ROCKINGHAM, N.C. — Two-time and defending IHRA Alcohol Funny Car champion Laurie Cannister set new speed records on the eighth-mile strip at San Antonio (Texas) Raceway, using the same setup and equipment used for quarter-mile passes.
The IHRA’s season opener was the only time its drivers will be on an eighth-mile strip this season as they return to the more familiar quarter-mile layouts such as Rockingham (N.C.) Dragway.
For Cannister, whose first Alcohol Funny Car title came in 2002, her record-setting weekend came while running a quarter-mile setup installed by her tuner and husband, Dale Cannister.
“Our quarter-mile setup seemed to work well on the eighth-mile,” Laurie said. “We ran it, got a national record with it and it all worked pretty well.”
Cannister set records for elapsed time (3.731 seconds) and speed (198.32 miles per hour) on the eighth-mile.
While the Cannisters chose the quarter-mile setup, they opted against changes in either or both transmission and rear-end gears they could have selected.
“There’s a lot of combinations you could use,” said Cannister, noting that most of the speed of any run comes from the first eighth-mile, in first and second gear.
But the top-end speed comes in third gear, which is barely punched when the chutes are thrown on the eighth-mile strips.
“It’s tough to get off the throttle at the eighth-mile,” she said. “(On a quarter-mile) you shift into third right at mid-track and your run isn’t over until you hit the quarter mile. When you shift into third, that’s when the car really starts hauling the mail out the other end.
“For me, it was tough to step off the throttle after the eighth-mile.”
Similarly, the Top Fuel team of Bruce Litton and the Nitro Funny Car team of Matt Hagan made no changes from their quarter-mile setups.
“You always want the car to run as hard as it can for 830 feet, which is at the eighth-mile,” said Jay Lewis, crew chief for Hagan’s Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS. “There’s not a lot that I change, per se, from the quarter-mile... When you run an eighth-mile, you still want to get there as fast as you can, you just don’t run the other half.”
And that wasn’t a real problem for Hagan, a Nitro Funny Car rookie, either. His test sessions in the preseason had not gone past 1,000 feet, roughly a fifth-mile.
While the IHRA’s lone eighth-mile stop doesn’t overly tax crews with changes, the quarter-mile strips feel a lot more like home.
Cannister said that second eighth-mile is where the fun is as a driver.
“We enjoy going to San Antonio, everyone is wonderful. I won’t complain about it,” said Lewis. “But drag racing was built on the quarter-mile and that’s where it belongs.”