March 15th / 16th Lake Ming Bakersfield California
The National Jet
Boat Association opened there 2008 season with the first drag boat race
in the United States. Over 60 race teams made up the competition and
there were a few new rides in the Lake Ming pit area. Saturday,
qualifying day, was the only day I was able to attend and here are some
notes from the day. I am also working on consolidating some of the NJBA
results and will add a dedicated page for winners and runner ups.
Cloudy, breezy, and early on cold conditions were on tap as the racers
took to the water for qualifying. I hit some snow in Gormon heading up
for the day and when we got to the track it was cold! That did not stop
my good buddy photoMark McLaughlin from wearing shorts and flip flops
however! In typical fashion the jet boats classes were the first to run
and were a number of machines that I either had not seen before or that
were new. If you watch the Performanceboat.com forums you will see that
there is a lot of comraderie between a bunch of the newer (within the
last few years) jet boat racers and these guys know how to have fun on
the water be it at the races or at the river. They have some very nice
hardware and run extremely hard. In the hydro world there were a couple
of capsuled machines that included Troy Ferry, Steve Henry, and a new
machine out of the Mark Peters camp. Troy did not have much luck on
Saturday as the machine continues to be a handful in terms of steering.
Since he debuted the ex Rob Steele built and campaigned machine he has
had a hard time making a nice straight run down the course. After two
attempts on Saturday he got pulled off the rope when the wind started
to pick up. I am sure he and his Jim Campos tuned team will get things
worked out. Steve Henry, whom I believe is based out of the Pacific
Northwest, also made a lap on Saturday in his good looking flame job
Fineline hulled Pro Mod entry. Mark Peters, who if you recall was
involved in a nasty crash (capsuled PM machine) some years ago brought
out a new PGH. From the looks of it the flourescent green machine is a
Kurtis hulled DRE powered machine. Michael Torgerson was in the cockpit
and he would make a couple laps but the team appeared to have driveline
issues. The name of the flamed machine is Chump Change. In the
flatbottom ranks there were a number TAF teams who were testing. Mark
Porter made at least five runs on Saturday and I heard he made a bunch
more on Sunday. Porter was in the seat of the Monster Energy Drink
Special and he made some hard leaves in the machine. Many of them had
to be aborted as the front end came up to high and machine chined to
the right hard. This team looks like they are working hard to get
things dialed in. Speaking of dialed in the Westerfields, yup that
would be plural, made laps in the All Lit Up machine. Steve made a
couple on Saturday and then son Shane suited up for Sunday. How about a
father and son two boat team!! Steve ran a stout lap on Saturday but
unfortunately for us photographers there was no fire to be seen. Good
luck to this team in 2008 as they chase for points in TAF class. Ken
Simonds debuted an all new flatty in BGF. I am not sure if this is an
all new machine or the machine that Steve Westefield previously ran in
the PE class. In the results I see where Simonds recorded a 7.73 on
Sunday so it looks like this machine is going to be a quick one.
Don Jones also had his awesome looking Barely Legal TAF out on the
water and he took the runner up to Dennis Porter in the TAF class. Tom
Bandy had an excellent weekend as he took wins in the 8.0 class and I
believe the UBFJ class. Mike frey also doubled up with wins in his
awesome looking old school Shovelnose Sanger hydro. I got some good
pics if you might be interested and also shot HD video of each of the
runs as well. If I got a picture of you than I also got video as I
shoot both at the same time. Enjoy the pics and I am already looking
forward to the second race on the NJBA schedule on the first weekend in
April.
Home