RE: Interview with me and Dale Creasy form Edmonton
Thats a good interview birdie, I watched it a couple of weeks ago when it first came out, tough luck with you losing your blower belt last week you really crushed her on the light.. speaking of which,I included the piece in Comp plus about your reaction times. Great job, good luck to Doug and you guys at Indy and I'll catch up with you in Epping... Oh yeah just read that Evan Knoll isn't to happy with the point system announced for the NHRA next year and he says there is going to be big annoucnement coming after Indy , word has it he is going to double the purse in the pro classes for the IHRA (good stuff) ..
TOP FUEL
Reaction streak goes on -- Torco Racing Fuels Dragster driver Rick Cooper lost his opening-round race with Hillary Will, but he kept his reaction-time streak alive. Will advanced, despite her .118-second light in the K.B. Racing/Kalitta Motorsports Dragster against Cooper's .063.
Clay Millican is the only driver to get the better of Cooper at the starting line all year, and he did it only once, at Milan, Michigan. That's why Cooper has the IHRA's best reaction-time average at .065 seconds.
"I cut lights. I tree people," he said, referring to the electronic "Christmas tree" starting device. "I nearly doubled it on Hillary. My whole psyche is that when I come up to the line, I don't care who you are -- I want to beat you on the tree.
"The blower belt came off," Cooper said with a "What can you do?" shrug. "I drove that car the best I could."
Cooper -- whose teammate, Doug Foley, faced Will in the final -- said the Norwalk newcomer has strong fundamentals. "It takes awhile. It takes lots of laps," he said. "I'm still always learning. If you don't keep learning, something's wrong."
He said he doesn't practice on a simulated Christmas tree, for several reasons. For starters, most of the available ones give the driver a button to press -- a procedure that doesn't duplicate how a driver launches. The setting and sense of urgency are missing, as well. Instead, Cooper -- a golf pro from Boise, Idaho -- said he relies on a visualization process to prepare himself for perhaps the most important contribution a driver can make to a run.
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