Ask any drag racer about tire shake and they'll tell you they hope it never happens to them.
About a year ago, while taking off at the start at Northland Motorsports Park, Brian Barby lived through that unnerving feeling when the 17-inch slicks of his super pro dragster suddenly released their grip on the track as he gunned the throttle of his thousand-horsepower engine.
He wasn't sure what had happened until tower operator Karen Wilkinson showed him the uneven skid marks his tires left behind as they warped to the point there was daylight showing underneath.
"That rattled my cage pretty good, I'd never felt a violent tire shake like that before," Barby said. "You just keep your foot into it. and drive through it when you're in a race. It can happen at any track. It has a lot to do with the car's setup and suspension."
It also didn't help that he was racing on a pockmarked asphalt track riddled with dips and rises that could unload the weight of race car at any time. Those bumps and crevices are now gone, replaced by a 720-foot strip of freshly-paved concrete that beckons drivers at the National Hot Rod Association-approved drag strip. They'll get to break in that new pavement today at the first street legal race event of the season.
"I haven't seen it, but from the guys in Fort St. John are saying, it's absolutely stellar," said Barby. "Brent [track owner Marshall] put a lot of money into the facility and that's what it needed. His whole concept is about giving back to the community. He has a great vision for it and I think it's only going to grow."
Bracket racing in the FasGas/Lordco/Quaker State Street Legal series starts today at 5 p.m. and will continue until 9. On most nights last year, as a Friday night event, it wasn't unusual to see 100 cars racing.
Now in his ninth season of drag racing, Barby had just three months of racing experience when he won an NHRA Wally award as the A-class winner in the National Dragster Challenge, driving a 10-second car. His daughter Taihler also won a Wally that day behind the wheel of a junior dragster.
He now drives a rail built in California, which came equipped with rear suspension. Over the winter Barby installed a 632-cubic-inch engine that cranks out 1,100 horsepower. Last weekend in Fort St. John at the IHRA Ironman Classic, he covered the quarter-mile in 7.47 seconds with a top speed of 178 mph.
Two weeks ago in Ashcroft, Barby placed third out of 28 at an IHRA event and he followed that up last weekend by placing third out of 32 racers in the super pro class at an Ironman Classic IHRA meet in Fort St. John. Because he chose Fort St. John over a conflicting IHRA Summit Super Series points meet that same weekend in Ashcroft a week ago, that dropped him from third to seventh in the Summit super pro points standings
Last year Barby was picked as the driver of the year at the Ashcroft track. A victory in the top racing class in Edmonton qualified Barby for the IHRA Summit Sportsman World Finals in Memphis, Tenn. He made the trip to Memphis but was eliminated in the first round after he left the start a split-second too early.
"I was pretty pumped, but I didn't put enough in my delay box," he said. "Typically what happens when you're getting into something of that calibre your adrenaline starts to flow and I red-lighted by four thousandths [of a second]."
Barby is looking forward to next weekend when Prince George hosts its first of three NHRA Rolling Mix National Dragster Challenge series points meet of the season July 26-28. The three-day meet will be combined with the Rocky Mountain Nostalgia Funny Car points final, which will feature blown-alcohol cars capable of running 200 miles per hour.
