Student racer reflects on last season at Cedar Falls Raceway

Last racing season was a great time filled with trial and error and a lot of heavy lifting. 

We started by wrapping the exhaust and intake manifold on the truck because wrapping would stop it from overheating the engine bay, and the truck that we were using was a 2004 Chevrolet S10. 

Most of the time if you run a drag car, you are going to be under the car, and some key things you should have are some tools and a really good engine hoist. 

It is always good to make replacement body panels because sometimes it might break, but the Chevy S10 is usually a really popular vehicle to use during the race season, so you could go around the strip and see if anyone has anything to spare, but don’t assume anyone will give you anything. 

Running on the race track isn’t easy though because there is a specific time, and you have to go off the racing tree, which is a light that goes from yellow to green to red, and you want to launch your car, and you want to time it when you have to go on the green light, and if you launch it right when it gets to the green light, you get what is called a trip zip, which is the best launching time. 

The race track is a quarter of a mile, and you have a specific time to get down it, and if you hit it a couple of times, that’s your time that you have to hit every time you run or get close to it so you could win the championship at the track. 

Before that you do that, you do a burnout so that you have traction and your tires can expand. Also before you do your run and after, you have to take air out of your tires then put air back in when you get back to your trailer. 

What happened to us when we ran down the track once is that our rear axle broke on one pass, and we had to be out for the rest of the season because it took a couple of months to get it replaced. 

This next season I’m not gonna run because I don’t have the funds to get a car. Last year I only ran because we borrowed a family member’s drag truck and that family member is unfortunately gone, but I want to race in his name, so if you go to the race track in a couple of years, I might be racing again at the Cedar Falls Raceway.