[herb andrews]

'Living the dream'

Bazz Young's early race cars, 'Ratfink', 'Sunburst' and Desperado' are documented here on the forum but coming up to date, what appears to have been overlooked, at least this side of the ocean is what happened over August 23-24 this year, at the 60th annual World Series of Drag Racing at Illinois Cordova Dragway Park. In qualifying Bazz ran 5.997@240, to be the first British racer, ok ex-pat to run a 5 in a Nostalgia Funny Car.

The itch to get back into a race car never goes away and in Bazz's case was scratched two years ago when he saw a complete funny car for sale. Running the 5 was the result of getting the engine combination right, which Bazz's tuner Jerry 'Nitrohelper' Newman advised on, finding local crew and learning how to drive the car.

With Bazz feeling comfortable driving the car, Jerry's tune up not hurt parts, well not regularly! and the car just into the 5's, he looked at the next thing on the wish list, racing down the fabled quarter mile at Bakersfield's Famoso Raceway, at this years Californian Hot Rod Reunion (CHRR).

Bazz's old racing partner Micky Moore came with Norm and I to last weekend's CHRR. Here's how Bazz got on:

Bazz discussing rod length and piston wrist pin combinations with Micky
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Vic Loved all that is Bakersfield so it was a nice touch that his old friend Bazz carried his name on the car.
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The combined British, Australian and United States flags is an indicator of the journey Bazz and Veronica have taken to get to their current resting place, Kenosha
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Just a small selection of Brit well wishers that came by
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Bazz's talented tuner, Jerry 'Nitrohelper' Newman
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Bazz is hands on with the between rounds maintenance work
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In the staging lanes
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Hurry up, wait... 3 oil downs in NTF took over an hour to clean up, so all there was to do was wait in the 10 car wide staging lanes. Don't go falling asleep Micky!
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Bazz's hero cards
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Bazz b.jpg (589.01 KiB) Viewed 9960 times

So, how did Bazz do? With only two qualifying sessions and 40+ NFC's on site qualifying for the 16 car field was always going to be tight. Bazz's first session was a 6.13, due to the exceptional start line traction, resulting in little smoke on the burnout. Second session was a better (PB) 5.97 @ 218 but the bump was around .86 so they did not qualify, the 90%+ nitro load sending the pistons to the aluminium gods, looking on the positive, neither did 24+ other racers, including some heavy hitters so Bazz and the team should hold their heads high. No doubt with the data from the two runs in their pocket, it made the 2300 mile return trip to Kenosha and planning the next visit to Bakersfield easier........ To be continued.

Herb

[torment]

What a great looking car..a credit to the team.

[Bazz Young]

'Living the dream'

Bazz Young's early race cars, 'Ratfink', 'Sunburst' and Desperado' are documented here on the forum but coming up to date, what appears to have been overlooked, at least this side of the ocean is what happened over August 23-24 this year, at the 60th annual World Series of Drag Racing at Illinois Cordova Dragway Park. In qualifying Bazz ran 5.997@240, to be the first British racer, ok ex-pat to run a 5 in a Nostalgia Funny Car.

The itch to get back into a race car never goes away and in Bazz's case was scratched two years ago when he saw a complete funny car for sale. Running the 5 was the result of getting the engine combination right, which Bazz's tuner Jerry 'Nitrohelper' Newman advised on, finding local crew and learning how to drive the car.

With Bazz feeling comfortable driving the car, Jerry's tune up not hurt parts, well not regularly! and the car just into the 5's, he looked at the next thing on the wish list, racing down the fabled quarter mile at Bakersfield's Famoso Raceway, at this years Californian Hot Rod Reunion (CHRR).

Bazz's old racing partner Micky Moore came with Norm and I to last weekend's CHRR. Here's how Bazz got on:

So, how did Bazz do? With only two qualifying sessions and 40+ NFC's on site qualifying for the 16 car field was always going to be tight. Bazz's first session was a 6.13, due to the exceptional start line traction, resulting in little smoke on the burnout. Second session was a better (PB) 5.97 @ 218 but the bump was around .86 so they did not qualify, the 90%+ nitro load sending the pistons to the aluminium gods, looking on the positive, neither did 24+ other racers, including some heavy hitters so Bazz and the team should hold their heads high. No doubt with the data from the two runs in their pocket, it made the 2300 mile return trip to Kenosha and planning the next visit to Bakersfield easier........ To be continued.

Herb

Hey Herb - it was great to see you and the gang from England over for the CHRR and especially of course, my old mate Mickey "Moo". There was a lot of reminiscing going on I can tell you - it doesn't seem like 35 years since Mick and I last raced at the "Pod".
I mentioned on my Facebook page (Bazz Young) that if you tried to explain to someone outside of our sport that you'd driven a total of 4400+ miles (7 X 12 hour days) to race a car for a total of 12 seconds, they could be forgiven for thinking you were bloomin mad!! What everybody here knows is that we'd do it again tomorrow if we could.
It was a blast and you're right, we learned a lot. The track at Bakersfield is certainly unlike any of the tracks I have been regularly racing at around the mid-west for the last couple of years. We completely underestimated the "teeth" in the track and had too much weight in the clutch and not enough power in the motor - I had more smoke in the car from the clutch than there was on the outside from the tires during the first burnout.
We fixed the clutch and added more of everything for the motor (blower, nitro and magneto) for the 2nd qualifier. We were concerned after the first run that the blower had lost a lot of boost and decided to add a lot more overdrive than we would ordinarily ever do between runs rather than replace the blower for a fresh one - we'll never know if that was the right choice. The result however was that #6 went out, consequently #8 had to work harder than it liked, melted the piston, got some piston ring stuck under an inlet valve and backfired the blower at a 1000', so we coasted for the last few hundred feet, hence the low terminal speed. The 1/8 mile ET was encouraging at 3.80 making me think we were on the way to a mid 5.80. However, coulda, woulda, shoulda....
Anyway - great to see you and the gang and we'll look forward to seeing you again next year (I hope). If anyone wants to keep up with our adventures, check us out at http://www.down-under-thunder.com The site is a little behind this year but I'll bring it up to date over the next few weeks.
Until next time..... Bazzz

[jaytee]

nice work Herb thanks for story and photos and good luck for the future Bazz

[eraider]

Neat!

[ukdrn]

Thanks for the story Herb and well done Bazz.
Congrats on the 5 and the tribute to Vic was a really nice touch.

[jaytee]

http://www.fuelcoupe.com/article/rounds-8/