1980 Pontiac Trans Am - Shootout

VMP Edition
What would you say if High Performance Pontiac invited you to have private use of an NHRA track for the day, make as many passes as you wanted, and then get your Pontiac featured in the magazine? Sound too good to be true? It's not. We've been doing it for more than a dozen years.

To kick off the Pontiac summer show season, HPP invited a select group of racers to enjoy the recently renovated quarter-mile strip at Virginia Motorsports Park in Petersburg, Virginia, the day before the Pontiacs In the Park event. The racers' mission: to push their Ponchos to the limit, while experimenting with tuning, tire pressure, launch rpm, and shift points, all in an effort to achieve their best e.t.'s ever.

This month, we'll highlight two drag racers who share a passion for Pontiacs, but while one loves the big-body brawn popular at the beginning of Pontiac's musclecar era, the other prefers the sleek, lighter weight of the Bandit-years' Trans Ams. Let's meet the racers.

Randy Peer of Ridgely, West Virginia, came to illustrate the brute force of his '64 Catalina. It features a 455 engine bored to 463 cubes, cast-iron No. 13 heads, a Turbo 400 trans, and 4.10 gears.

Roy Sams of Chesterfield, Virginia, arrived with his '80 Trans Am. It's equipped with a stroked and poked 455 motor that now sports 474 cubes, cast-iron No. 62 heads, a Turbo 400 trans, and 4.10 gears.

Weather Report
The temperature at Virginia Motorsports Park ranged from 82 to 87 degrees during our shoot-out. Barometric pressure was 29.69 hg and the dew point was 64.4 degrees. The track sits at 98 feet above sea level and density altitude ranged from 2,083-2,368. We use a factor of 0.9731 for e.t. and 1.0283 for mph for 2,300 feet to chart the theoretical best performance at sea level. This will be done on the best pass only based on e.t's.

The five most important passes are listed.
Run Notes: 1) Engine cold, hooked well; 4) Hooked well, pulled well; 6) Hooked well, got faster; 7) Played with timing, hooked well, got faster; 8) Got faster, good time.

Roy Sams
Roy was able to make four passes during the event. His first was a 10.43 at 127.57 mph, with 32-degrees timing. From the very beginning, he felt that the track was a little slick and that spinning off the line and poor traction were the results. For his subsequent passes, he set timing at 33 degrees and earned his best time of the day, a 10.34 at 128.07, on his second run. His third pass was nominally slower at 10.40, but on the fourth, the spinning off the line was so severe that he did not complete the pass.

Randy Peer
Randy's Catalina is built to endure the rigors of the track and he felt comfortable racing it all day long-eight passes in total. His first was a 12.03 at 111.28 mph and his goal was to beat his best time ever of 11.69. On passes two through seven, his e.t.'s ranged from 11.82 to 11.92. Finally, on his last pass, he squeezed another 0.05 second out of the Pontiac, earning an 11.77 e.t. His tuning changes consisted of starting at 37 degrees advance and working down to 30 degrees, which netted him his best time of the day. Although he could have experimented with tire pressure, he chose to keep 20 psi in his rear tires throughout the event.

Owner Bio: Randy Peer
Randy, a 39-year-old salvage-yard owner, has been racing for 10 years. He bought his '64 Catalina in 2007 because he wanted something different. It's special to him because he likes early '60s cars that go fast. His most memorable experience was the first time down the quarter-mile with it at Hagerstown, Maryland, in 2007. Randy also owns a '69 GTO, a '63 LeMans, and a '70 LeMans.