Career Quick For Sitko Racing Team
Posted by: Sitko Family Racing
The Sitko Family Racing team has returned from our first race event in Mission, BC. It was a gloomy weekend on the coast with a lot of rain and delays, but we still managed to get some racing in!
Career Quick!
The team hopped in the truck and made the 1100 km long journey to Mission Raceway Park early Wednesday morning and arrived at the track at about 6:30pm Wednesday night. Unfortunately when we arrived, it was raining, and continued to rain through the night.
The weather Thursday morning didn’t look too promising, but it wasn’t raining so we got the car ready for a couple of test passes. Nathan’s brother Troy would be making the test laps in the car in an attempt to qualify for his Top Alcohol Funny Car license. After a few tweaks to the car we hit the track. Troy’s first run was a planned shut off run at about half-track, which resulted in a 6.59 @ 157mph pass. The second pass was another early shut off pass 6.30 @ 183mph. Both runs looked very promising, netting the team it’s best 60-foot times with the car ever!
For Friday qualifying Nathan was back in the seat. Our qualifying session was set to start at 3:15 pm, but due to rain delays and a few oil cleanups on the track we got to run just before 5:00pm. For our first qualifying run we were paired up against Jeff Ashwell’s Napa sponsored funny car. Unfortunately after the burnout the injector hat on Jeff’s car froze up and killed the engine, so we were on a single pass. Nathan took the tree and raced down the quarter mile to the team’s career best ET and speed, a 5.815 second blast at 243.37 mph, qualifying the team in the #2 position.
Sitko Racing Firebird
Saturday’s qualifying sessions were a total rainout, so on to Sunday! Sunday morning we were able to get in one more qualifying run. We were very pleased with the position we were sitting in coming into this qualifying round, but things were about to change. After backing up from the burnout, Nathan pulled into the pre-stage beams and brought up the engine RPMs as usual, but a split second afterwards the engine went silent. The team pulled the car back to the pit area to find it had broken two connecting rods and threw them out the side of the engine block! The was not much time in-between the qualifying session and round one eliminations, so we had to hustle to get the spare motor in the car before first round. Our final qualifying position was #3.
The crew did an amazing job getting the spare motor ready and in-between the frame rails in just about an hour. It was nice to hear the motor come to life in the warm-up, as it had been sitting in the shop for over a year wrapped in saran wrap ready to go. Also a big thanks to our pit neighbours the Hugh Ridley owned Top Alcohol Dragster race team for giving us a hand getting the car ready for first round.
We were still bolting on a few small parts as we were rolling out of our pit stall towards the staging lanes to meet our first round opponent John Evanchuk. The car left hard and was on another mid-5.80 second pass when about half-track it sprung an oil leak from the manifold gasket and coated the rear tires with oil, making the car shoot suddenly to the left towards the other lane. Nathan managed to get the car under control without hitting any timing cones or anything else but did cross the centerline; it sure was a wild ride!
A big thanks goes out to all of our sponsors for supporting our team, without them we could never had made it to the track! Hyperion Laser Rehabilitation & Wellness Center, JET Tools, Pro Stock Performance, Fairmont Electroplating, Noralta Lodge, North West Paving, Commercial Solutions, Gee and Gee Racing & Hoosier Racing Tires, Precision Performance, and George Sitko Racing Components. Thank you all very much! We’d also like to welcome our newest sponsor, Generation Electronics!
The team will now re-group and head to their next event in Medicine Hat, AB. Hopefully the skies are clear and sunny!
Sitko Family Racing – www.sitkoracing.com
(Photos By: Gerry Frechette)
