Steady gains, hard rains leave Carpenter anticipating Martin, MI event
(7-31-06) CHARLOTTE, NC. -- Charles Carpenter endured the "second-worst rainout of his career” at the IHRA Canadian Nationals at Toronto Motorsports Park on July 21-22. The only rainout that Carpenter ranked higher in his 32-year career was a complete washout of a 1990 Super Chevy Show event in Sonoma, California, then called Sears Point Raceway. “A rainout is a big disappointment no matter where you are, but the further you are from home, it seems to hurt a little worse. We also had our good friend Paul Albino join us this weekend, which added to the disappointment. I guess it’s the long ride back that lets it sink in,” Carpenter stated. “At least back in 1990 at Sonoma I was on my own little “western swing”, stringing together several races in Seattle, Sonoma, Bakersfield, and Sacramento one after the other.”
The downtime at the track brought on by the rain gave Carpenter extra time to field questions and comments on his recent letter to the IHRA and everyone involved with Pro Modified regarding the state of the class. Carpenter noted, “The vast majority of the feedback I have received on my letter has been very positive. A few people have had their qualms with it, but that’s certainly to be expected when addressing such a sensitive issue across every media outlet available.” He also granted 1320TV an interview conducted by multi-time Top Fuel World Champion Clay Millican on the subject, and used the time to its fullest. “Clay told me I get the award for being the first person to not let him get more than 5 words in during an interview,” Carpenter joked.
Carpenter feels that he has steadily improved his iconic nitrous-assisted 1955 Chevy’s performance at each event this season, and was looking to make even more gains in Toronto. “We ran a career best 6.22 at 226.47 mph in Milan, and we were looking forward to perhaps running in better atmospheric conditions in Toronto,” said Carpenter. “Those better conditions coupled with a little more tuning on the car would have almost certainly produced 6-teens for us.” Carpenter went on to add, “We just need to keep improving our performance at every race. With the way the blown cars are running, it might not guarantee us a spot in the field, but at least they can’t say anything about the kinds of numbers we are running.”
The extra downtime certainly gave Carpenter and the rest of the Embee Performance team the opportunity to prepare for this weekend’s event, the Torco Racing Fuels Northern Nationals at US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, MI.
A confident Carpenter added, “Hopefully, we just had to wait a couple weeks to squeeze some more great numbers out of this old Shoebox”
For more on Charles Carpenter and the Embee Performance team, be sure to check out:
www.fastest55.com
www.embeeperformance.com
Photo courtesy David Anderson
