Bradford Wins at Slippery
Rock-ingham
AHDRA at Rockingham Dragway
Rockingham, North Carolina October 4-5, 2003
"We went down
there knowing we had to have a good outing on both bikes,"
Tom Bradford said about the AHDRA race at Rockingham. His
Thunder Eagle Racing Team was deep in the hunt for national
championships in both Pro Stock and Pro Gas. Bradford was
battling with perennial champ Frank Dove Jr. in Pro Gas and
longtime rivals Dirk Higgins and Jon Miller only 3 points
down in Pro Stock. In a surprise move, Higgins and Miller
entered Pro Gas at The Rock instead of Pro Stock. "I'm
not sure why they did that," said Bradford. "It
would have been a bullfight down to the end in Pro Stock and
in drag racing, anything can happen."
Anything can happen,
especially on a marginal track like the one Bradford found
at Rockingham. "The worse I've ever seen there,"
said Tom. "We just couldn't get a hold of the track.
It was so slippery in the middle we took 15% out of the Pro
Stock bike just to run a .31."
Pro Stock
Qualifying
-
R round 1 1st
Tom Bradford 7.409 et 169.23mph
-
Round 2 1st
Tom Bradford no improvement - "We made a change and
it went the wrong way."
-
Rround 3 1st
Tom Bradford 7.315et 180.45 mph
It just goes to
show how far the Thunder Eagle team has come in such a short
amount of time that they run a 7.31 and are disappointed.
But after the .29 at Indy they know what they have and, like
providing your children with the best education possible,
want to put it in the proper environment to shine. "We
need to get this bike on a track that's prepped from start
to finish," said Tom.
After an NHRA bodywork
mix-up at the start of the season, the team has avoided The
Big Show and stuck to the AHDRA circuit. But without car tire
rubber and the NHRA's massive track preparation, the all-motorcycle
events are rarely run on tracks that are as good as they can
be. Bradford noted that his .31 run at Rockingham would have
surely bested #16 qualifier Todd Doege's 7.29 on the Pete
Briggs Kawasaki the same weekend at the NHRA event at Maple
Grove, Pennsylvania. "Knowing the air they had to tune
to in Reading, I'm pretty sure we could have run good there,"
said Tom, who claimed about 4/100ths lay in track prep. He's
looking to compare his Buell's numbers at Vegas with the numbers
from the NHRA event at the same track the very next weekend.
"Come hell or high water we're going to have something
that's NHRA legal next year."
Pro Stock Eliminations
Bradford was glad to see Rockingham runner-up Hip Kachel in
Pro Stock. "That's one team that had been running Pro
Gas and it's good to see them running where they belong. There
should have been at least a 5 bike field in Pro Stock."
Instead there were 3. Tom points out that his team's performance
hasn't come by virtue of a multi-million dollar operation
like that of Vance & Hines, but by plain old hard work
and trail and error. And everything the Thunder Eagle team
has made for their Buell is for sale. "Our parts are
available, but I have to have commitments," said Tom.
"I can't make a run of cylinder heads, for instance,
and have them just sit on the shelf."
Pro Gas Qualifying
"In the Pro
Gas deal, we had to come out of the Indy DNQ with a good run,"
said Tom. "We had to qualify decent and go at least a
couple of rounds, which we did. The bike is finally coming
around and the gremlins are solved. We pulled the front cylinder
head after qualifying and found a broken valvespring, which
was probably broken at Indy.
"The 8.05
and 8.00 are the best runs on the bike since Lee Coffey's
owned the bike. But I sure would have loved to have run a
7 for Lee. With Frank going out early at Rockingham he doesn't
really have a chance to catch us in points. So we're putting
Jerry Chapman on the bike for Vegas to prepare for next year."
Bradford
thanked sponsors Hal's Performance Advantage, Hal's Harley-Davidson/Buell,
Joker Machine, Vanson Leathers, The Carburetor Shop, T-N-S
Machining, CRD Inc., S&S Cycle, Gates Belts and Hoses,
Buell Motor Co., Mustang Shelly's Roadhouse, Red Line Oil,
MTI Coatings, Stitch-it-Embroidery, Accurate Automatic Parts,
and Wurth Products.
Tom Bradford and
the Hal's H-D/Thunder Eagle Buell will be racing next at the
AHDRA JIMS Las Vegas Nationals, October 17-19 at The Strip
in Las Vegas, Nevada.
www.thundereagleracing.com
www.halspa.com
www.ahdra.com
The Thunder Eagle Report is prepared by Tim Hailey, www.eatmyink.com
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