2005 Dodge Viper vs. F-16 Viper

This year, we didn't exactly advance the car's cause, although we had one or two excuses. (Such as the fact that the planes have Pratt & Whitney jet engines. And the cars don't.) Our first two races were somewhat chaotic, for a number of reasons. First off, Helbig noticed that when he lined up at the 8000-foot mark on the runway, the plane seemed to be a bit farther ahead. Like a thousand feet ahead. He reasoned that a $20 million fighter crewed by a highly competitive alpha male (in this case, Guy "Pepe" Brilando) needs a head start as much as Britney Spears needs more publicity, so he moved up, changing the distance over which the race was to be run. Theoretically, this handed the advantage to the car, which works better over short distances, except that Helbig never heard the countdown. Score one for the planes. To add insult to injury, I fried the clutch on the Comp Coupe by running too many crowd-pleasing burnouts prior to the start. We lined up, Helbig handed over the radio we were using, and the tower asked if we were ready. Since the Comp Coupe had a dragging clutch and I couldn't actually get it into gear, I was about as prepared as the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Eventually, the lever slotted home, and the countdown began. The launch and the shift to second were about perfect, but when I tried to shift from second to third, the lever was reluctant to come out of gear, and I had to wrestle it across the gate into-um-fifth. After the cursing died down, I had blown a certain win against Tim "Hulk" Hax. Two-nil for the planes. That night, Dan Knott, director of SRT, suggested that they would be making an automatic Viper just for me. Helbig was still ticked off, whereas I was a bit more sanguine. Then again, I don't work for Dodge. On Sunday, Estes made sure that the course was set up properly, and the Dodges rolled out as the F-16s completed their preflight checks on the other runway, about 300 yards distant. Helbig staged his Competition Coupe against Chris "Shep" Sheppard while the PA announcer asked the crowd who was going to win. They got it right. Helbig didn't hear the countdown again, and he took off slightly after the plane launched. But it was close, because he ran the plane down over the quarter-mile mark and only just lost out at the half-mile. If he had left the line at the same time as the F-16, we might have clawed back to a victory. The end result, though, was planes four, cars nil. Everyone kept telling us, "At least a Viper won." But from our perspective, at least, it was the wrong kind of Viper. One suspects that the cars will come more heavily armed the next time this race takes place.