Or:

"Yes, Doug Tjapkes (easy to pronounce; the "T" is silent and everything
else sounds like you'd expect: JAP-kess) blew his R2 Hawk on his seventh
run. (I thought 7 was a lucky number?) He had been tickling the 14s,
too; getting as low as 15.026 early Saturday morning.

They pulled his Hawk onto the trailer at the far end of the track and
left without coming back to the pits for a post-mortem, so we don't know
for sure what happened. It did blow big-time: camshaft, rod, bearing,
and piston parts out through the oil pan and all over the track. Ouch!

On a happier note, Ted and The Plain Brown Wrapper posted a new low ET
for their performance at that event: 12.848 at 111.11 MPH! So did The
Tomato: 108.27 MPH, while matching Ted's previous low ET with the Tomato
up there: 13.301.

The BIG "improver" and the star of the show, in perspective, was Richard
Poe and his 1963 R1/4-speed Lark Custom 2-door. He astonished everyone
with a 14.354 ET right out of the box (first run) late Friday afternoon.
He came back shaking, "Geeze, how could I ever do that good again?"
(Remember, it was just last September that Richard finally broke into
the 14s after years of trying.)

Well, Richard came back Saturday morning and posted a 14.278, and then,
two runs later, a 14.353!!!! All of Richard's terminal speeds were
between 94.57 - 96.56 MPH; very consistent.

While doing "all the above," Richard beat the following cars in heads-up
drag racing: 1969 Hurst Olds 455, 1963 Corvette Fuel Injection, 1971
Mustang SCJ429, and a 1969 Rambler Scrambler...and remember, Richard's
car is an unsupercharged R1!! (In fairness to those competitors, Richard
beat some of them on Reaction Time; they turned lower ETs, but he had a
better reaction time and got to the end of the quarter-mile sooner, so
he won fair-and-square even though he had a higher ET. It's not the
lowest ET that wins a drag race; it's the car that gets to the end of
the quarter-mile first after the lights go green!)

We had seven Studebakers running: The Tomato, The Plain Brown Wrapper,
Peter Sant's R2 Avanti, Chuck Kern's R2 Avanti, John Raab's mostly R1
1963 Lark Regal 2-door, Richard Poe's 1963 Lark Custom R1 2-door, and
Doug Tjapkes' 1963 R2 Super Hawk. Everyone except Doug had a great time
and most posted a new record for their car one way or another...that is,
once the rain stopped mid-afternoon Friday and they could get the track
dried off for a couple hours' running on what should have been an 8-hour
practice day.

More later in Turning Wheels. BP

BP"

Peter drives about 500 mile each way to the drags each year.  When I
say he drives, I mean he drives the Avanti.  Races it and drives it
home to Canada.

His "KOOL R 2" Avanti is an automatic with air and he runs a 3.08 rear
end and turned in the high 14's.  I believe he usually runs the mid
14's.  Like Richard Poe's R 1 Super Lark four speed, Peter's car is
extremely heavy.

I just looked up the records of the June meet last year that Peter
drove to and it weighed 3825 with Peter in it.

To my knowledge the cars were not weighed this year but the fellow was
at the scales as I came back from a run and I had the Tomato weighed
and it was about 40 pounds lighter than last year weighing 3517 (with
me in it-180 pounds).  Must have had more gas in the tank last year or
maybe the scales had not been calibrated.

Ted