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The BME Bulletin
Bill Miller
Engineering's Top Fuel Blog Like the Spanish conquistadors who burned their ships after landing in the New World, there was no going back for the Bill Miller Engineering Top Fuel team when they arrived at Memphis Motorsports Park for the O'Reilly Auto Parts Mid-South Nationals. After testing a new supercharger and engine combination in Seattle and Sonoma, and with the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals only two weeks away, it was no time to be timid. Team owner and crew chief Bill Miller jumped in with both feet with a new "setback" supercharger manifold that relocates the blower rearward for more uniform fuel distribution and more horsepower. Miller's audacity was rewarded with the team's best qualifying performance of the season. Driver Brady Kalivoda ran 4.791/300.13 in the first session, 4.704/308.71 in the second session, and 4.711/309.70 in the final session. That performance put the black BME dragster seventh on Friday and 10th going into final eliminations on Sunday. After mild weather on Friday and Saturday, race day dawned with typical summer conditions for Memphis: hot and humid. Kalivoda's first-round opponent was Top Fuel kingpin Larry Dixon in Don Prudhomme's Miller Lite dragster. Kalivoda was first off the starting line, but both dragsters lost traction at mid-track. Dixon won the tire-smoking duel with a 5.027-second elapsed time at 276.92 mph to Kalivoda's 5.488 e.t. at 238.26 mph. Brady Kalivoda: From the Driver Seat "At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we had another great weekend with the best set of qualifying runs we've made this season," said Kalivoda. "After jumping in with both feet with the setback supercharger, we did extremely well under difficult circumstances. It makes it really fun for the driver; I'm having a blast! "Sunday was a repeat of the last three races with the weather changing dramatically for the first round. That's where the full-time teams have a leg up on us because they have more experience under tough conditions. We took our best shot racing Dixon. I got a jump at the start and we both spun the tires down the track. We did it sooner and that was the difference. With the reaction time difference, a 5.07 would have won the race - how many times are you going to run a 5.07 and beat Larry Dixon? It was a missed opportunity for a win light." The View from the Top: Bill Miller on Memphis "I decided that if we were going to run a setback blower like the big dogs, we should just do it," Miller said. "So when we got back from Sonoma, we took everything off the car and everything out of the trailer for a conventional supercharger. There's no going back." "Along with the new supercharger and engine combination, we have to cope with the new 85 percent nitro rule," Miller noted. "We're spinning the blower faster, putting in more fuel and raising the compression ratio to compensate for the reduced nitro percentage. The goal is to pump the same volume of nitro into the cylinders as we did previously with a 90 percent mixture. "Going into the first round on Sunday, we knew that Brady would take a big bite out of the Christmas Tree and we hoped to run a 4.60 or 4.70 against Dixon," he continued. "The track temperature was 125 degrees, and we don't have a thick notebook on how to run the car under those conditions. When the car that ran in the lane ahead of us smoked the tires, I knew we were in trouble. I adjusted the clutch to engage less aggressively, but at 1.2 seconds into the run it zipped the tires. "We're installing a programmable ignition box for the next race that should prevent that happening again," Miller revealed. "We'll be able to change the spark timing until a few seconds before the run." Next Stop: Indianapolis The Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park is always special, but this year's edition has the extra significance of the event's silver anniversary. "It will be awesome to race for the first time in the U.S. Nationals on its 50th anniversary," said Kalivoda. "Indy is the biggest event in NHRA drag racing, and I get to compete there as a driver. It's just tremendous. "I've gone to Indy several times as a crew member, and I was a part of the Schumacher Racing team when Tony won the U.S. Nationals in 2000," Kalivoda recalled. "That was an incredible feeling that I'd love to repeat. "As well as we've been running, it's hard to believe we don't have a round win yet this season. It's not through lack of effort - we just haven't been getting any breaks. I'd like to think that maybe we're saving them all for Indy and we can translate that into a win light or two. If you're going to do it anywhere, that's the place to do it." BME Race Results O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals, Memphis, Tenn., Aug. 22, 2004 Qualified: No. 10 at 4.704/309.70 mph First Round: Larry Dixon (5.027/276.92) defeated Brady Kalivoda (5.488/238.26).
Next Race Mac Tools U.S. Nationals, Indianapolis, September 3-6
TV Schedule: Saturday, Sept. 4, early qualifying highlights, 8 -9 p.m. (ET) ESPN2 Sunday, Sept. 5, NHRA 2Day event preview, 11:30 a.m. - noon (ET) ESPN Sunday, Sept. 5, qualifying highlights, 1 - 3 p.m. (ET) ESPN Sunday, Sept. 5, qualifying highlights, 5 - 8 p.m. (ET) ESPN2 Monday, Sept. 6, NHRA 2Day 50 years of U.S. Nationals, 11 - 11:30 a.m. (ET) ESPN2 Monday, Sept. 6, early eliminations, 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. (ET) ESPN2 Monday, Sept. 6, final eliminations, 7 - 10 p.m. (ET) ESPN2
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