BOB VANDERGRIFF - "THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS'
There’s a part of Bob Vandergriff that hears the song by Timbuk3 playing in the back of his mind. Now that band might not be a household name, but their song “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” is commonly known.
Vandergriff’s optimism is fueled by the progress his team has made with a new engine combination comprised mainly of internal components fabricated in his Alpharetta, Georgia-based racing shop.
Today’s 333 mile per hour top speed during Saturday qualifying in Pomona only confirms that he’s on to something.
“We just felt they would be better,” Vandergriff said. “We started testing them the last five races and of the [initial phase] Countdown deal and that kind of put us in a bad spot. I mean we knew that we had better parts but we didn’t have enough information to race it so we kind of threw them in there once in a while trying to get data on it but we didn’t feel comfortable enough racing it.
How can a driver light up the motor in flames several times in the lights and lose his 13th career final round and still smile. It's really not that hard if you have something brighter down the road.
There’s a part of Bob
Vandergriff that hears the song by Timbuk3 playing in the back of his mind. Now
that band might not be a household name, but their song “The Future’s So Bright
I Gotta Wear Shades” is commonly known.
Vandergriff’s optimism is
fueled by the progress his team has made with a new engine combination comprised
mainly of internal components fabricated in his Alpharetta, Georgia-based racing
shop.
Today’s 333 mile per hour top speed during Saturday qualifying
in Pomona only confirms that he’s on to something.
“We just felt they would be
better,” Vandergriff said. “We started testing them the last five races and of
the [initial phase] Countdown deal and that kind of put us in a bad spot. I
mean we knew that we had better parts but we didn’t have enough information to
race it so we kind of threw them in there once in a while trying to get data on
it but we didn’t feel comfortable enough racing it.
“Once we got
knocked out of the Countdown deal we decided to go ahead and put all of that
stuff on there and it showed a lot of promise in Vegas so we’re excited about
this weekend.
I think you see a lot of that starting to happen more in the future because the C&C equipment is readily available to us and if you do have something better you want to keep it internal,” Vandergriff said. “You don’t want to have somebody make it and then it go to the whole pit area. I think you’re going to see that more and more as time goes by. We’re actually working on a joint program with the people at Richard Childress Racing to help us with the engineering side of it and their engineers to be able to build a lot more stuff internally. - Bob Vandergriff, Jr.
Vandergriff has run several times in the 330-mph range
already. He said they have had help on the parts but when pressed to specify, he
only said that it’s the stuff between the oil pan and the injector.
Vandergriff did say these are the parts they usually buy in bulk from
manufacturers. With that said, are these special components providing longer
engine life?
“No, actually they’ve been a little bit more destructive
so far,” Vandergriff said. “It’s only because we don’t have enough information
on it and we don’t know what to tune up. A couple of the runs ended with us
blowing up at the finish line but we’re fixing it and we’re certainly not adding more fuel to
it. We’re fixing the trouble spots and I’m excited. I think that if the
weather cools off it’ll run in the 4.40’s.”
Vandergriff wouldn’t
consider himself a trend-setter in this arena, but he did say that his project
will be common among the top teams in the future.
I think you see a
lot of that starting to happen more in the future because the C&C equipment
is readily available to us and if you do have something better you want to keep
it internal,” Vandergriff said. “You don’t want to have somebody make it and
then it go to the whole pit area. I think you’re going to see that more and
more as time goes by. We’re actually working on a joint program with the people
at Richard Childress Racing to help us with the engineering side of it and their
engineers to be able to build a lot more stuff internally."