 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
           
|
Driver Blogs - Frankie Cicerale
February 16th Well, I will come right out and say it. My blog last year was a disaster. I apologize for the lack of entries. Things got so darn hectic, I couldn’t keep up with it. I promise to make an honest effort of it this year. Let’s see if we can get you all back up to speed. Last year was a Jekyll and Hyde year to say the least. The first half of the year went great. Minus the few races I had to miss because of commitments in the dragster and the overwhelming amount of rainouts we had, I was able to rip off one win in the Nova and score enough points to qualify for the Summit E.T. Racing Series Bracket Finals the first half. That was a huge relief, since I was already qualified, I could concentrate on trying to get the Super Comp program back on track. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have left the dragster in the rafters and stuck with the Nova. The second half of the season saw me make my way back to the trailer with my tail between my legs more often than not. The inconsistency problems with the dragster cropped back up, even after the overhaul work that was done on the car during the off season. To be honest, I think all those first round losses I took in the dragster shook my confidence up pretty bad, as the lack of round wins carried over to my venerable Nova. I didn’t pick up a win for the rest of the season, recorded a 3rd round best at the Englishtown LODRS race in the dragster, and, for the first time since I started, lost 1st round at the Bracket Finals. To say that the back half of the year was frustrating would be an understatement. When the win light didn’t come on at the Bracket Finals, I was crushed. If there ever was a car and a race I could do well in, the Nova and the Bracket Finals were it. When I couldn’t get out of the first round, it was devastating. I skipped the Atco LODRS event due to work commitments, though I did make it down there on Monday to watch Vinnie do his thing and finish 2nd in Super Street points, which was awesome. As much as it pains me to admit, though, when we packed the Nova up in the trailer at Maple Grove after I lost, I had no desire to race the rest of the season. I was that beat up and tired, and I have never been like that. Off of the track, things went a heck of a lot better. I proposed to my girlfriend (now fiancee) of 3 years, Robin Bull, on August 11th, and she made me the happiest man in the world by saying yes. No, I didn’t propose to her on the starting line; I did it the romantic way. We took a nice trip into NYC, had dinner at the Hard Rock Café, and took a carriage ride through Central Park. We took a short walk through the Cherry Hill area of the park, and I found a nice secluded area with a great view of the lake and the skyline of upper Manhattan. One question later and she had the ring on her finger. Too bad I couldn’t win that weekend. Oh well! I also was hired full-time in July to work as an Associate Editor for Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords magazine. In addition, I also got to realize a dream of mine when I got to write my first article for Super Chevy magazine, which is in the same office as MM&FF. For a kid who has read Super Chevy since he has been little, it’s really cool to see your name in there as an author. Overall, my job isn’t a bad gig. I get paid to write about heads, camshafts, and sick amounts of horsepower. Plus I get to take a few stabs at the track when we schedule a track day in the summertime. I think we need a staff bracket race though. With 2007 almost upon us, there is change in the air at Tax Bracket Racing. Vinnie will once again be back behind the wheel of the Thunderbird full-time, as well as the Monte Carlo. As for myself, between the travel I am going to have to do for work, planning the wedding, and keeping the finances in check so Robin and I can pay for the wedding AND the house, racing will be a relief valve for me this year. Dad and I haven’t committed to a definite schedule this year, but suffice it to say I might only be running the dragster on a limited schedule. As for the bracket program with the Nova, we will once again make an effort to qualify for and hopefully win the Bracket Finals. It would be quite nice to come back from my honeymoon and have to go to Pomona for the chance to win the World Championship on my birthday. Well, that’s all for now. Lunch break is over and I have to get back to writing all of those great feature and tech articles for MM&FF magazine. Check back next week as I’ll have another blog entry up. Now if I could only find a way to hit the lottery for a few million bucks so I can pay for this dang wedding… April 26, 2006 First of all, let me apologize for the long delay since my last entry. I have come to the conclusion that four hours could be added to the day and I still wouldn’t be able to get everything done. I am going to have to play a little catch up I guess. We did decent at Atco considering Vinnie and I started the season off in two cars that we have had little or no seat time in. Except for one run on which I missed the 1-2 shift, I was happy with how I drove the Thunderbird. I made a little bit of an error at the finish line second round, but the car was rock solid, Dad had the car dialed extremely well, and there wasn’t a bit of rust on me as far as hitting the tree. Dad and I even got a chance to flex our muscles a bit by putting together a killer run in the last time trial session. I hit an .002 light and thanks to Dad’s gift of being able to add, subtract, and do all those things he does with numbers (he is an accountant after all) the car put a 10.903 up on the boards, adding up to an .005 package. Not bad considering that was our fourth run of the season and my twelfth pass in the Thunderbird overall. I think I could get used to this, especially pulling the wheels up on the starting line like I did. In the dragster, the name of the game is to keep the wheels from pulling up and out of the beams, but in a door car like the Thunderbird it’s different. It’s acceptable, and in my opinion, really cool. I can’t wait to run the car again in June. Well, it has been three weeks since Atco and Vinnie and I have yet to make a run in the Monte Carlo and the Nova at Island Dragway. Mother Nature has had other ideas as we have gotten rained out the past three weeks. Maybe she is saying we need to start racing boats, who knows. I was bummed out because I have been really looking forward to getting out in the Nova. I have owned the Nova since my sophomore year of high school, and what was supposed to be a street car and a college commuter car is now, well, a rocket ship. The only time I get to drive her is at the track, and when you only get to drive your baby a quarter mile at a time, you try to maximize your fun in it. It’s all good though. April showers bring May flowers, so I only have a week left (I hope). The rained out weekends haven’t been a complete loss. The April 8th rain out allowed Robin and I to go to her best friend’s open house at her and her husband’s new place. Let me tell you, there is nothing like watching a NASCAR race on a huge 60-inch HDTV with surround sound. It was like being there, minus the screaming fans, the smells of the race, and the fact that all I could drink and eat were free and fourteen steps away in the kitchen. The rain out on April 15th was good for Dad because, obviously, that’s the end of tax season, and he definitely needed the time to get some more tax returns done. Last weekend’s rain out saw me spending all day with Miss Angelina, the family dog. Actually, dog is an understatement. She is more like the Queen of the family. Amazing how a cute little 19 lb. Toy Fox Terrier/Eskimo mix dog can make Mom, Dad, Vinnie, Robin, and myself melt, but…she is just so cute! I think I am going to have to enter her in DRAW’s cutest dog contest this year. The dragster is back in the trailer, and I can’t wait to get her out and stretch her legs at the Division 1 event in Maple Grove on Memorial Day weekend. The car should be back in winning form, and I have been itching to drive her back into the Winner’s Circle. Hopefully this will be the year. School ends this Friday, and I couldn’t be happier. Between racing, school, work, getting things for the internship squared away, and a host of other things, I am going to welcome the minuscule amount of free time the end of classes will bring. Besides, I have one more class before I gradate so that also helps a lot. Speaking of the internship, I start next Monday, and I couldn’t be more excited. True, I will have to bleed a little Ford blue, but I think I can handle it. All I have to do is walk into my office and see the die cast Nova, Camaro, and ’57 Chevy sitting on my desk to keep me sane. In all honesty, it’s not going to be that bad working for a Ford magazine. If it were an import magazine, it would be different. The whole buzz bomb thing would be mighty tough to swallow. That’s all for now. I promise to start updating the blog on a more regular basis, especially with some of the things coming up that we have planned. Stay tuned for more…like they said on TV, same Bat time, same Bat channel. Now if I could only figure out a way to make it stop raining so we could go racing… March 25, 2006 One week to go before we take the ride down to Atco for the season opener, and things are getting hectic. There is just so much to do and not enough time to get everything done. Classes started again this week so the time that I had free during spring break to get things done disappeared. Dad and Vinnie dropped the dragster off to the guys at Landy’s Performance to get the car re-wired. We all knew it was going to take some time, but after about a day of scooping the car out, there is more to be done than just re-wiring the car. As a matter of fact, I just got back from the shop a few minutes ago and it’s pretty much set in stone the dragster won’t be ready for Atco. The switch panel from Painless Wiring came in along with the new tach and everything else we ordered. The wiring is all out of the car, and we think we found the reason why the car was all over the place last year. Dad and I knew that the problem was probably in the wiring, we just couldn’t find it. It’s better to leave things like this in the hands of the professionals. At any rate, the car is getting the new Mega 450 box we got from Biondo Race Products last year installed, and the car is going to come back a completely different animal. The guys at the shop are going to make another dash for the car, install a different steering shaft with a removable steering wheel, relocate the delay box, and install the new flexplate and transmission shields that were out of date. The guys at the shop have been busy working on the dragster, and I have been busy working on things here as well. My NHRA license is up at the end of April, so I had to schedule my physical and my eye appointment for early next week. I also had to get a Super Street number so I can run the T-Bird at Atco. I swear, I have more numbers than I have cars anymore. At least my numbers are pretty much the same. My Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Street, and ET numbers are all 151J, with my Stock number being the only one off base at 1510. Vinnie, on the other hand, has like four different numbers. Poor Mom, she is the one who has to keep up with it. With so much going on with school and the race team, I haven’t really had time to go out and relax. I am up early just about every day to get some practice tree time in before work or class, and when I get done with the day, its off to the gym. Last night was the first time that I had the chance to go out with my girlfriend, Robin, for a few weeks. We ended up going to a college bar in New Brunswick. We had an awesome time. We got there right before everyone started loading up the place, so we had a nice little area to ourselves. Robin and I even ran into a few kids we graduated high school with, which was pretty cool. We did some dancing and just enjoyed ourselves. It was the first time since the beginning of March that my mind was completely off of the racecars and the upcoming season. The only part of the night that came close to being a racing thing was when the Jagermiester girls came over to give Robin and I a few free items. As you all know, Jager, as we young ones call it, sponsors Max Naylor’s Pro Stock car. I told Robin take the free stuff because it will keep a racer on the track and the girl was like “you race?” Robin did all the work for me. Who needs a PR person when you have a girlfriend who loves talking about racing more than you do! Well gang, my time is up. I have a few more things to get written up before Vinnie and I take a ride back to the shop to drop off some panels so the dash and switch panel can be mocked up without running into a clearance problem. After that, it’s the last blast of the year before racing season: a late night friendly poker game with our good friends Mike Young and Bobby Sartin. Bobby’s other half is out in Texas on business, so he has the condo to himself. I foresee a long night of cigar smoking, joking around, and card playing. Now if I could only figure out how to actually WIN in Texas Hold’em… Monday, March 20, 2006 In the words of the Black Eyed Peas: Let’s get it started in here! It has been a long off-season, but then again, last season was a long one as well. I had a decent title defense in the Nova and Vinnie kept the Street championship in the family as he won it all at Island Dragway, but I know I left a lot on the table last year. Goal number one for 2006: keep the parts breakage to a minimum and on the cheap side. Vinnie got a ride in Ralph and Adam Landolfi’s Camaro in Stock for next year, so for the first time in a few years, the Tax Bracket Racing team will run the full Division 1 schedule. We had to curtail the divisional thing the past few years because of school and family obligations, but hopefully we can make a big splash in our return to the circuit. The off-season has been long but busy. After putting the new motor in the Nova last year and breaking just about everything in the car, the Nova is pretty much ready to roll. We will run through the valves and make some adjustments to the car for 2006, but the car will remain for the most part untouched. There were a few things that changed in Street for 2006, the biggest thing being the E.T. break dropping from 12.00 seconds to 11.50 seconds for this season. That should make things interesting. Vinnie and I are planning on running both Street and the class formerly known as Heavy, though with the E.T. breaks, there really isn’t a difference anymore. Personally, I have no idea why the E.T. break was dropped, seeing as how you still have to run 13.00 or slower in California, but I don’t make those types of decisions. It’s all good though. The California motor is sitting on the engine stand waiting to be dropped under the hood for another trip out West. The dragster is going to take a bit longer to get ready. We had some consistency issues with the car last year, so instead of leaving things alone and shooting ourselves in the foot this year, Dad and I decided to make wholesale changes to the car. Don Garbinski will run through the carburetor, and Landy’s Performance will be completely rewiring the car from front to back and putting in the new Painless switch panel and Biondo Racing Products Mega 450 delay box. They are also going to check out the fuel pumps, throttle stop, ignition system, and everything else electronic in the car. All that is left after that is cleaning the car up, organizing the trailers, re doing the contingency decals so it doesn’t look like I just slapped them on, and taking care of some sponsor signage. We are shooting to have the car ready for the Atco Open. I’m going to run the dragster all year, and make an appearance or two in the vacated seat of the Thunderbird. It was cool running the car last year, and I’m going to run it at the Island Open while Vinnie is there running the stocker. Don’t worry gang; I will still be wearing my bright red bowtie proudly. For a while I thought I might be joining Vinnie in Stock or even making a run or two in an IHRA Top Stock car, but I am happy to be back running with Tax Bracket Racing. I mean there is no place like home. I’ve been working hard to make sure that I am going to be as flawless as I know the cars will be. I’ve been spending at least forty-five minutes on the practice tree each day, and I joined the new LA Fitness that opened up in Piscataway to make sure that I am in shape. I need every advantage I can get. I am even practicing my top end racing on my IHRA game that I have for Xbox. I don’t know if Dad is buying it or not, but it’s worth a shot. Outside of racing, I’ve been busy as well. I’m down to four classes at Rutgers before I graduate, and I have been doing some freelance work for Competitionplus.com. The freelance stuff is cool because I have been writing some pretty interesting articles. I will also be starting an internship for Primedia and their magazine in the Rochelle Park office. That’s going to be awesome. I can’t wait to decorate my office with all my Chevy and Gordon stuff. As I was reading my old column I wrote for Jr. Dragster magazine a while ago, I came across the “Now if I could only” line that I would end each column with. You know what, that might be a pretty cool way to end each blog entry. That’s all for now. Now if I could only figure out an easier way to come up with a line every week… |
||
 |
 |