There is/was another drag strip more on your side of Phoenix. I'm pretty sure it was called Speedworld, but I may be mistaken. I raced at Firebird because I either lived in Tucson (until '95) or would be staying at the Army National Guard Headquarters on that side of town once I moved up to Flagstaff ('95-'00).
Keep us posted on your progress. You definitely need to try and get as much "seat time" as you can to work out any bugs and get familiar with it before you go all the way to Vegas.
If it comes to making a decision to spend the weekend doing something like swapping the 7 1/4 for the 8 1/4 instead of getting to a drag race to practice, choose the drag racing! The 8 1/4 is definitely better, but "seat time" is the better choice. If you're driving the car to Vegas you'll be much happier with the highway gears anyway
We made the mistake of constantly tweaking something on the GodsRods Duster all the time instead of just making it reliable and getting some seat time. The result was that we spent the whole weekend tinkering on the car instead of winning races.