 
 The first qualifying session was held under the lights on Friday night. Bill Dunlap in Mike Fuller's car.   Eventual co-finalist Jim Murphy in his WW2 Racing fueler.   Brendan Murry was one of two cars that broke into the fives with a 5.995 that qualified him # 2 behind Terry Cox.  Jason Richey in Dave Smith's "Nitro Fever".   Jim Murphy and ? at the WW 2 Racing pit.  Rick Williamson in the Schwartz-Berger-Williamson "Hot Rod Bills" car. They battle traction problems all weekend.  Session two was held on Saturday morning. Here Terry Cox made his run and when he passed by Jason Ellis he was squirting fuel all over the place.    He took the 2nd turnoff and can't shut off the motor. After what felt like an eternity of watching the motor idle roughly and apparently a small fire under and around the engine, Dave Smith Jr ("fire guy") squirts it down with the fire extinguisher and the engine finally died.    Bill Dunlap and Jim Murphy in a close one until Dunlap's engine stared eating pistons.     Dunlap looks like he expressed some frustration with the fire truck taking a while to get to his car while it was gently toasting. He stopped at the first turnout and the fire guy must have thought he was OK. Not sure what happened there. The Lee Jennings crew ran out to give him a hand as Jennings car was already sitting at the turnoff packing up from an aborted earlier run against Rick Williamson.  After this deal Fuller and Dunlap packed up and went home. After blowing an engine on Friday and a second engine here it was time to regroup for the CHRR.  Rick Williamson  Brendan Murry and Howard Haight   Haight completes his first and only attempt. They hurt the engine on this pass and couldn't make the call for eliminations that night.  Rick Williamson (in for Howard Haight) had a jump on Brendan Murry but blazed the tires by the tree leaving Murry to card a nice 6.041 @ 243.64 for the win.  Mark Malde who ran a career best 6.02 to qualify # 3 took out a cylinder dropping Jason Richey.  The final pair in round one pitted Jim Murphy and Lee Jennings.  Murphy was out first and never looked back carding a 6.093 @ 226.82 to Jennings' 6.181 @ 220.30.  Round two found Mark Malde and Brendan Murry doing battle.  It was a good drag race until Murry got out of the groove, moved toward the center line and had to lift and coast to a 6.896 @ 151.21. Malde moved to the final with a 6.342 @ 224.65.  The other pair in the semis was Jim Murphy and Terry Cox.  This was over early when the Rodeck and Cox entry Cox had a big flash of fire right off the line. Murphy hazed the tires at mid-track, lifted and got back in it to an off pace 6.342 @ 224.65. Cox coasted through with a 18.199 @ 44.29. Race Report by: Henry Walther - Rodex & Cox NTF 1st Session, TF, Friday night: Mark Malde 6.021
The scheduled second session on Friday night was postponed until Saturday afternoon when it could not be fit in to the schedule before the track's curfew time. Welcome to Sacramento! The hero of the night was definitely Mark Malde and the Birky Bunch. Their 6.02 was clean and stout, and everybody was happy to see it. Arnold Birky told me he hadn't been a number one qualifier since the days he was running his Junior Fuel car with Bobby Neal. A change in compression and camshaft has woken the car up. Our speed and ET were down due to a problem with our reverser. Just as it did on our first round win over Jim Murphy at Seattle two weeks earlier, it popped out of gear going into the lights (217.49 MPH). In Seattle that allowed the motor to zing up to 13,200 RPM, but here Terry caught it quicker and it only went to 10,005 RPM. It didn't throw the rods out, or hurt the crank, on either of those runs. Between Seattle and Sacramento we sent the reverser back to the manufacturer, and was assured that everything was now OK, but obviously it wasn't. 2nd Session, TF, Saturday afternoon. Terry Cox 5.990
As noted, the second round Rodeck & Cox qualifying effort was plagued with a fuel leak. It came from a hose fitting on the line from the pump to the barrel valve. Terry spotted the spray at about 500 feet and lifted, but then realized it was fuel, and not oil, so he got back on the throttle and then shut the car off early (224 MPH). We knocked the ring lands down on a couple of pistons due to the pump pressure being down, but otherwise all was OK. We were happy to be the number one qualifier, but even happier yet that the engine didn't come uncoupled from the rear tires this time. This was in no small part thanks to John Shoemaker who went home and got his new reverser and let us use it. As also noted, both Fuller-Dunlap, and Blair-Haight, wounded their cars and elected not to run eliminations. This reinstated Rick Williamson and, with the uneven number of cars, gave us a bye run for the first round. We were first out and responded by setting low ET of the event at 5.98 / 247 MPH. Going into the second round we were to race Jim Murphy again, and we were pretty confident that we could run quicker. However, once again we found a new and unique way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. After the burnout, as Terry was staging the car, an oil leak developed in front of the right side slick. When it was spotted it was too late to get his attention and shut him off. When he hit the throttle the oil sprayed out behind the right side headers and made for a quick bit of pyrotechnics as the car immediately smoked the tires from running over the oil. The strange thing is that the oil leak came from a non-pressurized source. A pipe plug blew out of a galley that was formerly used to return oil from the cylinder head to the pan. We now use external return lines, so this galley was plugged. Go figure. Anyway, that ended our bid for Arnold's Jockstrap. It is a real shame that the final wasn't run, as everyone, including Murphy I think, was rooting for Arnold Birky and Mark Malde, and they had a real shot at winning this thing. It'll be interesting to see if they carry through to the CHRR. We may have a new played in the house.
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