This was a fun day in the garage. Team Venom, the Jersey Boys, rolled into town with attitude. Frank Bottini had submitted his application to compete on PIPES very early and was clearly excited to be here. This guy wanted to be here. But Frankie wasn't a seasoned racer. His car is more of a show car. But he had a lot of confidence in his car. He hooked up with some strong team members, TJ Marchetti and Steve Murrow and made the trek to Arkansas to compete.Yank Performance came into the garage with a lot of racing experience. Mike Senia runs Yank Racing and he's been on the drag racing scene for a long time, with many accolades. His team was made up of his two sons, Kyle and Ryan. They were a last minute addition to the competition when another team dropped out 3 days before the first race. They originally entered a different car, but the day of the first baseline race they had some problems and had to swap cars. Since they had already ordered all the parts they were lucky that everything fit the Camaro.
Venom had a good time during production. They seemed to have a very good time off the set, but that's anothers story. In the garage there was a lot of talk about the shift knob they ordered as part of their parts budget. That shift knob looked cool, but it wasn't going to help performance.
Yank was probably the most organized team we saw in the garage. They came in with a plan (printed out on paper) and they followed their plan with no problems.
On Elimation day, it was Yank walking away. Venom's first time was actually slower than their baseline, but I think TJ missed a gear. We hated to see the Jersey Boys go, but they were great sports about it. Frankie's Cobra was featured in Mustang Enthusiast after the show (check out his Myspace for pics). And as a farewell shout out to Venom we'll always remember them for this....
