We beat Loose Cannon 1st round with a 4.95 @ 228mph - 2.92 @ 207 mph at the half. In the semi’s things came undone literally. The blower came apart, it lifted, broke the pulley and crank, big boom and lots of fire. It burnt most of the wiring, air lines, new computer stuff, etc. Engine swap was no problem. It was the electrical stuff that almost kept us from making the call. On the warm-up attempt it backfired hard - twice. An ignition/mag issue was found and we left the pits with less than four minutes to make the call. Thanks to Eddie Knoxx for watching the time and making sure we had nitro and tools in the truck so we could fuel it at the ramp. Steve found what he believed to be the problem when Eddie called 7 minutes to DQ. No pressure at all!!! New caps and wires. No fire-up/warm-up. Steve and I finished it riding on the trailer to the ramp. Jimmy fueled it at the ramp and we put Jarrett in the water. There was literally one minute left or be DQed. It fired, we all cheered…well, screamed, Jarrett left on John by a little bit and it ran our best mph to the half at 209 with no heat in the motor. It was virtually dead even until we pushed out both burst panels. They were stretched out a bit and hurt by the backfires, but we had no time to deal with it. We gave SSS a run for it. John Hass told Jarrett at the out ramp that he had heard about him from the pro-mod days, that he is for real, and that he came to play! Great job all weekend Jarrett!
I’m extremely proud to be a member of The Hot Licks Bullet crew. We had two very difficult turnarounds. When the boat came back just destroyed no one said a word. Todd, Mark, Jimmy, Kevin, Steve, Jarrett-yes our driver, Hoot and I all just went to work without saying a word. We all knew what needed to be done and we did it!!!
Special thanks to Dennis (Hoot) Gibson for giving us what we need and for making it fun!!! See you in a few in Gadsden.
-Recap written by Hot Licks Bullet crew member Geral Laney.