Season's Greetings

Wishing you all a great festive period and look forward to your continued support in the new season. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Team Rampage.

Season Pics

Dragstalgia

The success of the first ever Dragstalgia can only be described as fantastic. Not only because of the amount of nostalgic race cars that had entered, but also for bringing back all the traditions, that these days health and safety have restricted. The cackle fest, flame burnouts, even the good old christmas tree was brought out, totally refurbished.

The event for Team Rampage was an absolute blast, and thanks must go out to Santa Pod's track crew, doing an awesome job as ever. Having looked at every possible weather forecast, they were all unanimous in saying that it was going to bucket it down pretty much all day. But this was until our prayers to the weather gods were answered by providing the event with rays of sunshine from around 3:00pm onwards, and this time it was the turn of our rookie driver Dave King, who had previously been up the track a couple of times. We had chosen to enter into Wild Bunch for the meeting, having done a few meetings before in the class and being more than happy to enter again. The first run was somewhat wasted, as we decided beforehand to change the rpm chip to shift at 6000 instead of the usual 5400, but as forgetful as we are, we didn't tell Dave that and he thought the engine was revving much too high forcing him to come on and off the throttle going through the traps running 12 seconds.

The decision was therefore made to put the chip back to the original shift point of 5400rpm, and being that Dave was launching the car using only the throttle and not the launch button, his second run was a more respectable 9.90. This was however the end of the day for racing, but certainly not the end of the day in terms of entertainment! All the late evening shows proved to be well worth staying the night, it was made even better when the beers came out!

Sunday morning, in the earlier hours of around 4:00am, looked promising as the sun was actually shining at this time, but it wasn't until someone jinxed it that it became cloudier. Eventhough this was the case, the forecast for the day was supposed to be slightly better than Saturday's, and it wasn't until we were a few pairs away from the first run of the day when it started spitting. This lasted around 40 minutes, but as it was only light, the track wasn't too badly effected, resulting in the track crew taking little time to dry it. We had said in the morning that we would run a 9.8 because in Wild Bunch its about getting as close to your predicted E.T but without dialing it in into the timing system, and to our delight, the funny car ran a 9.816, thats bracket racers for you! This put us into the number two spot, which we gladly took, however once again the good old british weather spoilt the opportunity for another run, right before we were due to run too, and the race director decided to call the meeting off as the cut off point for the racing had already passed. So Team Rampage at least went home with the runners up trophy, and big thanks to the organisers of Wild Bunch Claire and Chris, we had a great weekend in your class, cheers for letting us in! And of course the Rampage crew of Jeff, Ian, Graham and Daniel, and last but not least our sponsors, much appreciated.

Main Event Race Report

It could be said that this year's Main Event was fairly successful for Team Rampage, the only let down being the weather on the Monday!

The first day of qualifying proved to be somewhat of a rush to begin with, as we didn't have the chance to set up the day before so this resulted in us having to miss out on the first round. It was 11:45, and after setting up our pit area, getting the car scrutinised and having a cuppa, the second round was upon us and to the team's delight, we ended up running an 8.12 on an 8.09, good enough for the number four spot, and the third round of qualifying only went from good to better. After making the joint decision to predict an 8.12 following the E.T from the previous run, the joy of everyone's face was fantastic to see when the Rampage dragster ran an 8.121, a mere +0.001 off of our dial in, which put the team straight into number one. This gave the team a bit of breathing space for the time being, so we were let off by breaking out in the following session by a couple of hundredths, although Dave Nelson in his slingshot dragster narrowed the gap between first and second by running +0.006 off of his dial in. The final qualifier of the day only improved the minority of racers in the field, so it was then time to go home for a well deserved pint.

From there on the weekend seemed to disappear, despite only getting three runs over Saturday and Sunday. The only run on Saturday showed that Dave had still got it when he pulled a +0.005 reaction time, and with how consistent the car was, that would have been tought for anyone to beat! As the day rolled by and the first session for the Pro classes was coming to an end, the choice was made that the Pro classes were to run again, this proved to be the end of the day for the Sportsman classes.

Sunday was to some extent the same, getting one qualifier in the morning where we dialled in an 8.13 and ran an 8.14, which verified that the dragster was still fighting fit. All Sportsman classes were scheduled another qualifier before the first round of eliminations in the evening but as predicted by a number of us, after the Pro classes hads their planned first run of the day, they then had their last qualifier straight after just having their third of four. This meant that all Sportsman classes would now be straight into eliminations in the evening.

The time was well into the evening by the time eliminations came around, 8:00 to be exact, and we had been paired up to race Roy Wilding in his S&K Racing dragster. Despite Roy qualifying at number seventeen, this was a man who was not to be counted out for by any means, having had a number of good races in the past. The tension that was built on the start line when staging was unbelievable, we had dialled in an 8.11 and Roy an 8.08, so it was to be a heads up race, and what a race it turned out to be. A +0.06 reaction time for Dave to Roy's +0.02 meant that Roy had four hundredths at the start, Dave slightly quiker to 60ft with a 1.15 to Roy's 1.22 but as the race progressed to the finish, Roy had pulled out a lead of just a measly 4ft handing him the win running a 8.09 on his 8.08, Dave running an 8.16 on his 8.11, knowing afterwards that this was where we had lost, it all boiled down to misjudgement.

This meant that we were able to come in the next day whenever and it wasn't too much of a loss for the team either, as it turned out to be absolutely abysmal. It had only been raining since 9:30am but once it started it never stopped and it wasn't until 2 o'clock time that the day was called off.

So for Team Rampage the event could be considered as a flourishing one, and a chance to see just how consistent the car could be, which proved to be very! Many thanks once again to Adrian, Jeff, Ian, Graham, Felicity, Daniel and particularly our sponsors Mini Gears and Smiths of Bloxham.

Easter Thunderball Race Report

The Easter Thunderball wasn't the best of starts to the 2011 season for Team Rampage:

The first round of qualifying on the Friday put us in the number 2 spot, dialling in an 8.10 and running an 8.126. Knowing how tough the class is continuously becoming, we knew that it wouldn't be long until the others would be settling in and getting a lot closer to their dial ins.

Rounds went by, and the last qualifier on Saturday evening proved to be the start of issues for the Rampage dragster as a loss of traction off the line ruined another chance to move up the field, eventually ending up in 9th.

Sunday morning was where things started to get worse, as the dragster began to bog-down and misfire as soon as it was leaving the line. With that being the case, it was time to put the thinking caps on and start to string together the possibilities of what was going on.

First round of eliminations came at around 7:00 o'clock that evening and the team were fortunate enough to gain a bye run, after Leon Green in his 7-second Supra had earlier announced that he wouldn't be running. That gave the opportunity to launch the car without having to worry about any competition in the other lane, but the dragster was still experiencing its misfire.

The decision was to arrive bright and early on the next and final day to resolve the matter, the theory being that, somehow, the engine was being starved of fuel. The morning arrived and having checked all the fuel lines, the filter, the regulator, you name it, the second round of eliminations was suddenly upon us and so it was time to ready ourselves for that, despite the trouble. We were matched with Nigel Turner, who had qualified a solid third, so we knew it would be a task in itself. Predictably, the car again misfired which enabled Nigel to take a comfortable win.

Before packing up and going, the choice made was to explain what was wrong and having already checked the components to do with fuel, the team eventually found that one of the two fuel pumps had no current going to it, according to the multimeter. Once that had been noticed, we were able to confirm that this was the issue, because the regulator was only reading two pounds of fuel pressure, six pounds lower than it should have been.

However, it was later discovered that one of the switches that had never been used before, operated the second fuel pump, meaning that all the time that we had had the car, it was only ever running on the one fuel pump.

So the team ended up soldering the two together onto the one switch, which then gave a reading of just under eight pounds of pressure. Funny how something so simple could cause such inconvenience, eh?

To some extent, it turned out to be a test weekend for Team Rampage and big thanks must go out to Jeff, Adrian (especially for coming straight off his night shift to help!), Ian, Felicity, Daniel, Geoff Hauser for giving his valued knowledge and opinion and especially our sponsors Mini Gears and Smiths of Bloxham.

The Off Season

Obviously during the off season, every team are still working hard, not just on preparing the cars for the new season ahead but also concentrating on gaining funds in the form of sponsorship, and team Rampage are no exception.

We are fortunate to have retained some existing sponsors, but through the help of Jeff Hart (crew member) are pleased to announce the additional support from Mini Gears Components Worldwide.

Mini Gears have been established for over 40 years and specialize in gears up to 600mm diameter, rads, transmission parts and specialized machining.

Nigel Walker who heads up the technical sales at Mini Gears visited our pit at Santa Pod Raceway during the 2010 season and thought the idea of sponsoring a dragster would be an ideal opportunity to further promote his business in the motor racing industry.

Team Rampage are currently busy getting both the dragster, funny car and trailers ready for the coming season ahead and look forward to seeing you at the track.

Thanks for reading.