NHRA Senior Vice President, Race Operations Graham Light walked into the control towerat Virginia Motorsports Park on Saturday morning of the NHRA Torco Race Fuels Narionals and greeted his staff in the usual manner. He didn’t say a word, but you could see on his face the desire for an easier day.

Light hoped the day would be a smoother day than Friday presented. In one day, Light survived inclement weather which altered the schedule, a racing surface that refused the adhesive process and a power failure that left the racers and thousands of race fans in the dark.

“We’ve had tougher days, trust me,” Light said. “We are fortunate to have a lot of good people that know what to do – some of them twenty and thirty years.”

Light said sometimes you just have to step aside and let those you have in place handle the situations.

“You immediately try and figure how you can juggle the schedule to make everything fit,” Light explained. “You want it to be as fair as it can be for both the professional and sportsman racers. Darryl Zimmerman and his crew do a great job of making all of that work.”

NHRA Senior Vice President, Race Operations Graham Light walked into the control towerat Virginia Motorsports Park on Saturday morning of the NHRA Torco Race Fuels Narionals and greeted his staff in the usual manner. He didn’t say a word, but you could see on his face the desire for an easier day.

Light hoped the day would be a smoother day than Friday presented. In one day, Light survived inclement weather which altered the schedule, a racing surface that refused the adhesive process and a power failure that left the racers and thousands of race fans in the dark.

“We’ve had tougher days, trust me,” Light said. “We are fortunate to have a lot of good people that know what to do – some of them twenty and thirty years.”

Light said sometimes you just have to step aside and let those you have in place handle the situations.

“You immediately try and figure how you can juggle the schedule to make everything fit,” Light explained. “You want it to be as fair as it can be for both the professional and sportsman racers. Darryl Zimmerman and his crew do a great job of making all of that work.”

Friday’s morning rains created problems for Light and his crew of officials.

“The concrete looked pretty good yesterday morning,” Light said. “For some reason, the rain got under it and the rubber lost its bond. We really had a virgin piece of concrete for about 550 feet. The first process is that you have to get all of that flaky rubber off. We did that and dried the track.

“We proceeded to try and put the rubber down with the tire machine that Roger Stull provided us with.”

Light explained how his crew used VHT as well as a powdered rosin [gold dust] to the racing surface and then worked it in until the surface turned black again.

“We had a good racing surface and the cars might have run even better if it hadn’t have been so humid,” Light said.

Everything appeared to be going well and then VMP went pitch black from a power failure. It was later determined the failure wasn’t limited to the track. An entire power grid in Dinwiddie, Virginia failed Friday evening.

“I was thankful that it wasn’t in the midst of two Top Fuel cars making a run,” Light said, a sigh of relief in his voice. “The concern was to make sure it didn’t happen again because it could have been catastrophic if two cars were running 300 miles per hour and the lights went out. Luckily it was between a pair of cars and Virginia Power has given us a pretty high level of confidence the situation has been resolved. It is a problem they identified on their grid.”

Friday’s miscues were nothing new to Light, however having them all piled into one event on a single day was unexpected.

“Some events go smooth as anything and others are plagued with issue after issue,” Light said. “We’ve had lights go out before. We’ve had rubber wash off before. It’s just we had them all happen in one day.”