To Hondo's point, the car performed unbelievably well for never having run a race before they unloaded at Syracuse. I was there for that race weekend and that car was by far the fastest and most stable car I had seen run on the mile. That thing was just humming down the straights and glued to the bottom in the corners.
To answer Brian's question, first the past version of the car. Balough was telling me about how the air was directed up under the long hood and dumped out the side pods by the headers. Using the air helped suck the nose of the car down on the track. It also steered off the RF, which was (and still is) atypical but was just his personal preference on the mile track car. As Hondo mentioned, the car ran the majority of the race on 7 cylinders, which is even more impressive as he spanked the best drivers and teams by a lot! Balough told me he never really ran more than half throttle when he was leading. Even when he got mired about mid-pack after his pit stop, he only pressed as hard as he thought he needed to get by the cars in front of him, and it only took him about 30 laps to get back to the lead.
The present version of the car has some interesting stories behind it too. First some quick background info. Chris Larsen, the owner of the NASCAR truck team that Stewart Friesen drives for, hired Balough to help as a driver coach for Friesen as he made his switch to pavement and the trucks. Larsen also took over running the Orange County Speedway, a track with a long and storied modified history and has done an amazing job updated that facility. So the Batmobile sat in a museum up here in New York for a number of years roughly as it was raced at Syracuse, as it was banned from competition immediately following the race. At some point last year, the car was pulled out of the museum and freshened up to run again on Larsen's nickel. It was then used to generate some publicity for the track, parked behind the grandstands with Balough signing autographs and pulling out on the track to run a couple of pace laps prior to main events at Orange County. The track celebrated it's 100th anniversary this year, culminating with the traditional year-ending race called Eastern States Weekend about a month ago. So Balough starts telling me that he and Weld planned to run the car in '80 at the Eastern States race, but it was banned. Balough had the notes of what Weld wanted to change to make the car more adaptable to a shorter track, which included the different nose tin you see on the first pic I posted. Larsen decides he wants to see what the car would do in race trim time-wise against the current dirt modifieds running at Eastern States, and tells Balough to get it ready to run fast laps. They put Friesen behind the wheel, and made a big deal about it, again to generate some buzz surrounding the race weekend. Unfortunately, the weather was crappy leading up to the main big block race, so Balough and Friesen didn't get as much time to mess around with the setups as they wanted too. Balough said one of the issues was tires - back in '80 they ran 15" rears and today the cars run 13". So they bolted some sprint car tires on and Friesen ran about 10-12 laps as an exhibition. They also added a small sideboard above the left -side window (tough to see in my pic, but Friesen's name is painted in it). The car wasn't quite as quick as the current fast cars for Eastern States, but Balough said if they had time to mess with it a bit more they could have picked up another second or more per lap. He thinks they'll bring it out again next year and try to squeeze more speed out of it. He told me that he mentioned to Larsen that it's a one-of-one car and Larsen said he didn't care if it got wrecked, he spent the bucks to refurbish it and wanted to see it at speed again, no matter what! It was a lot cooler story coming from Balough's mouth than me trying to explain to ya all here, believe me
