Norwalk Edition
Over the past two months, HPP brought you continuing coverage of our Pavement Pounders Shootout, held at the Summit Motorsports Park quarter-mile track in Norwalk, Ohio, as part of the annual Ames Performance Pontiac Tri-Power Nationals. HPP invited a select group of racers from across the United States to join us for an exciting day of closed-to-the public drag racing, test-and-tune, and camaraderie.
This month, we continue our Shootout with two racers who love the look of Pontiac Firebirds and Trans Ams and even the base color of each of their cars is very close in appearance. That's where the similarities between the cars and drivers end. The First-Gen Firebird owner has never raced on a quarter-mile track before, but he and his dad built his car to introduce him to the drag racing hobby. The Fourth-Gen T/A owner is a seasoned amateur racer with many trophies under his belt, but his new race car was just built and has never braved the Summit track.
Teddy Robb of Akron, Ohio, is a newbie to the sport with his '68 Firebird 400. It's equipped with a 428/461ci engine, factory No. 16 heads, a Borg Warner Super T10 four-speed manual trans, and 4.56 rear gears.
Ken Deabenderfer of Indiana, Penn-sylvania, is a familiar face at Norwalk each year with his '68 Tempest race car, but this year he's got something different-an '02 Trans Am tube-chassis race car. It features a 511ci MR1 engine, Edelbrock heads, a Turbo 400 trans, and 4.11 gears.
Weather Report
The temperature at Summit Motorsports Park during our Shootout ranged from 73.9 to 78.1 degrees. Barometric pressure was measured at 30.06 hg and the dew point was 53.1 degrees. This track is 853 feet above sea level and density altitude ranged from 2,022-2,296 feet, so we'll 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.