January 5, 2011 A little picture blog entry for everyone to see what we are up to. A bare Brad Anderson billet block is in the car with new front and rear motor plates and an alignment bar. We discovered some faults with the rearend housing mounting plates, so Nathan is whipping up a batch and we need to make sure the rearend will still line up perfectly with the mainline of the engine. Thus, the alignment bar! Here's Pops checking out Nathan's millwork on the aforementioned rearend housing mounting plates. He Approved, but this just goes to show that there is always a set of eyes over your shoulder! While our friends down south are in a rush to get ready and to the race track, this is what we are looking at here in Alberta. It's amazing that this will be the scene for a couple more months yet. Lenard loves the snow. But we actually managed to drag him indoors for a little offseason race car work. Here he is playing with the new Mark Williams aluminum center section. Pete and his daughter put in a full day with the first spare motor. They were doing CC tests and checking on what rod length this specific block requires to match the already built motor which we will start the year with. The spare bullet mentioned in the previous picture is on the engine stand and it won't be too long before it is put into it's "travel stand" and put under the counter in the trailer. Hopefully it stays there for a while! Anyways, you can see we are a busy bunch and you know there will be more updates just like this one. Hopefully it gives all of our fans an inside peak into what it takes to make one of these machines run. It's a lot of hard work for under six seconds! January 4, 2011 Another Year, Another Set of Rules! But, it's worth it. Just like Grandpa George says: "it only has to work once." Whether it be the Hans device, titanium shroud, new head pads or this year, the change to carbon brakes, all these safety measurements have to do is work once! A lot of drag racers forget that and we hear about it more and more because of the internet. The only thing we complain about is not having any money (that's because we spend it all on race cars). We love drag racing and drag racing has treated us well. We play the game safe because it's the only way to play the game. And if that means we have to drop some cash on some overpriced parts, we'll do it and we'll keep doing it. Besides, the new pieces for these brakes are shiny! January 1, 2011 Happy new year to all of our family, friends and fans! We almost can't contain our excitement. If you haven't noticed, we're going nitro racing in 2011! We've got a new sponsor in Team Ace Racing. We've got returning sponsors in Hyperion Laser Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, Jet Tools and Pro Stock Performance. And we've got a motor completed, a second one being built in the shop and we are compiling parts for the third. We'll be testing in Edmonton and then heading to the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a place we haven't got to race in a very long time (not since they've got a new track). But, I've got to keep some stuff for future surprises, so stay tuned! August 17, 2010 An off-weekend for the Sitko Family Racing TAFC doesn't mean we all just sit idly by waiting for our next race in Saskatoon. Troy Sitko was given the opportunity to race with the Rocky Mountain Nostalgia Funny Car (RMNFCA) group in Provost, Alberta over the weekend and what an exciting weekend it was. Did I mention how cold it was when we got there? Come on, crowd - HOW COLD WAS IT? Until then, I'd never seen frost across a racing surface in August before. A virgin track, it's actually an airport, there was no rubber on the surface and it was quite rough compared to our regularly groomed Castrol Raceway, or the unbelieveably smooth Mission Raceway Park. The track ran as an 1/8th mile on Saturday and switched to 1/4 mile on the Sunday, as it was an event for "new drag racers." Lots of tire smoke is what these RMNFCA guys are about, so Troy delievered, driving the Sekura brothers' Camaro on Saturday and their Trans Am on Sunday. Troy lost both rounds in peddle fests on Saturday, but won both the same way on Sunday. The crowd was sure pleased to see that much horsepower just down the dirt road from their home town and they came out with huge amounts of enthusiasm to see the cars in the pit area. Other sports don't offer you a chance to check out the dressing room in person and it was a little hard to convince the people in the stands to come down and get up and close to these machines. But after some push, they came in droves and were very thankful to a very fun group to race with. August 16, 2010 Hot August Night lived up to its billing, it was hot both on and off the track.  With temperatures in the 80’s, at least the mosquitoes were kept at bay. We had a great night.  With a new East West 10 inch clutch in the car, we were a little concerned that we had no data to fall back on, but were very relieved when a smooth 6.03 at 235 mph came up on the board in our first round race with John Evanchuk in the Red Wolf.    John ran a 6.07, but had problems with his fuel system, burning a few pistons in the process.  We were matched up with Ken Webster in the Synoil car in the final, Nathan drilled an 0.021 light and never looked back, as Webster smoked the tires on the starting line.  This was our first event win in a few years, and the crew is very excited.  We’re in Saskatoon next weekend, then we are working on plans for next year.  Some exciting news to come shortly. August 6, 2010 The Sitko Family Racing team had a very quiet July following what should have been a fairly busy June, but instead saw us making stops in Medicine Hat and Edmonton, and having one race weekend cancelled in Calgary. We also had a couple car displays in June and July - one at the River Cree Casino, and one at the Honda Edmonton Indy. First stop was Medicine Hat June 12-13th for the Top Alcohol Funny Car versus Top Alcohol Dragster Shootout. The sun was shining and the weather was great, perfect for racing. Our first qualifying run went quite well considering we were in the first pair of Top Alcohol cars to head down the MHDRA quarter mile. The car left the line nice and straight and accelerated down the quarter mile to the finish line in 6.05 seconds at 236.16 miles per hour. Our second qualifying run didn’t go quite as well as we hoped - we got very aggresive with the track. Just after the car left the line it went into tire shake then up into tire smoke, and knowing that our qualifying position would not improve Nathan shut the car down to save wear and tear on the engine parts. We took the win light in the first elimination round on Sunday, defeating Don St. Arneaud’s A/Fuel dragster with a time of 6.02 seconds at 235.36 mph. Tire shake bit us again in round two when we handed the round win to John Evanchuk as we shook and smoked the tires just past the start line. Our next stop was scheduled for June 19-20th at Race City in Calgary for the AHRA Reunion/Father’s Day Funny Car Classic event, but due to track and weather conditions the event was cancelled for us. A shame since the whole team really looked forward to this event. Next up was our biggest event of the year at home, the IHRA Rocky Mountain Nationals June 25-27th. To start the weekend, we had the car on display at the River Cree Casino for Castrol Raceway’s media event to promote the race weekend. We got a lot of attention from the Global TV cameramen with several shots of the car on the news that evening as well as a quick interview. K-97’s Rob Berg was also “live on location” and, after fixing some technical issues with the phone line, interviewed Nathan on the air. It was a great event and got a lot of exposure for our team and our sponsors. During the first round of qualifying on Friday we were racing beside Jay Childs in his Orange and Green Dodge Avenger Funny car all the way from Alaska. We wish we would see them more througout the season. What a great group of guys with a beautiful couple of race cars! We qualified with a time of 6.091 seconds at 234.82 mph, which placed us #4 in the 8-car field. Second round of qualifying on Saturday afternoon we stepped on the tune up a bit to try and improve our qualifying spot, and the car went right down the center of the lane and cruised through the finish line at a time of 5.951 seconds at 238.72 mph which temporarily moved us up to the number 3 spot, but by the end of the qualifying session we were again in the #4 position in the tough field. We decided it would be best to sit out the third qualifier Saturday night because the track surface was looking a bit slicker, and we were quite happy to be in the best qualifying spot we have ever been in at this event. Luckily for us it paid off as the other cars in our class that did choose to run did not improve on their earlier run times, leaving us #4 to race on Sunday. Our first elimination round matchup put us against multiple funny car champion, Rob Atchison’s ACE Manufacturing Funny Car, who was qualified just below us in the #5 slot. Nathan got the holeshot off the line with a 0.040 second reaction time to Rob’s 0.081 (0.000 is a perfect reaction time), but about 200 feet off the starting line a small part in our transmission failed sending the engine to the rev limiter at 10,500 rpm and as a result shut down the motor, while Atchison raced to his quickest run of the event. During the days running up to the Rockies, Troy Sitko received a call from Ron Hodgson mentioning Arvid Fonstad was looking for a driver for the event in his "Happy Hour" Prostalgia Funny Car. After a couple of conversations, the two met up at the track and they were off to the races. The car is a classic-bodied Mustang running in the 7.20 index class, and Troy adjusted quickly, qualifying #5. His race in first round was also cut short by transmission problems, however as he couldn't get back from the burnout, so he drove down the track and around the corner to watch Cory Kincaid take the win. Next we were off to the Honda Edmonton Inday. We had a great time displaying the car and we couldn’t have asked for better weather, which brought out a huge crowd over the weekend. We often don’t have as much time as we would like to talk to the fans while working on the car between rounds at a feverish pace, so this event provided plenty of time to chat it up with our fans and supporters. Our display was set up right beside the Indy autograph session trailer on the main walk way, so we had a ton of people come by and ask questions, get autographs, and take photos with our car which gave us a lot excellent exposure for our sponsors, as well as the local drag racing scene. June 20, 2010 The week of the River Cree Resort and Casino Rocky Mountain Nationals at Castrol Raceway is now upon us! Last year we had a great, tough crowd in the top alcohol funny car ranks. And, I believe that anyone that was in attendance would tell you that in 2009, top alcohol funny car was second to none to all the other classes at the Rockies and this year should be no different. We were very happy with our 5.90s last year, but we definately want to step up the program and qualify in the top half during this year's event. We've already had career numbers this year and are looking forward to surpassing those numbers right out of the trailer. Last year, our best of 5.944 seconds at 239.65 miles per hour earned us the #7 qualifying spot. The track records were set last year by Calgary's Roger Bateman during qualifying with a 5.615 @ 254.23 mph blast. Last year, it took a 5.775 to crack the top half of the field and we expect that this year will not be any different. Nine cars were on the property shooting for 8 spots, including Roger Bateman, Ken Webster, Rob Atchison, Scott McVey, John Evanchuk, Trevor Lebsack, Jordan Pawlick, Jay Childs and, your favorite, Nathan Sitko and the Sitko Family Racing team. With 8 of those 9 cars still in competition this race season, we are sure there will once again be a full field of TAFCs on the property. In addition to all above, except for Jordan Pawlick, other funny cars that are possibilities to make the trip out to Castrol Raceway are Dave Germain, Greg Hunter and Roddy McMillen. We hope to see them all out to support great drag racing in Western Canada. Also, the Sitko Family Racing TAFC will be out at the River Cree Casino Thursday, June 24th and Nathan Sitko will be a part of the Meet the Stars of the IHRA meet and greet the River Cree is putting on that night. The festivities begin at 4pm and run until 7pm. We hope to see you all out there! June 17, 2010 Finally an update since Medicine Hat! Sorry it took so long, I've been doing tests and getting results and planning for my return to school September 13th. So, I'll let you know how it went. We lined up with Greg Sereda for the first round of qualifying and we had front row seats for his boomer. Nathan, in the right lane, had a great pass and we were in the #3 qualifying spot after the first session. Our second round was less successful and I don't think we had the right tuneup for the left lane. The car smoked the tires pretty well at the hit. After that session, we were bumped to the number 4 spot by Ashley Bart. That lined us up against Don St. Arnaud's A\Fuel dragster during first round. We took advantage of our lane choice first round and took the round win against St. Arnaud with a 6.02 at 235 miles per hour. We lined up against John Evanchuk in the 2nd round again. This time the traction bug bit us again and Evanchuk got by us, even though his car was only running for about 30 seconds when he left the starting line due to starter trouble. June 1, 2010 Well, what a rainy wet trip that was! About 9 times out of 10, the weather in Mission, British Columbia is beautiful and sunny for the NHRA Division 6 Top Alcohol Opener, but I guess this was one of those 1 out of 10 times where it sucks. First of all, we want to thank Bill Ade and his family for their support over the weekend. They brought their RV trailer down to Mission Raceway Park and the crew enjoyed the comfort (and the dry spot) all weekend long. With the price of racing already, it's pretty tough to support bringing a motorhome down to the coast and spend the extra cash on gas, so it's good to have great friends like the Ade family. We also want to throw our thanks out to Eddie Godwin for his extra pair of hands over the race weekend. As you will read below, we had a very busy weekend that went about as smooth as possible because of the help of Bill and Eddie. One more thanks before we get on with things as we need to thank the Hugh Ridley racing team as well. We wouldn't have made first round without ANY of these people. They all played a very important role and helped us acheive career numbers (so far) this weekend. After testing, we were a little loss. But, we got some help from Jeff Johnsen of Hugh Ridley's racing team. He looked at our computer notes from our first two shakey runs as well as the data from our best runs previous from 2 years before in Mission and taught us how to analyze what we saw on the computer screen. It's something that has always been out of our realm a little bit and Jeff's description of little blips and curves and shakey parts of the lines that we saw on our computer screens changed so much of how we thought the computer thing really worked. Just reading a little curve on the drive shaft speed the wrong way will totally mess up a tune-up. We gave the car a basic setup and Troy took the wheel for the Thursday test session. We made two half-passes down the left lane at Mission Raceway on that day. The first run was a 6.59 @ 157 miles per hour, but what was an amazing immediate change was the 60-foot elapsed times. Previous, our best 60's were in the 0.990 second range. On this run, it was in the 0.960's. The second pass was much the same with a nice improvement in the 330-foot times as Troy ran a 6.30 @ 183 miles per hour. On Friday, right up until Nathan staged the funny car, we were sure we wouldn't get a run in. While we spent 2 hours in the staging lanes, there were two oil downs and a wreck on the track. The temperature had cooled down into the mid 50's and there were drops of water falling from the sky, one by one for the whole time we waited. We finally pulled up behind the burnout box next to the Ashewell Racing team's NAPA sponsored TAFC. We got to talk to them in the staging lanes and we look forward to meeting them again in the future. They are a great team. Nathan and Jeff did their burnouts and the rain was trying to fall the entire time. It was so humid and so cool, that the injector on the Ashewell funny car froze up and the car stalled before Jeff got to stage. And so, we were on a single. Nathan staged and took off to run a 5.81 @ 243 miles per hour. We finished the session in the number 2 qualifying spot, right behind Brian Hough. Saturday did what we thought all day Friday. It rained and rained and didn't stop until the early hours of Sunday morning. Sunday was a busy, busy day. We got bumped to third during the second qualifying session that morning, so we decided we'd try and get our number 2 spot back (we were bumped by Rob Atchison by only a few thousandths of a second). We pulled up to stage against Brian Hough and Nathan brought the rpm up and then they dropped. Two connecting rods had come out of the block and the rush was on. There was an hour and a half in between that session and first round, where we would meet up with John Evanchuk in the Red Wolf funny car. With a lot of hands on deck and everyone putting their nose right down onto the grind stone, we got the job done. We met John up at the starting line and it started off as a great drag race! John was a little late and Nathan was right on time. It looked like it would be close right up until the end. But since we just had glued the intake manifold down, the car got up in RPM and blew the glue and gasket in the back of the intake out, spraying the left rear tire and sending Nathan on a wild ride only 300 feet down the race track. Nathan didn't touch the wall, but he did touch the center line and our race weekend was over. We stayed and did maintenance Sunday night (in the rain) and left Monday morning (in the rain). But, we did run our best ET ever and had our highest qualifying position at a divisional event ever, so it was a fantastic weekend. We even got to party a little bit Saturday night to celebrate Lenard's 24th birthday! May 9, 2010 The first and very chilly test session for the Sitko Racing top alcohol funny car is complete. The day include layers of clothing, lots of tire shake and a lot of learning. The team tried a lot of things during the two runs and they didn't quite pan out. But, we like to think the day was successful because of the learning that took place and the team was able to use the day to get "back in the groove." The team was also able to put a lap on each set of rear slicks in order to break them in and we were able to tweak the car in different directions to get the funny car ready for the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event at Mission Raceway Park in just a few weeks. Mission, British Columbia is one of the teams favorite spots to race. The absolutely incredible air conditions along with one of the smoothest racing surfaces around help to create and hold about any amount of horsepower you can put down to the ground. Watching racers like Clint Thompson, Brian Hough, Bucky Austin and Pat Austin running way down near the national record year after year on this race track gets us very excited whenever we are able to make the 12 hour trip west. March 14, 2010 We're all rubbing our hands together at the prospects for this race season here at the Sitko Family Racing headquarters! Looking outside, we see less and less snow everyday. We've got our blower back and it's primed and ready to rock. Nathan put a call in at Brad Anderson Engineering and our pistons and rods and all the other things that swing around at scary speeds inside the block have been shipped to us and we are awaiting their arrival. Overall, things are starting to move a little quicker as our off-season winds down. We are very excited to get out on the race track in May and start giving our sponsors the exposure that only a 250+ mile per hour billboard can give. North West Paving has now joined our race team as an associate sponsor for the 2010 racing season. And of course, Hyperion Laser Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, Pro Stock Performance, Fairmont Electroplating, Jet Tools, Precision Performance, Commercial Solutions and Gee & Gee Racing will all be represented in a proffesional, fun and family-oriented way when our season begins. In my next blog, I'll give you a picture tour of our race shop as it is right now, parts, tools and other race car bits included. I will start introducing you to our team members and I'll get some pictures up of them as well. And, I'll even start letting the other guys write blogs of their own soon, so you can get a peak in through another point-of-view. March 4, 2010 To quote someone's status on Facebook: "Why can't summer be as long as winter?" The last time we raced was September 14th. We are nearing the six months of winter time and it doesn't seem fair that the racing season has started in the Southern United States (in fact, they will be running their 3rd national event next weekend already) and we still have the rest of March and all of April to go. And that's if we're lucky! I seem to remember years when we raced the first weekend with the threat of snow. Everyone working on the racecar, wearing a thick jacket, holding the hot motor pieces close, just to feel a bit of warmth in your fingers. But, lets not even think about that! This year, it will be warm...I hope. The Sitko Family Racing team is just getting going full speed ahead now. We've got a list of new sponsors and some of our favorites returning (which will be posted here very soon) and the team can't wait to go out there and show them all what we've got in store for this race season. Of course, the car has switched ownership as Nathan and I are now filling that role. The engine will have some cool new components as well as a boat load of refreshed parts and pieces. When you want to chase after the big fish, you have to push the envelope a little bit further and you need the parts to back you up. All of the work and parts that we can get locally is nearly complete. The block and spare sleeves that we used last year have been honed by Pro Stock Performance. The cylinder heads have been gone through and are nearly finished. Nathan designed a new puke tank to correspond with new NHRA rules and it is ready and mounted on the car. Lenard and I have gone through the transmission with my dad, Ken and everything looks good there. Mark and Pete went through the rear end gears and have them back in the car already. So, we're just waiting on some parts that had to be shipped out of town. The PSI superchager has been inspected and certified as well as refurbished. A screw-type supercharger must be inspected by it's manufacturer every 3 years to make sure everything is safe and legal. It's been recoated for maximum output and will be sitting on top of the engine again very soon. The connecting rods, bearings and piston rings have been ordered and will be shipped up through the snow very soon. Next up will be new tires and a little bit of body work at Greg Sereda's shop.