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.

We'd like to thank our sponsors for their great support!

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.