With his Mustang not working the way he wanted, Brian Gahm decided to take matters into his own hands.
As he proved at Maple Grove Raceway, that's still a highly-effective option.
Running on his back-up motor for the last two events, Gahm finally started to see the results he wanted at the Penske Truck Leasing Inaugural Northeast Drags.
Much of it was his own doing, as he used holeshots to knock off Pete Berner and Tony Gillig, advancing to the finals after two first-round exits in 2011.
"We really struggled the first two races, so the whole team needed that," Gahm said. "(Maple Grove) was good for us. Our guys have really been busting their butts and they needed to get their chins picked up.
"We know we're on the right page now, so hopefully we can be consistent and make some good laps. You never know what could happen."
That's certainly been the case this year for Gahm, though not much of what was happening was good, at least until Maple Grove.
With a busy winter behind him, the winningest driver in the class didn't test much before the 2011 season-opener at Royal Purple Raceway.
It only got worse once he arrived, too, as Gahm broke his top motor during an early qualifying run.
This wasn't a minor break, either.
"I never junked anything as bad as I did that one," Gahm said. "This is something we can't fix during the year. That's just the way it goes, I guess."
Unable to find a combination with the back-up motor, Gahm fell in the first round before things went even more sour a month later at Palm Beach International Raceway.
Though not as bad as the break in March, Gahm broke his back-up motor before he had qualified for the Safety-Kleen Spring Drags II.
Searching for anything, Gahm settled on Doug Kirk's fourth motor, which at least got him into the loaded field.
"We had to use it or we wouldn't have gone in the show," Gahm said. "We got lucky to just get in."
It also left Gahm with a decision to make: fix the back-up motor and do his best to contend for an XPS championship or sit out – likely for an extended period – while his main motor gets fixed.
The competitor that Gahm is, it wasn't hard to figure out his answer.
"We elected to do all the races instead of sitting anything out. We'll have the back-up motor the rest of the year," Gahm said. "It's pretty good, but we're just trying to find out what works best with this motor.
"We just have to find it."
Gahm's business work schedule doesn't leave time to test, but he found plenty of what he was hoping for at Maple Grove.
It was nowhere near his quickest run in his XPS career, but Gahm's 4.09 to qualify seventh was a big step up from the first two races.
After a first-round win and a 4.10 against Trevor Eman, Gahm really went to work.
Pete Berner went 4.059 – the second-quickest run of the weekend – against Gahm in the quarterfinals, but the Ohio native had an impressive .024 reaction time to hold off the most recent event winner.
A round later, Gahm went .028, making his 4.08 stand up against Tony Gillig's 4.07 in the semifinals.
"We had to win (at the starting line)," Gahm said. "The car wasn't the fastest thing, but it was consistent and I was driving good.
"Every time you go up there, you try to do the best you can. You know, we're struggling right now and we're in a little bit of a rut, but we'll be okay. We'll get back on track."
Gahm already seems to be there and the finals appearance was certainly encouraging.
The next step is finding a better combination for the back-up motor, and Gahm, currently No. 6 in points, hopes that happens at next month's Kansas National Guard Independence Drags V.
If that happens, Gahm could return to his winning ways.
"We're coming and we'll keep working at it," Gahm said. "We just want to stay in the hunt."
Photos by Roger Richards
