The recent restructuring of Don Schumacher Racing’s nitro teams had arguably the largest impact on McClenathan’s team which lost not only the crew chief Mike Green to his U.S. Army-sponsored teammate Tony Schumacher, but also other key team members. On top of that, McClenathan’s new tuners are in their first year of tuning a dragster after many years of turning the wrenches on floppers.

McClenathan made the third quickest run of the weekend with a 3.887 elapsed time. His speeds were non-essential considering most of his runs were aborted, mainly due to tire-shake.
While many of the teams at Palm Beach International Raceway were busy testing the parameters of new parts and combinations, veteran driver Cory McClenathan and his team were testing an even more crucial element – the chemistry among themselves.

The recent restructuring of Don Schumacher Racing’s nitro teams had arguably the largest impact on McClenathan’s team which lost not only the crew chief Mike Green to his U.S. Army-sponsored teammate Tony Schumacher, but also other key team members. On top of that, McClenathan’s new tuners are in their first year of tuning a dragster after many years of turning the wrenches on floppers.

McClenathan made the third quickest run of the weekend with a 3.887 elapsed time. His speeds were non-essential considering most of his runs were aborted, mainly due to tire-shake.

He plans to remain at PBIR for additional testing on Monday.

“We were actually testing so many things that we weren’t really trying to make full passes,” said McClenathan. “We’re excited. For Todd and Phil and all the guys coming from Funny Cars and working on the dragster I’m already very pleased with what I’ve seen as far as early numbers are concerned on the FRAM car. It’s a big difference working on a dragster than working on a Funny Car. And the way these guys are conducting themselves on this car has already shown me a lot of class and lot of finesse as I look to the future.”

Testing an unproven dragster only adds to the complexity of the new scenery for Okuhara and Shuler.

“We have a brand-new car,” McClenathan added. “We took down the spare car we had up in the hauler last year. We wanted to start with something fresh, basically. We have some parts and pieces that we’re trying out to help better our program and it looks as though they’re all going to work really well. You need that edge, so I’m excited to be able to try some new things.”

Of course, he’s excited about the progress of the new crew in this first test.

“The guys have done a great job this weekend. We made only one full run and shut off a little early, and it ran 3.887. So I was happy about that. We left a little bit on the table there, so it probably would have run .86, easy. It just shows that we do not have to step on it to still run very well.

“Even though some of the other cars have run a little bit better than we have, and our teammate Tony Schumacher has run better than we have (3.812/317.05), we’re in a different mode. We’re more in the ‘let’s go here, let’s go to half-track before we make full passes’ mode.

“I’m excited for tomorrow and then for Phoenix next week to see what this FRAM Top Fuel dragster is going to be able to run. It really doesn’t matter what you run during testing. What matters is what you can do in Pomona. It’s funny, to be in drag racing for as many years as I have been in a Top Fuel car, I have not worked with one guy on this team before. It’s amazing to have all these people out here and never have worked with any of them.”