When Terry Robbins won the 2005 ORSCA 10-wide title with this ’02 Camaro it carried a silver and black livery, but after purchasing it in 2006 Barfield had it repainted in his familiar yellow hue late this spring.
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Who built the new turbo engine?
Barfield: Randy built it, the first big turbo engine he’s built and we’re working with Steve Petty on all the turbo stuff and fuel injection. We want to get this thing sorted out and we think we’ve put a pretty good team together. We’re looking forward to a really big year, next year especially.
There were rumors at one time that you might put together an ADRL Extreme 10.5 effort. Any truth to that?
Barfield: You know, I thought about it, but we’re so busy with ORSCA and concentrating on Outlaw 10.5 that I really doubt it. I like their racing and wouldn’t mind even taking the ’69 over there and trying it out with it. We could get it down to about 2,800 (pounds) or something along about there and I think it could be competitive there.
Are you satisfied with ORSCA’s progress in its fourth season?
Barfield: Well, I think if you’re completely happy you get complacent. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement, but I also think we’ve made great strides this year. And we’re already working on next year, trying to figure out ways to have even bigger and better events, but also at bigger and better tracks.
If you try to compare ORSCA to NHRA or IHRA, well, there’s no comparison, we’ve got a long way to go, but we do try to emulate them any way we can.
What are some of the bigger issues ORSCA has to address right now?
Barfield: We’ve really struggled a bit with setting rules and making sure that everybody abides by the rules, but you know, some of the problem is that every time someone brings out a new car there’s always going to be some issues with it. Especially a new model car because there are no guidelines to go by and when you go out there and you check, let’s say wheelbase, it’s dead on or very close to it. You know, there’s been some things moved on these cars, but the first time a tech man goes around with a tape measure he’s just told to check wheelbase, overall dimensions and that type of thing. He’s not told to find out if they slid the whole chassis forward like they did on the old Funny Cars.
That’s what everybody is griping about, that we’re not doing a thorough enough job of teching, but when you have a car like that there’s just no guidelines to start from. So there are some issues we’re trying to work out.
Over the weekend [Atlanta Dragway, July 6-8] we did some measuring on not every car, but probably 80 percent of the cars out there, to see how far things have been stretched and to try and figure out a way to set the rules and guidelines to where everybody can abide by them.
