Mastercam team gets monkey off its back

MASTERCAM SAYS THE MONKEY IS DEAD
by Cole Coonce, NR Mojo Wire

Los Angeles, CA--After claiming Runner up of the "B" Main at the Goodguys 41st March Meet, the Mastercam AA/Fuel Dragster Race Team can exhale with the knowledge that the monkey that rode on its back for the duration of the 1999 season is not only finally off, it has been taken outside and shot.

This monkey, who grew to assume the shape and girth of King Kong as the season progressed, was invisible to those who didn't belong to the team but mainfested itself in the form of performance-killing tire smoke.

Indeed, the team laid down six smokeless runs en route to a runner-up finish in the "B" Main.

(For more on the Mastercam team's weekend at Bakersfield, point your browser to http://www.nitronic.com/wayback.html and groove on both the blow-by-blow as well as the existential ruminations of the Mastercam fueler's latest greasemonkey, Bert Toulotte)

No animals were harmed during the making of this press release.

MASTERCAM NOTES: Look for an explanation (?) of front-motored fuel dragsters as the Mastercam AA/FD guys make its mainstream media debut *tonight* (3/21) on The X Show, 11:pm EST/PST on the FX channel...

MORE MASTERCAM AT BAKERSFIELD: Mastercam driver Tim Gibson, who had his first experience driving a slingshot fueler last weekend, also drives the Bill Miller Engineering rear-engined fueler on the NHRA circuit. He noted some of the similarities in driving the different styles of dragsters, most importantly the difference in bringing the two machines to a stop. In the rear-engined car, hitting the parachutes and then getting on the brakes is an acceptable and relatively mellow way to stop the car; this same procedure in the front-engined dragster can make the car bounce like it was it was being dribbled by Meadowlark Lemon... "The chutes made it bounce and the brakes made it bounce," Gibson explained, in reference to slowing the Mastercam fueler. "I thought it was odd, but then I looked in the other lane and I'm bouncing and the guy next to me is bouncing. Maybe it's the way tire work...")