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" I am not a cheater" Khalid alBalooshi

25K views 130 replies 83 participants last post by  Big Block Guy 
#1 ·
Those were the words of Khalid alBalooshi, a decorated Pro Modified racer who up until Friday evening, provisional No. 1 qualifier at the NHRA Carolina Nationals in Concord, NC.
In a random tech inspection, Balooshi's 5.717, 256.89 run was thrown out, and NHRA disqualified him from participating in the event. NHRA has yet to provide details of the disqualifications, nor reveal the alleged infraction.
"They [NHRA] don't realize how much time and effort I make coming here to race," Dubai native Balooshi said. "Flying over here, showing up here to race. I leave a family, two kids I leave at home to come and do this. I am not a cheater.
"Personally, I don't need to go anywhere and cheat. I really don't know what to say beyond that."
A source close to the situation said the alleged infraction is related to a firmware violation.

http://www.competitionplus.com/drag...Kn2UNElJBq4YSpoNniUzHJ__7jfAU-HO9a16E1jhVUCtk
 
#49 ·
I have ZERO inside knowledge of the alleged "firmware" violation.

However if the wording is correct its pretty cut and dried, firmware is by definition permanently programmed not something that is adjusted.....so if the code has been changed then "someone" cheated.

That said Kalid may or may not have had knowledge of the changes....a tuner/crew-chief's pay is dependent on his/her ability to generate wins so keeping something like this under one's hat (and making it seem like the win was through sheer talent alone not talent and some clever chip burning) would greatly increase the potential salary.

That said to think that you could get away with this is pretty naïve...its a simple thing to make a comparator that would plug into the harness and scan all the code line by line to look for any changes.
 
#53 ·
It appears nhra doesn't agree
 
#55 ·
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#58 ·
So the short of it is those promods are 36lbs limited and someone within his camp manipulated the datalog/efi software to show it staying under that 36lb rule? Thatd be cheating no matter who in the crew did it, cut and dry as mentioned.
Sounds like they couldn't get the car to perform legally at 36lbs and still gta win. Damn sure isnt fair to the guys following the rule
 
#60 ·
This could be as simple as he was running a non-approved version
that offered no performance advantage....an older version or
something similar.

Or it could be something that was modified and gave a definite
advantage....without knowing more details such as the pressure
data logs and whatever else that controller is doing you just cant
say if there was cheating or liberties being taken.

The NHRA could give more details as to what was going on other
than just saying it was non approved.

Does anyone know what adjustments the NHRA has put on the Turbo
cars this year to help insure parity or slow them down?
 
#78 ·
I doubt he's smart enough for it to take the NHRA 5 hours to catch anything he personally would have done. The way racing teams work, they use the same name of the guy who's name they would announce as the "winner" as when they announce "loser" or in this case "cheater". Someone he paid probably knows what's going and the only question is did he know about it before the problem was found.
 
#77 ·
Is he part of Wayne County drag racing???????
 
#86 · (Edited)
Makes a lot of sense. It sure sounds like NHRA was scratching their heads over what they found. Perhaps they should have let it go for this race. After the race they should have sat down and reviewed everything and made a ruling how to proceed in the future.

After hearing what happened and rereading this - "No other boost controller or form of boost control is permitted" - I don't think NHRA needs to rework the rules since "boost control" is such a broad term to interpret.
 
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