Well, blog fans, I’ve slacked a bit over the last week in getting you some updated reading material on all things Kalitta (Sorry Wilbs). So, I had a stack of e-mails with some great questions from fans about various and insightful things and I thought now would be a good time to get one of those answered for you.

This question comes from Willie “Big Will” Johnson (which I have to take this opportunity to say that if Mr. Johnson is not a blues singer from the Mississippi Delta, he sure has a great name for it anyway!). Jon Oberhofer, crew chief on Dave Grubnic’s Zantrex-3 rail, is providing his wisdom for an answer…

Q: I notice every time that I am in the pits when you guys warm up the cars, the driver will drop the clutch, grab the brake, and then hit the throttle for a split second. I am curious…what’s the reason for doing that other than stopping the hearts of fans who aren’t prepared to hear it? I see some teams do it and others don’t. Is there an advantage to doing that?

A: The reason we hit the throttle is to seat the clutch. We are trying to get the clutch discs as flat as possible. Sometimes there may be a little high spot in a disc, so by seating the clutch we are trying to knock those high spots off before we actually run the car. Plus it is funny to see people react when they are not prepared for it. We’ve had people freak out and run away, but mostly fans just spill their drinks … which is a party foul, I might add! We also do it to check to see how responsive the motor is.

I don’t know that there really is an advantage or disadvantage to doing it. We’ve not done it before and ran just as good when we have, but it’s just an effort to eliminate a variable if you can.

Thanks for the question, Big Will.

Jon “O”