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Jirka Kaplan AA/AM
When Jirka Kaplan recently made that historic 5.974-second
pass in his Competition Eliminator AA/AM '27 Ford Altered
at Mission Raceway during qualifying at the Division 6
Lucas Oil Series event, it was exactly what he had been aiming
for, though it came at a time when he really didn't expected it.
For the past four years, Kaplan had been chasing the number
5, and he wanted to be the first to eclipse the barrier. In
2007 he wanted it, but the car didn't want to cooperate and
he just didn't have enough power, so he and his cohorts
went back to the shop and got back to work on research
and development. At the end of the following season, on
November 8, 2008, their efforts were evident when Kaplan
was a rocket ship at the Las Vegas Pacific Division event,
clocking an exceptional 6.068 at 225.71 mph.
They had something in their hands that was making big
waves in the performance-based class, but a rule change
that put their blower on the wrong side of legal also put a
big kink in forward progress, and a regrouping was required.
"We lost power, but me and my friend Les Davenport were
running an A/Fuel car [with Davenport as the builder/driver],
and we were able to apply quite a bit of what we learned
from that car to this one," said Kaplan. "I prepared it the way
I thought it should be run, and we were lucky that it had
enough sauce to make it."
The effective strategy included sinking what is a virtual twin
of Kaplan's current Comp engine into the A/Fueler - in fact,
it was the motor he ran in 2008, just complemented by a different
supercharger - and gathering notes. They were having
too much fun with the A/Fuel car to consider abandoning
that project in favor of the Comp entry, so Kaplan saved his money
and bought the pieces necessary to duplicate the powerplant.
The mean little car was another story. Kaplan bought the
Ron Williams/Victory Racecars-built Competition Eliminator
entry in 1991. It wasn't his first racecar; he initially tried out
the drag strip in a High School Challenge competition driving
a '66 El Camino that he still owns - the family calls the
Chevy Sleeping Beauty in light of its restful, or non-operative,
nature. Young Kaplan tried to rebuild the engine with
big dreams in mind, but was unsuccessful and sought help
from a friend that he went to school with - Ryan Davenport,
whose father, Les, was a drag racer with plenty of engine
knowledge. The connection would prove critical to his future
success and hunger for speed.
"At the time, Les had been running alcohol Funny Car but
decided he didn't want to do that anymore," said Kaplan.
"He helped me put together a big block Chevy for my El
Camino, and we dyno-tested it, and it made I think 800
horsepower without nitrous. But he had his Funny Car sitting
there doing nothing, and he said I could borrow it. So
we put this injected alcohol motor in it, and that was my first
actual real racecar."
Kaplan raced the flopper for two years before shelving drag
racing in favor of going to University to study Petroleum
Engineering - "to try to make something out of myself," he
said. He claims he wasn't any good at racing the Funny Car,
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OCTOBER 2011
but he acquired seat time and experience that would benefit
his future goals. "I'm too stupid to know when to quit,"
laughed Kaplan, who initially ran his altered as a bracket car
for over a decade while his business was building. "When I
had extra money that I could throw away on racecars, I
stepped up and built a blown combination."
The AA/AM class was a welcome spot for Kaplan, who started
with a small block Chevrolet and was able to run a very
quick 6.48 at Mission early in his efforts. From there, they
just kept fine tuning things until switching to a BB combination
that enabled the car to dip farther below the index than
even his current setup. Eventually, Kaplan tried out the
AA/Gas supercharged scene. It was another fast combination,
and he won races before rule changes brought about
another re-thinking and a return to AA/AM.
The altered is what Kaplan calls "an old-style alcohol Funny
Car with a lot of modern day effort put into it." They run it
like an alcohol Funny Car, which means that the car is hard
on parts - especially if it's run fast and hard like they did at
Mission. It's difficult to drive, it's expensive, and it takes a
very capable crew. But they wanted to run that 5. And they did.
Kaplan mentioned a few key contributors to that magical
moment in Mission: crew chief Davenport and Acceleration
Enterprises, chassis builders Dennis Sarmento and Wade
Ramsey of Sarmento Fabrication, and longtime Comp
Eliminator racer Brian Hyerstay. He also thanked Bearspaw
Petroleum, the company that allows him the time to get
away and enjoy this little hobby of making history, as well as
his gal, Pattie Omand. "Pattie wasn't at the race," he said,
"But she helps me a lot. Before I left to go to Mission, she
worked for a full day helping me pack the trailer and getting
the car ready to go. She would have loved to have been
there, and I sometimes discourage her from going because
it's kind of like a guy thing for us, but she is a pretty important
part of this. I'd like to thank her." "We did it because we
wanted to go fast, and we thought that with 370 cubic inches
and an old-roots type of supercharger, it would be a nice
feather in our cap."
"We're just a bunch of Canadians who don't have anything
to do in the wintertime because our cars are all in snow
drifts out here, so we have to scheme on how to make them
go fast in the summertime," he laughed. "But really, this is a
neat car, and I'd like to run it some more. It's like a shooting
star - it's gonna burn brightly for a while, and then it'll fizzle
out. In the meantime, I'd like to have fun with it."