracks. Regarding electronics, they will not be allowed on Street and Nostalgia Eliminators (we're trying to get info on Jr. Dragsters). Electronics are allowed on the Competition Eliminator, as well as both Outlaw Eliminators. Every week we keep learning of new Gassers that will be running with us, so we felt that having their own "Eliminator" would make for a great show. We'll be fine tuning rules, such as year cutoff, etc. there's alot of these cars that have been sitting in garages for years, and this is just what they need to blow off the cobwebs and bring them out. We also know that alot of guys liked the heads-up concept of the "Outlaw Eliminator", but may not be competitive against the 500+ cu. in. cars with multiple power adders. Solution? Another heads-up "Outlaw" class called "Outlaw 2.5". Same rules as "Outlaw", such as a heads-up 0.400 Pro tree, but with a 2.50 breakout rule. This class will be perfect for the typical modified small block Street/Strip car, the car that would run 11's and 12's in the quarter mile. For the guys with the tuners, the fact that we're allowing slicks should be welcome news. The modified FWD cars usually had traction issues. Running slicks should prove to be a good solution. We're always looking for new pictures... we're missing pics of the FWD contingent, so guys, send 'em in! Time to wrap this up for now. See all of you at the show this weekend! Sunday, Jan. 31st Well, January is in the books, putting us closer to days that will be warmer. Spring can't come soon enough for us! Believe it or not, we're about 10 weeks away from our opener... hard to imagine. From the "brain fade" department: We've been asking people to send pictures. Of course, not being as computer savvy as we should be, we failed to realize that you can't send them from our contact page. Oops... time to fix that. Our apologies. You can email us directly by sending to sparky@100footdrags.com . They should get to us. If not, give us a call at the shop at 860-772-2058. We'd like to welcome B&B Performance in Branford, CT as the left lane sponsor. They join right lane sponsor Swift Performance from Norwich in a growing list of HDRA sponsors for the 2010 season. We will be doing articles on both in the upcoming issue of our newsletter, as well as coverage here on the site. Wednesday, Jan. 27th We're getting calls and emails from all over the place. The word is really starting to get out about our Friday night gig. Keep it going! Keep sending pictures! We love 'em We plan on attending the Maratta show the first weekend of Feb. (a week and a half from now). Dennis Tate from the TV show "Cars & Us" will be there. We're going to try to get together to get an interview with me for an upcoming show. We've been on before, and it got us some nice publicity. Dennis is a hardcore Dover Dragway fan. Sunday, Jan. 24th We'd like to welcome two new sponsors for our 2010 season. First, SWIFT MOTORSPORTS in Norwich, CT will be sponsoring the right lane, as well as all the Cruise nights. Swift has a tremendous facility, complete with a wheel dyno which can be set up for 2wd or AWD. They currently have a new Camaro project car in which they have added a turbo. They have plans to make this into a kit. We'll be posting pictures of this car. About 540 HP on 5-1/2 pounds of boost!!! This car will be at our Friday night events. Our other new sponsor is JO-DI's Sound & Performance Center in New London, CT. They will be sponsoring the May 7th opening night "Tuners vs Domestic Shootout", plus the "Tuner Shootout" on August 6th. While JO-DI's can hook anybody up with a great sound system, they also deal in performance parts and their installation for all cars. Stop by and see 'em! PICTURES: The pictures are just starting to come in. We have pics of a 10 second Monza on their way, and possibly pics of a wheelie van that will make its way down to the 'Bowl. JUST STOP AND THINK WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE: This is shaping up to be an amazing season. Drag Racing is back in Connecticut after over 25 years of nothing. People are chomping at the bit to go back racing. Anything and everything will be coming out of the woodwork to race with us on Friday nights. Cars that may not be legal for 1/4 milers won't have to stay parked... they'll be with us. A Car Cruise, which will add an atmosphere unlike anything else to the Drags. The Drags... adding an element to the Cruise that no other Cruise can match. Nostalgia Gassers, all-out heads-up high horsepower "Outlaw" door slammers, Street rods, Tuners, Street cars, people racing Mom's car, Motorcycles, Jr Dragsters... you name it, and it'll be racing here. This combination of Drags and Cruise every week is going to create something amazing! This won't be just a Friday night event... it's going to be a happening! This will be the place to be... a weekly festival that everybody will plan their Friday night around! The word is spreading, and it's growing. Thanks to all those helping get the word out, and please keep doing it. We're all going to be part of something that is going to be huge! Tuesday, Jan. 19th There's alot of excitement in the air for the Friday Night Drags& Cruise at the 'Bowl this season. We know of several cars that will be running the heads-up "OUTLAW" class... we're going to see alot of FAST cars this summer. We also know of cars built or being built just for the Bracket Races on our 100 foot format. We have been told by people that they would like to send pics of their cars they'll be using to compete. Please send them and we'll post them. As many of you can imagine, sponsorship is the lifeblood af any race operation. We are going full force with our Sponsorship Program as of today. We're keeping it simple. We are publishing a weekly newsletter (monthly from Feb. - April) that will be given to spectators and racers FREE! You have a business that could use a cost effective way to reach potential customers? Place an ad with our newsletter. Placing an ad will make your business a partial or total sponsor for an event. Sponsor a night. Sponsor a lane. Sponsor the a Cruise night. Don't have a business, or don't have anything left in the budget, but still want to participate? For $20 you can sponsor one foot of the race track. We started this program this afternoon, and already have a couple feet sold. You'll be listed on our website, and you'll get a card certifying your sponsorship. Look at our new "Newsletter" page. Keep in mind that it's a work-in-process, and it needs alot of tweeking. A brief explaination of our sponsorship program is on that page also. We need to find a better way to put the newsletter on this site, so we will be receptive to constructive ideas. SPREAD THE WORD! DRAG RACING IS BACK IN CONNECTICUT! Wednesday, Jan. 13th It was great to see the turnout we had last night for our first rules meeting. Some new faces, and some faces we haven't seen since we last had the tree. We're going to have some FAST cars showing up, including participants for our new heads-up "OUTLAW" CLASS. We're also expecting some old time Gassers to running with us on a regular basis. We also see where some people are going to build cars just to go racing with us. DRAG RACING IS BACK IN FULL FOCE IN CONNECTICUT! Everybody gave great feedback, and now we have some homework to do. We'll have the rules a little more refined by next week. We have to get some questions answered by the Speedbowl operators first before we get everything resolved. We have a meeting with them tomorrow. Some of the questions dealt with building a burnout pad (anybody with connections with a concrete business?), helmets, passengers, etc. The main objective was to emphasize safety. No surprise here, but everybody was in agreement that the Cruise done in combination with the Drags is going to be an absolute home run. The atmosphere is going to be unlike anything else. Right now, we are going to be concentrating on landing sponsorships for each event. We'll soon be posting a page on how businesses or clubs can benefit from becoming involved in our sponsorship program. The rates will be quite affordable too. We'll be back updating the site in the next day or two. Any feedback or questions? Shoot us an email! Meanwhile, get on the phones and internet and go spread the word! Thursday, Dec. 24th We're in the process of adding to the rules. It's a work-in-process. We've started to clarify how we will run the races during each event, as well as starting to add safety items. We have more work to do, and suggestions are welcome. As it stands right now, we will be running 8 eliminators each night. All "Street" and "Modified" cars will be run together, and divided between 4 indexes (each being an eliminator). Dial-in will be permissable within each index; competitors cannot run faster than their chosen index. Index A: 2.49 and faster Index B: 2.50 - 2.99 Index C: 3.00 - 3.49 Index D: 3.50 and slower There will most likely be special separate races during the season for just "Street" cars, as well as "Modified". There will also be four other eliminators: Outlaw, Jr. Dragster, Motorcycle, plus whatever the Shootout is for the event. The "rules" page has more info and details. During out first ever "Nationals" in October, we plan to run all the "Shootouts", as well as`all the other regular Eliminators during the weekend. There could be 30 or more "Eliminators" during those 3 days! For those that don't know yet, we're bringing back the tree and full timing system, complete with time slips, dial-ins, index, heads-up pro tree, etc. We will NOT have a 60 foot time available on the slip for multible reasons. First, the finish line is just past that mark. Second, because we are using a stock car track that has other events on it, we are not allowed to spray the surface with a traction compound as it would create a dangerous situation for their Saturday night events. Because of this, comparing your 60 foot times from other facilities would be futile. Since our format is totally different from traditional drags, we are toying with having a 6 foot time printed on the slip. This would be more relevant and unique to our distance and format. More later. | |
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