On the eve of the March Meet, Bobby McLennan shares his thoughts on BangShift about the state of the AA/Fuel Dragster scene.

Here he officially shares his thoughts about the two-car team (the Chrysler shoed by Adam Sorokin and a Chevy driven by Larry Gotelli, Jr.),

Among the hot topics: transmissions have been okayed for testing and match racing, but not competition in the Heritage Series. Of that, he says, “In Top Fuel-as opposed to the Funny Cars, our rules say we run high-gear only. No transmission. We got the okay from NHRA to experiment with a transmission-the Funny Car rule package was put together fifteen years after we did ours. They took a number of components that we had and said, “What if we do this and what if we do that?” I don’t think their rules are perfect, but they certainly sparked a class to build forty-plus cars. (AA/Fuel Dragster team owner) Mike Fuller’s recommendation to NHRA was that with the (bigger) Hoosier tire, we try the transmission to limit the rpm and limit the load that we are putting on our engines and hopefully everything last a little bit longer.”

Eseential reading for the inquisitive nitromaniac.

Adam Sorokin and the Champion Speed Shop launched the Van Dyke Motorsports Retroliner to the NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series win over worthy opponent Jim Murphy at the California Hot Rod Rod Reunion. Sorokin clicked off an astounding 5.63 for the win, pushing the Retroliner to victory at 252 MPH. The team stepped up on the win incrementally over the weekend. Co-Crew Chief Bob McLennan thought Murphy had loaded the gun for bear at the burnout, but quickly saw Sorokin pushing straight around Murphy. Sorokin hit a quick light and was traveling 210 MPH at half track.

“To have the car run that hard in the round that decided the championship was pretty cool. The thing was a rocket ship, and pulled all the way to the lights”, said Sorokin

With the points win in the bag the team was ready to reload and come back out for the final event battle. The weather had other ideas. A raindrop decision on Sunday postponed the racing action until Monday. The new day brought more rain, and the event was called once more. The remaining top fuel racers decided to pick things up again in Pomona, California at the 2010 NHRA World Finals on November 11-14th. Adam Sorokin will go up against Brett Harris in a race to decide the winner of the rained-out California Hot Rod Reunion. The team is back in South San Francisco preparing the launch vehicle for the final round, less than a month away in Southern California.

Photo Sean Work of the Bakersfield Californian. Click here for tickets and information on the upcoming 2010 NHRA World Finals

Actually there’s about twenty or so seconds of video with the team handing over the car to Adam Sorokin for the second full qualifying pass on the hemi-powered dragster. For the second time in as many rounds, the car in the other lane suffered mechanical breakage, handing Sorokin a second single qualifying pass at Famoso. While these occurrences may give rise to unsubstantiated rumors of some sort of mechanically disruptive secret weapon hidden under the carbon-fiber body panels, the new car may in fact be so incredible that it simply disables worthy opponents before they even get a chance to run. What really happened though, is what you see here. Sorokin took the car down track and into the show with a 7.63 second ET pass at 207 mph. Click on the video above or head on over to the Champion Speed Shop YouTube channel for more videos.

More: Champion Speed Shop YouTube Channel

Famoso Raceway – Adam Sorokin took the Champion Speed Shop streamliner to a number seven qualifying spot with a clean 6.04 second ET at 225.11 miles per hour. The crew is busy turning the car around for first round of top fuel eliminations, currently scheduled for 4PM – just hours from the final qualifying round. Brett Harris set low qualifying ET with a 5.80, while top speed went to Rick Rodgers with a 255.75 mile per hour run.The 16 car AA/Fuel dragster ladder is set, and Sorokin will take up the fight against Terry Cook in the Cheetah II in what promises to be a heavy round of nitromethane racing action at Famoso.