Melanie Troxel is
on a roll, and heading into this weekend's O'Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at
Heartland Park Topeka, the most recent winner on the NHRA tour is hoping to ride
the momentum all the way to the winner's circle.
 
Troxel won the last
event in Bristol, Tenn. and added her name to an elite list of only 14 drivers
who have won in both nitro Funny Car and Top Fuel Dragster. She also holds the
honor of being the first woman to achieve that feat.
 

The Flowmaster American Drag Racing League (ADRL) presented by the
National Guard has added RSS Feed capability to its www.ADRL.us Web
site. Essentially, RSS (Rich Summary Site or Really Simple Syndication)
offers an easy, free, scheduled method of distributing a concise list
of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to subscribers
using personal computers, laptops and even palmtop devices.

“This is just one more step toward making ADRL.us a daily ‘go-to’
destination for our fans and racers,” ADRL Vice President of
Communications Ian Tocher said. “Our online readers are very
Internet-savvy and this means they’ll now be able to learn of ADRL.us
updates more quickly and easily. I hope many, many readers will take
the opportunity to explore what the new ADRL RSS feed has to offer.”

The U.S. Army Top Fuel team and driver Tony “the Sarge” Schumacher will
host a two-star general as well as a hometown hero during the weekend
of the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals presented by Castrol GTX at Heartland Park Topeka.

Already a lofty third in the POWERade Funny Car points, former world champion
Cruz Pedregon believes a switch to a Toyota Solara body will take his Advance
Auto Parts race team to new heights. Pedregon will debut his new carbon-fiber
shell this weekend at Heartland Park Topeka, where he's won four times in six
final-round showings.

"I'm already a Toyota guy," the 1992 series champ
said from his Indianapolis race shop. "My midget team runs Toyotas and all of
our support vehicles are Toyotas. It's certainly a brand we believe in and are
proud to represent.

"We've done our homework on this deal. We've had
numerous discussions with the design people and they've been very forthright
with all of the wind tunnel data. Rahn [Tobler, Pedregon's crew chief] is
convinced there's some extra speed in that body."

The battle for bragging rights amongst the nitrous Pro Modified entries
used to be for the quickest run. With Pat Stoken’s first round 6.022
elapsed time at 237.13 miles per hour run during the recently completed
IHRA Motor City Nationals in Milan, Michigan, the focus has now turned
towards
the first sub-six second run.

Mike Castellana’s 6.052, 236.96 might not have been quicker than
Stoken’s, but the performance only emphasized further the race to the
five-second zone was on.

A third player in the battle is Jim Halsey who has run in the mid-6.0 range.

The controversy of parity amongst the supercharged and nitrous
combination within the same class has been forgotten. A new war will be
waged over the next few IHRA events.

The offices of Torco Race Fuels, Inc. were open on Wednesday for
business despite rumors circulating the business had been shut down by
the federal government.

A call to Torco's Terry McMillen answered questions but left the door open for speculation.

“The business is open today, I assure you,” McMillen said. “Customers
are picking up racing gas. We are taking orders. I’ll be honest, we’ve
run into some roadblocks in obtaining the raw materials to continue
production but we’ll work through that.

Schumacher Electric Suzuki Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Chip Ellis had the chance
to be a rock star for a day on Tuesday at the Don Schumacher Racing facility in
Brownsburg, Ind. Ellis didn’t play in a rock band for the entertainment of the
guys at the DSR shop. Instead, he sat behind the wheel of the Rockstar Energy
Drink Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car and made a warm-up start.
 
Before
rumors develop that Ellis is following Antron Brown's lead and leaving the PSM
class to drive in the Funny Car category of the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
(Brown joined the Top Fuel class after leaving DSR's PSM team last year), here
is the real story:

"This all came about after the Rockstar Energy Drink
Funny Car suffered a couple of wheelstands in Bristol," explained Ellis of what
happened to driver Jerry Toliver at the last NHRA event in Tennessee. "The
Rockstar crew stripped the chassis and sent it out for repair and they just got
it back from the chassis shop and put it back together. Phil Shuler (Toliver's
crew chief) said they needed to start it up and he asked me if I wanted to do
the warm-up (as the resident DSR professional racer) and I was glad I was here
for the opportunity to try it out. 

A source close to the
situation has told CompetitionPlus.com that Justin Humphreys will race this
weekend at the NHRA Summernationals in Topeka,
Kansas.

CompetitionPlus.com has
learned the former Sport Compact standout will do battle in the Dodge Stratus formerly
driven by Richie Stevens. He will utilize power from Allen and Roy Johnson this
weekend.

After 44 victories and five world championships over a 13-year
professional career, one would think that Top Fuel driver Tony
Schumacher has conquered every race track he’s come across.

“That would definitely be a wrong assumption,” said the Chicago-area
resident. “Excluding the new Charlotte venue, I haven’t won at four
tracks that are currently on the schedule. And, one of those tracks is
coming up this weekend.”

This weekend’s tour stop is Heartland Park, where the 19th annual
O’Reilly Summer Nationals will be contested. Schumacher has yet to
qualify number one or advance to a final round in the Sunflower State.

“For some reason, it’s been a really tough track for us over the
years,” he said. “It appeared like we made some progress last year by
qualifying second and getting to the semifinals. Perhaps, we’ll break
down the door this year and win the race.”

Five years ago, the IHRA Pro Stock division relied on two major engine
builders to service as many as twenty to thirty Pro Stock teams. If you
ran a Ford, you had Jon Kaase horsepower. A Chevrolet or GM meant you
relied on Sonny Leonard for your engines.

Today’s IHRA Pro Stock division stands prepared to reach for the next level with in-house engine programs.

As many as four prominent teams have embarked on exclusive engine
programs. The IHRA’s Pro Stock division has always been considered a
less expensive alternative to the highly-complex 500-inch NHRA
programs. 

Pete Berner, 2006 IHRA Pro Stock world champion, became the latest to
announce such a program. He will partner with former Pro Stock racer
Jerry Janota.