TONGLET CAN’T STOP SMILING
When LE Tonglet became a teammate to reigning NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle world champion Jerry Savoie he immediately had lofty expectations for 2017.
And, he hasn’t been disappointed.
Tonglet, who is riding a Vance & Hines-powered Suzuki, arrived at the Mile-High Nationals, first in points, thanks to four wins – Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta, Norwalk and Chicago. He left Denver with a little over a three round point lead over Eddie Krawiec depsite losing in the second round.
“It’s been a dream season so far. We’ve had a lot of success. It’s a fun year. A lot less work being put on me and my dad. We knew we would be fast but not this early in the season. We figured around Chicago and now we can start turning around and running good but to come out the second race and win it is just a huge statement, then we went on to win another one. The team has won the last five races. We’ve only lost one race so far. So that’s a pretty cool stat for us and it’s been a lot of fun. The team has put a lot of work into the bike in the off season and it just shows on the track.”
Back in 2010, Tonglet won his lone NHRA world championship, but that was with his family team that was constantly watching the budget.
“This team is just great. They’re not going to park anything on any run,” Tonglet said. “We’re going to go out every qualifying run and try to go to No. 1. Last year and the couple years before that we would sit out a qualifying run if we couldn’t improve, but that’s not the case over here. We try to get every point that we can.”
Tonglet’s day job is as a firefighter in Jefferson Parrish in Metairie, La., and his work mates are aware of his side gig.
“Oh yeah, they all watch us,” Tonglet said. “They love it. They love to see us do good. They like watching it on TV.”
Tonglet has a simple goal for the remainder of the season.
“You want to finish one and two (in the points), and it doesn’t matter which one of us is one or two it would just be very cool to do,” he said.