NMCA/zmax completely unhappy

[CRE]

Originally Posted by coulterz28

My car chucked a rod right out of the burnout box shooting oil all over the headers. My friend and wife both were yelling fire and everyone just watched. Finally my friend grabbed the fire extinguisher and put it out. The whole time I was still strapped in the car. No one was doing anything so I assumed it was not serious. This could have been a really bad situation. I have most of it on video as well.
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In the other lane Brad Schehr was told to go forward and make a single run. The track official told him to go and stage then as Brad stages his car the guy running the tree turns around and walks away. The tree never drops and burns Brad down. I bitched at the starter and he told us to go again and the tree never drops again and burns him down a 2nd time. Again the official walked away after Schehr went all the way in. Brad just took off. He did get another pass later that night.

I seen many problems with the tree also. Two cars from ProStock pull up to the starting line. The car in the right lane double bulbed the guy in the left. The car in the left lane turned on the prestage light and the tree came down.
It wasn't 2 seconds. left lane got a red light.?????? Also seen the Yellow Mavrick in ProStock stage and get burned down by the tree on a single run. After I seen him sit there burning the trans up I thought holy crap lift off the gas. I looked back and I guess the tree finally drop because the light was green. Seemed like he waited a very long time to me for the tree to drop.

[Big Kahuna]

Well since I'm not the first one to bitch and be called the trouble maker -- I'll give you my take:

The track is beautiful

There were more security guards than racers. My wife stood up to watch me make a pass -- and was rudely told to sit down in the stands. My son was walking into the men's room with a beer in his hand -- when one of the jack-booted guards told him he couldn't go in there with a beer. So he slammed the beer and and threw the can in the trash -- and that made the guard all the more angry.

In all of my life -- I 've never had a real problem getting my car to hook - except after the jet car in Bradenton. It typically does 1.29-1.31 in the 60. I had a 1.44, three 1.50s, and I obvioulsy went the wrong way for the first round and got a spinning 1.67. I have a 4-speed and many of the 4-speeds were having problems -- but I honestly don't know if my car has a problem -- or this is the world's worst hooking track. Since I've been given the label of trouble-maker -- I kept my damn mouth shut all weekend. However, the rig next to me had a local guy and he says that the track is horrible. The NHRA drivers all complained -- after their own people did the best they could. He says that there is one T&T a month -- and no organized competition. The weekends are spent with street tire racing and no track prep is needed. I heard nothing but complaints all weekend about the track prep -- and the Gestapo. I guess even the vendors were part of it. I was so confused at my spinning that I went to the Mickey Thompson trailer to ask about air pressure to stop my spinning. I was pretty much told that a lot of people were asking the same question, and they really didn't have an answer. The wheel guy with the display in front of me came up out of the blue and asked what I thought of the track. I told him I loved the look of the facility -- but that my car wouldn't hook. He said that someone from the track came to him the night before to ask him whet he'd been hearing from the drivers. He said he told the guy that there were a lot of complaints on track prep -- and the official ackowledged he'd heard the same and that the prep guys were all pretty new and inexperienced.

All of that said -- I might have gotten kicked far down the ladder from the 3rd place position I had -- but my son won his first in NMC so I still left with a smile. Now I have to shut out to have a chance after this track couldn't hold my car.




I noticed that a lot of people in the Top 2 positions got screwed this weekend because of the track -- after getting screwed on the Redistribution of points. I'll bet there's a lot of pissed off racers.

If they can find the solution to crappy track prep -- I'd come back. It is Bradenton's sand I really have a problem with.

Oh, by the way -- four jets cars fogging the lanes just before the finals was a nice touch.

[Big Kahuna]

Originally Posted by CRE

In the other lane Brad Schehr was told to go forward and make a single run. The track official told him to go and stage then as Brad stages his car the guy running the tree turns around and walks away. The tree never drops and burns Brad down. I bitched at the starter and he told us to go again and the tree never drops again and burns him down a 2nd time. Again the official walked away after Schehr went all the way in. Brad just took off. He did get another pass later that night.

I seen many problems with the tree also. Two cars from ProStock pull up to the starting line. The car in the right lane double bulbed the guy in the left. The car in the left lane turned on the prestage light and the tree came down.
It wasn't 2 seconds. left lane got a red light.?????? Also seen the Yellow Mavrick in ProStock stage and get burned down by the tree on a single run. After I seen him sit there burning the trans up I thought holy crap lift off the gas. I looked back and I guess the tree finally drop because the light was green. Seemed like he waited a very long time to me for the tree to drop.

Something like that happened to my son -- and I thought he was yanking on my chain. A much slower car red lit -- and that made his light turn green without counting down the yellows (.500 Sportsman). He got a .300 light and I was busting his balls all of the way home -- while he kept telling me he thought the other guy rolled through the light to make that happen.

[Ben Mens jr.]

Originally Posted by brian@afm

In the final round, the guy "running" the hose for the water box accidently sprayed the back half of Mark Anderson NMRA P/S car, including the left rear wheel. Since I wasn't there, I watched the video this morning on StangTV and saw a track official pointing at the car, showing someone in a white shirt, assumably an NMCA/NMRA official, the water. Nothing was done and Mark had his hands full trying not to wreck the car and his opponent. In fact, Mark and crew were later told that nobody on the line saw anything. Reeeeaalllyyyyyy, why the pointing at the car then?

My rant in just beginning.

The guy was spraying the water unnecessarily close to our car before the burnout too, I'm sure it was the same with others. No water got onto our car but it's still dangerous.

Must not be enough time after the burnout before the next car?

[TRZ Motorsports]

Originally Posted by WarrenRacing71

The security guy on the track was just as bad. He grabbed my dad's credential necklace, pulled on it real hard to look at the # sticker, then thew it back down. He was giving him beef about being around the track, when I was the next car out.

He was also told to "Get the f*ck off of the track." because he was trying to inform the officials that they had our indexes wrong. *since Ken and my hands waving, horns honking, cars not staging, and shutting off wasn't clear enough that something was wrong* I have always been told to check your dial in boards before your run. If it is wrong, do not stage and let someone know. That's what we did.

That guy needs a serious talking to. I seen him doing that with a lot of people. He wasn't letting crew members check out the track prior to their runs, which I think is total BS. I understand getting crowds out of there, but c'mon whats wrong with a crew member sticking around to see how their next rounds opponent runs or whatever. That guy was on a huge power-trip.

We were treated pretty poorly as well. We weren't there racing, but we were in the vendor area and helping out some customers. I'll just say we were excited to hit a new track and area, and we won't be going back there next year. Cockiness and sarcasm gets old real fast and it wasn't only the Zmax crew.

[CrawlinRS]

Originally Posted by WarrenRacing71

I think they don't like us because we only make one left turn

Wow, ZMax kinda sounds like Route 66 Joliet. 66 doesn't give a dam about racers or spectators, all they care about is $$ and Nascar.

I am glad we did not make the ZMax race, sounds like there are a lot of unhappy racers.

[GMCRACER]

Originally Posted by CrawlinRS

Wow, ZMax kinda sounds like Route 66 Joliet. 66 doesn't give a dam about racers or spectators, all they care about is $$ and Nascar.

I am glad we did not make the ZMax race, sounds like there are a lot of unhappy racers.

Heck it makes 66 sound like 41...

[Colleen Rowley]

It was ruff out there but i feel the NMCA NMRA did what they could to try and make the best of a pretty bad situation. Staff from our organization spent a ton of time out on the starting line working trying to do what they could to make sure things went as smooth as possible with the circumstances being what they were. They had no way of knowing till the thing was up and running that things would go the way they did.
with experience comes knowledge, it is still a green track and a green staff.
hopefully they will learn from the mistakes of the weekend and hopefully correct where they went wrong. it is a beautiful facility i would like to return to it under better circumstances

[Topfun99]

I was there with my True Street car but burned my head gasket on my second time trial pass Friday evening so I became a spectator for the rest of the weekend. I didn't have a lot of negative encounters with any specific track personnel but my brief experience as a racer and 2 days of being a spectator I definitely had the impression that they were struggling managing the flow of race cars in the staging lanes.

My biggest beef as a spectator were the big gaps of time when there was absolutely no racing. I would walk a good distance to watch some action and then sit there in the hot sun for 30 minutes to see 10-15 cars go down the track. Also, if you were pitting on the south side with the sportsman cars you had to walk past the grandstand on the south side, through the tunnel, past the first set of stairs to the grandstand on the north side (it was blocked off) to the second set of access stairs for the granstand. Ballpark estimate is that the total distance went from 200 ft to the south grandstand access to 800ft to access the north grandstands.

Sidebar - I feel sorry for any dogs at the track. The only grass areas I remember seeing were down by the scales at the top end. Access to any doggie relief would require them to walk around on the sun baked asphalt with their bare paws. When I got home and told my 2 dogs about it they both wined for a few minutes just thinking about it.

[bbnova]

Thanks for making my morning...

Originally Posted by Topfun99

I was there with my True Street car but burned my head gasket on my second time trial pass Friday evening so I became a spectator for the rest of the weekend. I didn't have a lot of negative encounters with any specific track personnel but my brief experience as a racer and 2 days of being a spectator I definitely had the impression that they were struggling managing the flow of race cars in the staging lanes.

My biggest beef as a spectator were the big gaps of time when there was absolutely no racing. I would walk a good distance to watch some action and then sit there in the hot sun for 30 minutes to see 10-15 cars go down the track. Also, if you were pitting on the south side with the sportsman cars you had to walk past the grandstand on the south side, through the tunnel, past the first set of stairs to the grandstand on the north side (it was blocked off) to the second set of access stairs for the granstand. Ballpark estimate is that the total distance went from 200 ft to the south grandstand access to 800ft to access the north grandstands.

Sidebar - I feel sorry for any dogs at the track. The only grass areas I remember seeing were down by the scales at the top end. Access to any doggie relief would require them to walk around on the sun baked asphalt with their bare paws. When I got home and told my 2 dogs about it they both wined for a few minutes just thinking about it.

[47hudson]

The track was inconsistant but they seemed to be trying to work it out. They acctually sprayed the track during the day but it didn't seem to hold for long. I knew you fast cars would have issues when my heap spun down track! I Didn't have any problems with security or the crew from Zmax everyone was super nice and helpful. I think they will get better with time, I'll give them another shot. You have lower expectations when you run at Atlanta every week I guess. I had a blast even if I was one and done!

[Big Kahuna]

My rig was in front of the registration booth -- where all of the NMCA people would meet morning and night. I can tell you that they worked like dogs from before 7AM until hours after the last car went down. They soon realized that they were at a slippery track and I'm sure they did everything humanly possible to make the best of what they had. My hats off to all of the NMCA staff for making do the best they could. While I'm pissed I could never get my car down the track and I took a major asskickin in the points -- I know they tried hard to fix it. This was the first race in a year that I didn't go at least three rounds.

If that track ever wants to have big events -- including NHRA to keep coming back, they'll have to do something as I don't think prep alone can cure the track. They need to have real race cars with slicks compete on the weekends and season the track. You can't build a track that beautiful and only have street tire racing on it during the year. There is no real defined groove.

I felt for the dogs too. I was fortunate enough to have a golf cart to ride my three dogs the mile trip from where I was parked to past tech five times a day. Not one patch of grass inside the fence.

I'll bet the ice vendor was the most popular vendor there.

I'd be willing to give them another shot at fixing their track before I'd consider Bradenton. You can't fix sand. The pits aren't so bad for the heads up cars -- but they suck for the rest of us. That farmer plowing the acre at the end of the track in a headwind needs to be shot -- but you know he and the track must have a major fued going on. Gainesville would be so much nicer -- or better yet, Texas.

I like the Route 66 track -- and never experienced a problem there. I also liked the Atlanta track -- and wouldn't shed a tear if it replaced Charlotte. Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas are all nice tracks, that are professionally run. I know all of the North East people scream about having to go there -- but my shortest haul is Memphis -- 650 miles. My average haul is 1100 miles -- so it wouldn't hurt to give the Texas guys one short haul. There are a lot of racers here that once bit by the NMCA bug might become regulars. Pinks fills them up here. I know Seth Angel has said he wishes something could be worked out. NMCA needs a little Southern Hospitality in its tracks.

[brian@afm]

Originally Posted by Ben Mens jr.

The guy was spraying the water unnecessarily close to our car before the burnout too, I'm sure it was the same with others. No water got onto our car but it's still dangerous.

Must not be enough time after the burnout before the next car?

He was spraying the box area, started talking to someone and turned a bit and then proceeded to spray the car. There was water running down the back window, so I'm told. The people at the line saw it, but, did nothing, the video is proof of that. Later, C.H. supposedly asked the starting line crew if they had seen anything, they LIED, and said no.