My last race of the year...I win AND get a semis in a faster class!?

[ATaylorRacing]

So my racing at Indy was done quite some time ago with the Matchbox...and my last United Manual Transmission Racers series was October 11th with me ending up 4th place with the ONLY car actually driven to and from the track...knock on wood...and NOT the slowest one there. On Oct 17 I drove the Cheap Skate to Kil Kare in Xenia, OH for the Kentucky Bluegrass Super Shifters series last race. They have a 8.5 second slow end limit for cars with slicks...the S stick Class, and for slower cars with DOTs is the D Stick Class....thats me. I ended up winning the D Stick class (we run 1/4), then the series director invited my rough, slow piece of rust to enter the S Stick class. This was after he had brought up the idea to all the drivers of the faster class...not one driver objected since the more cars entered the higher the pay out...and what in the heck could a street driven 4 banger do against full blown drag cars? They put us on a ladder sheet according to our reaction times...best one got 1st round bye...#2 qualifier was...THIS old FART! Round 1 I easily won, round 2 and three were nail bitters, then I FINALLY lost in the semis. I ran a 9.938 on a 9.90...had a better reaction, but Tom Borgia (3 years in a row UMTR Champ) ran a 6.865 on a 6.86 dial. In the final his opponent red lit. He took the stripe by only .0029. A lot of the year I was having trouble red lighting, so before this race I swapped 205/50/14 Mickey Thompson SS tires for the about 2" taller diameter 215/60/14 size M/T SS. I red lit first practice pass, lowered the tire pressure and that took care of that. A nice by product of the taller tires was that I never needed to hit 4th gear. That shift would occur about half way between the 1000' mark and 1/4 mile. Staying in 3rd only saw 5800 at the end of the 1/4 instead of the past 6200 out of breath passes on the shorter tires when not shifting into 4th. The last UMTR race, I had a best ET of ZZZZZZZZ
15.80...basically the same weather conditions Sunday saw my best drop to 15.57...as far as 1/8th mile, my previous best was 10.07 and Sunday that dropped to a 9.92 best. All launches are done at 3900 and shifts at 5500.
https://www.facebook.com/1554490534829259/photos/pb.1554490534829259.-2207520000.1445283845./1633044770307168/?type=3&theater