Hello blog readers! For those of you who don’t know me, which is the majority of you folks reading this, my name is Jason Tirb, but most people just call me Turbo. My sole purpose at Kalitta Motorsports right now is to take care of my assistant, Matt Korol; others may know this magnificent person as Bobby. Actually, I’m just kidding, that’s not my sole purpose, but it does occupy a good percentage of my time here on earth (just kidding, Bobby). My actual job is the clutch specialist on the Doug Kalitta-driven Mac Tools Top Fuel dragster. Todd asked me to share with you about my racing experience over Australia.



During December, I was fortunate enough to visit Australia and fulfill a dream of racing there. From the minute I stepped off the plane until I left Australia, it never lacked for excitement. The shop I worked at was owned by Santo Rapisarda. Santo is a long time friend of Glenn Mikres, who tunes Scott’s DHL Funny Car. Santo’s hospitality to us was more than you ever could imagine. The racing part however was difficult and challenged us the entire time.



Once at the shop, we found ourselves in a difficult situation. The car needed a lot of attention, and from the fuel tank forward needed new pipe welded on. After working on the car for five days straight with hardly any sleep we started her up. This was pretty sweet for me since it was my first time sitting in the cockpit, which was a truly amazing feeling. The next day we went to the track at Western Sydney Int’l Dragway to prepare for qualifying at Australia vs. United States Top Fuel Showdown. Mike Dunn drove the dragster I was working on.



Our first attempt looked good until the car smoked the tires around 300 feet. Once the car came back, I noticed the supercharger was not bolted to the intake anymore and oil was leaking out of the block. This was the first of four motors we blew up…oops! We missed Q2 due to the overwhelming amount of work that needed to be done. On our last qualifying attempt, we ran a 4.80, which qualified us, but again the motor blew up.



We stayed all night and into Sunday morning to get the car ready for the first round of eliminations without getting any sleep. Our first run wasn’t so good because we blew up the motor again, but we still won the round. In the semis, we broke a fluid line for the clutch management and blew the motor up…again!



Then, things actually got worse as a hail storm occurred and produced baseball-sized hail and destroyed our pit area. They announced an evacuation of the facility. Then, once it stopped, they told us to be in the staging lanes in 45 minutes! Our pit looked like a bomb went off and the car wasn’t even put together. With everything that happened, we made it up to the staging lanes just in time, but only to lose to last year’s Australian Top Fuel Champion, Phil Read (that’s me and Phil in the photo).



Needless to say we were disappointed we lost, but relieved for the first time in a week for the excitement to end and get some well-deserved rest. The next day we were invited to go on the harbor cruise with the Read family. This was a very nice treat, and I got to see downtown Sydney, which was a blast.



Thanks again to everyone who made my trip possible and enjoyable, well, mostly enjoyable.



Turbo