5:30 PM and the New's theory of holding the first round of eliminations did in fact help sell out the day. In the past Saturday night was the third qualifying session and several of the cars would sit it out. Not so when you've got to run.

Round 1 was scheduled for 7:00 but actually got underway about 7:45. First out was low qualifier Rick White who opted to be the first car out for his single.

Because of the odd car count being run on a 16 car ladder, there was one bye run every round to the final.

There it was - low ET of the meet. The boys from San Diego had come to play - again.

Williamson slowed a tenth from his qualifying time but a 5.91 at 250.36 was more than enough to cover Malde's shut off early 6.35 at 177.13. Rick would be back on Sunday.

Harris legged it through to another 5.81 at 237.09 to advance to round two on Sunday. Big Red was there to play as well.

Day realized this race was over. With Murphy long gone he wisely shut it off.

 

Murphy stopped the clocks with a nice 5.842 at just 229.29 to advance to round two on Sunday. The three "Big Dogs" had all advanced with stellar times.

The final pair out for round one was Mike McClennan with lane choice against Troy Green who had struggled in both qualifying sessions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point Green was dangerously close to the wall but it didn't matter - the engine was a dead player.

 

Then the engine burned the # 7 piston and debris from the piston got stuck under the # 7 intake valve. When it blew up, the # 7 intake valve was not sealed to the seat letting the ignition spark the fuel into the manifold. When # 7 is on it's power stroke # 4 is on overlap. The explosion in the intake manifold blew the # 4 intake valve into the # 4 exhaust valve and that is why the # 4 valves were broken and the chamber and piston in the # 4 hole were beaten up. Got that so far?

The good news is the Manifold designed by Tom Shelar performed exactly as it was designed to do in this situation. The explosion in the manifold was so big the burst panel area was insufficient . The manifold is designed to split if the explosive energy is so big that the burst panel area and the blower shear studs are not enough to allow the energy to escape fast enough. ( Scott Kalitta's 's manifold exploded opening up the engine valley, Mendy Fry in Frank Hedge's car at Sonoma had the same issue both resulted in a big fire.) The only fire Green experienced after the initial explosion was a small amount of oil from the oil pressure gage being damaged. And they did not put any oil on the track just a small amount of nitro from the fuel system.

Video at HSMS Boise Boom

 

 

 

 

 

As Great White limped along McClennan's ride had problems of its own. The ensuing oil down led to a 52 minute clean up and delay running funny cars. There are many good things to say about Firebird Raceway but their speed in doing track clean ups isn't one of them. This huge delay would greatly effect the performance of the floppers.

McClennan strapped a huge holeshot on White (.023 to .144) and it looked like an upset in the making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But an upset was not to be. Big Blue had to much for the beautiful new Fuller car and caught McClennan just before the '330 mark and pulled away for another outstanding time of 5.79 at 251.45.

 

 

In spite of being passed McClennan didn't give up but he did almost try to catch White a little to hard as the car got out of the groove and like so many others before him made a hard move to the center line.

 

 

 

 

 

Up on three wheels this was another close one.

 

 

With timing blocks in his wake, McClennan got the car settled and coasted through with a shut-off 6.30 at 178.85.

 

Because of the odd car count being run on a 16 car ladder, there was one bye run every round to the final. In the semis Harris got the nod in R2.

 

 

At the 60' clock the car started to shift to the left.

 

Note Brett's correction to the right.

 

Harris clicked it at the 660' clocks and coasted to a 7.00 at just 134.83.

 

5:45 p.m. found Rick Williamson facing Jim Murphy in the final pair to see who would advance to round 3.

 

Sunday - Round Three of Eliminations

The only actual pair for the semis was Brett Harris and Rick White... Murphy had the single.

Before we start this weird tale, in Rick's defense you will notice that he still has his visor up as Harris hit the throttle (below). These photos were cropped from the same picture so you can see exactly what may have thrown White off so much... or at least contributed to it.

Now, as stated in the opening, this is the start of one of the more bizarre Top Fuel races ever seen. Now you must pay attention and yes, there will be a test. Notice that Harris' staging lights are off while White's are still on.

Harris clocked a stout 1.01 60' time - the quickest ever for this car. He appeared to be on a winning run - until....

At about the 80' mark the car made a horrible "squealing" noise, the engine zinged to 11,500 rpm and immediately stopped accelerating. Harris shut the butterflies to do an instant assessment of what had just happened.

Now, Harris is dead in the water and White is still sitting on the starting line with his crew wondering what the hell is going on.

Brett hit the throttle a second time and that was when he was sure it was driveline failure. Meanwhile, White is STILL sitting on the starting line exactly where he was staged 2 seconds earlier when Harris left.

All Harris could do was shut down the engine and hope White was dead in the water as well.

3.038 (an eternity in drag racing) seconds after Brett left he heard the roar of White's engine coming at him.

A dejected Harris climbed out of his dead mount and would later say that he had never seen anything like that. He added that it was a very helpless feeling to finally hear White and know that at some point he would catch him.

When asked what happened all the normally good leaving White could say was that he just wasn't there - gone to the Bahamas. You can bet that won't happen again.

 

Here is the culprit - a high dollar billet pinion gear assembly that literally came out of the housing chewing up the gears in the process. The studs broke on the plate that holds the pinion and its bearing in the rearend housing. They figure studs were hurt by tire shake on the previous run.

Jack Harris is already making equipment changes to make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

With the sun rapidly going down in the west, the pit of the Neal & White team were doing far more than their normal between round service. For a crew that often doesn't even pull the heads, they had it down to bare bones including the clutch. The 6.66 in the semis was way off par for this car and they wanted to make sure that didn't happen again.

Down the aisle the WW2 crew were in the same boat. Everything out and checked. Leave nothing to chance.

Not wanting to even come close to going back to the Bahamas, White was back in form and left first by two hundredths. However, both cars left like rockets.

Just past the 60' clocks Murphy's car got out of the groove and started to push to the center.

Driving like a man possessed, Murphy used every trick he knew to wrestle the car back into its lane but it had a mind of its own. The Boise track has narrow grooves to begin with and when the temps drop it can be a very tricky place to race.

The flames in Jim's car went down just before he crossed the center line and took out a couple of timing blocks.

A dejected Murphy reels his car in and watches helplessly as White streaked to low ET of the meet.

White capitalized in spades for the good luck he got in the semis by setting low ET and Top Speed of the event.

 

Top Fuel Qualifying

Funny Car

Pits N People