AL HOFMANN is gone...

It is hard to believe Al is gone. Al was a hardcore drag racer and will be missed. Al didn't have a lot of success in the 80's, he often shored up the last qualifying position which he did at the old Montreal events, Al and his low budget car "shored up" the 15-car field in 1987 and qualified #14 (and, yes, there were only 14 cars) in the 1988 event. Those were the only events he qualified for in those two years and the 80's were low-buck/hard-luck days.

Then in 1990, things started to turn around after sponsor money started to come in and from 1987 through 2002, Al ended up with a 233-212 record, eight #1's. He qualified in 227 events, was in the top eight 127 times, 15 event wins and 17 runner-ups. Al won 19 rounds at the first Pomona event and driver-wise was most successful against Tom Hoover going 23-2 against Tom.

One trivia item...Al never beat the Bruce's (Sarver and Larson)...going 0-5 against Sarver and 0-4 against Larson.

Frank Hawley is back!

Frank Hawley is back on the NHRA trail as a driver. He qualified #11 with a 4.916, lost in the first round to Jack Beckman.

I don't personally know Frank, but whenever I have ask him at a National event what is new, he patiently tells me what teams he's working for and what he is doing (but in a generic way, not to give out too much info). I put Hawley up there with Raymond Beadle, Snake, Mongoose and such, as legendary FC drivers.

Frank Hawley is most remembered for driving a Funny Car, but he last raced in NHRA in Top Fuel. Racing from 1988 to 1991. During those 4 years, Frank managed a 59% winning percent (60-41). He qualified for 43 events winning 2 of them and runner-up 4 times. He also composed a 5.3 qualifying position average, with 6 #1 qualifying positions. Frank, known for his driver teacher school compiled a 2-4 holeshot record and recorded one redlight loss in the 3rd round at Denver in 1990 to Joe Amato. Speaking of Amato, that was Frank's nemesis, going 1-9 against Joe in those 4 years.

How to use RSS feeds

As some of you know I am a contributor to Drag Racing Online. DRO is the only
major drag racing site to offer RSS feeds. Below is how I set them up for myself.
This obviously works for any type of newsfeed, as long as the site offers it.

RSS feeds are a fairly new internet tool which stands for Really Simple Syndication. You need a "feed reader" or an "aggregator" to see the feeds. I use the one Yahoo offers and most sites support this “reader”. I am moving more and more to RSS feeds to stay current with news, finance and of course sports, specifically drag racing. I have found using My Yahoo and RSS feeds easier than email subscriptions and bookmarks to get the lastest articles about things I’m interested in. I have found that email updates seem to clutter my inbox and I can’t seem to get to them to stay current. I do go to my bookmarks occasionally, but don’t always have time to read everything on the page. I am keeping my bookmark pages, but with using RSS feeds, I can at a glance see the news I want to stay current with.

HOW TO GET STARTED:The first thing you want to do is get a “newsreader”. The easiest for me is just using Yahoo. First you need a “My Yahoo”. This is a personalized and customizable page on Yahoo.com. Go to Yahoo.com and create an account with an idea. Don’t worry, you won’t get spammed over this either.

Click the MyYahoo link.

After you have setup your “My Yahoo” page here is how I have setup my RSS feeds, specifically for DRO. At DRO you will see the feeds link at the end of the page. This is true with most sites. Their links for RSS feeds are on the left side or at the bottom of the home page.

After you click the link, you see lots of options (see below). Click the stories or information you want to follow. I watch the DRO feed and the 1320 notes feed.

After clicking the DRO feed, it shows up in “My Yahoo” page at the top of the page. (see below).

I categorize my information into news (the My Front Page), Bible Study, Finances (I like to track stock news), CBS Finance (CBS MarketPlace.com has tons of RSS feeds if you are interested) and of course Sports. I want to put the DRO feed into the Sports section. The screen shot below shows how I’m dragging the DRO feed to my Sports page. You simply hold the left mouse button down in the header section and drag the module to the page you want it in. You DON’T have to do this! Your My Front Page can be your only page with whatever mix of info you like! I have so many feeds now, I categorize them.

Below is the DRO feed module after I dragged it to my Sports section. As you can see below, my Sports page is a work in progress. I have my fantasy football from CBSSports.com and Yahoo NFL news. I also have added the two DRO feeds.

Ok, after I have added the feeds to the pages, I want to take a look at what is new. I see a headline that Force is back. What is this all about? Simply put your mouse under the headline and you get a paragraph or so of what the article is about. Actually, what you get is the first few lines of the article, but any good writer will tell you what the article is about in the first few lines.

If you are interested in the article, simply click the link and boom bada bing or Bing Bada Boom you can read the whole article.

So there you have it. RSS feeds 101 and how to use them.

DRO is the only major Drag Racing site at the time of this writing to be using
them.

Good racing to you this year!