Well Scooter, I don't know whether to congratulate you or give you my condolences.

I'll start you off like I have everybody else I've ever trained.

1. Counsel with the track owner and/or race director and determine how strict they want you to be. If they want you to toss a car out that night because the battery is not properly secured in the vehicle, so be it. If they want you to pass a car with half the floor missing, so be it. They are the ones who write your check. Do it like they want it done. (There are no gray areas at Firebird. The car is either legal by the book and gets to run or it's not and it gets trailered.)

2. Be courteous to everyone. They paid their money to have a good time and they don't need their chops busted by some smart*** tech inspector. If their car is nice, tell them so. If it isn't, keep your mouth shut. Thank them for showing up and assure them that they can lean on you for anything or any information they need while they're there. If you can't answer their question, find someone who can.

3. Don't tell anyone to make any changes to their car that you can't show them in black and white in the rulebook. There are no exceptions to this, no matter how you feel about the vehicle or driver personally.

4. Read the rulebook cover to cover, over and over and over and over and.....

5. As you walk around the car, you'll be looking for things that can prevent them from running at all (like a busted windshield, less than 1/16th inch of tread all the way across all tires, missing lug nuts, short studs, missing or non-functional neutral safety switch, etc.) You'll also be looking for parts or lack of parts that will limit their e.t. Memorize what parts are required at what e.t. If you walk up to a car and it has a rollbar, you automatically know that the car is qualified to go quicker than 11.50 (the quickest limit without a bar), as long as the bar is legal, which you'll find out shortly. But what is the limit for this car? If you know that an aftermarket damper is required at 10.99 and you see this car has a stock damper on the crank, then that is his limiting part on the car so far. You now know that the car can't go quicker than 11.00 and you can look for other things that will disqualify the car from running at all. If it has an aftermarket damper, then that will not be the limiting part, keep looking.

6. Make certain that every part of the tech card is filled out by the entrant and that they have signed the card, limiting the track's liability in the event of an incident. If you have a separate waiver for the entrant to sign, make sure he/she signs it before you let the car go to the staging lanes. Be particularly watchful for under-age drivers. You must be 18 with a valid driver's license to drag race. If 16 or 17, you must have a parent or guardian sign a notarized waiver for you. No driver's license, no race. We keep a list of 16-17 year olds that have signed and notarized waivers on file at the track. Not on the list?, no race. In any kind of a lawsuit that goes before a judge/jury, the court will always find in favor of the minor, no matter how many lawyers the track has in its defense.

7. Sometimes you will let minor infractions go if they will not play a major role in the safety of the driver or other participants. What I do in that case is look the car owner in the eye and say: "This is a problem, but I'll let you run the car tonight if you promise me you'll fix it before you come back again. Will you do that?" They'll say yes every time and you've made a friend. You are now viewed by that racer as a reasonable technical inspector and he'll tell his buddies. Pretty soon, word will get around that Scooter knows his way around a race car and knows the rules, but he's also a pretty good guy who won't rag on you about petty stuff.