MOONEYES MEET June, 2003 Page 1

Finally it Shined! June 15th, 2003, at the MOONEYES MEET held at the Sendai Highland. April's race got cancelled due to the rain, so did three of the PRA races that were supposed to be held last October. Due to the monsoon season arriving, and this being the 4th (4 is an unlucky number in Japan because you pronounce it "shi" and that is synonymous to the word "death" in Japanese) was not to uplifting. Even us, the hosts of the races were getting pessimistic. And even more interestingly, as hot as midsummer, with the sun shining down on us and even burning us a little. The next day, Sunday was the day we needed sunlight. The night of Saturday, it drizzled a little bit making all of us feel very anxious. But the moment I looked outside in the morning, I saw... No RAIN!

Everyone thought of doing the samething. That was to run the strips as many time as we could before it started raining. The Glory Rod, racing for the first time in 6 monthes after I crashed it last October, with our Boss, Shige Suganuma behind the wheel managed to run it in the 11s. I patted myself in the back when I heard that the Glory Rod made a personal best of 11.404" with a high speed of 193.05km/h. The 10" barrier is sure is a high one and the only this we can probably do is to dope up Shige Suganuma himself.

Another thing that was joyful was that the people who came to the PRA-MOONEYES joint races last year gladly came to this one too. Some with a little bit of modification, some a lot, and some who transplanted engines to go faster. Even the PRA racecar came out to run because their races were cancelled due to the rain.