the last working man top fuel racer

[coyotedale]

You have to admire Jake Sanders in his effort running top fuel. If you don't know who he is, look him up. My wife and I got to know them years ago when they started running nostalgia nitro F/C; that car was Jake's senior year high school project and was a bit over the top compared to the rest of his class. His talent and capability has grown like crazy, either making parts for all Indy cars, repairing blocks for fuel/alcohol teams, and everything in between.

Keep an eye on him. Don't know if we will see this kind of independent effort again any time soon

 

[Mike]

Dont forget Scott Palmer and the Joons. All great for the sport

 

[stitcherbob]

Just pondering something…. Do you think we have more dropped cylinders in nitro racing now than back when the teams did throttle whacks in the pits? I know there seems to be more than back when they did dry hops on the line….

 

[mgty3whlr]

Back in the day, They flowed a fraction of the fuel that they run in them today. Way more varibles for a cylinder to drop.

 

[Ponyhntr]

Just pondering something…. Do you think we have more dropped cylinders in nitro racing now than back when the teams did throttle whacks in the pits? I know there seems to be more than back when they did dry hops on the line….

Yes, but those are not the reasons why. Like Joe said… way more fuel volume. Any small variable where it doesn’t light for even one revolution drowns it out and drops.

 

[T.Smith]

Just pondering something…. Do you think we have more dropped cylinders in nitro racing now than back when the teams did throttle whacks in the pits? I know there seems to be more than back when they did dry hops on the line….

I've seen plenty of old videos of nitro cars back in the day running on 7 cylinders. I think the difference compared to now, it wasn't a death sentence to your run.

 

[SoCal Racer]

Cool to see Jake out there on his own after tuning for his father, "Mr. Explosive" Mark Sanders. After making a good run in Q1 he said, "we might even qualify!" which he almost did. Wasn't until Q4 he got bumped out. Then in Q5 (to borrow a Maxwell Smart expression) he "missed it by that much" with "that" being .018 and ending up 17th.