As the Lucas Oil Drag Racing series rolls into Houston Raceway Park
this weekend Comp eliminator racers will continue to earn a stake in
one of the largest Comp eliminator purses in NHRA drag racing history.

Comp racers have the opportunity to compete at three of six races in
the South Central division to qualify to run for a $25,000.00 season
ending purse at the seventh and final race of the year in the division,
at Noble Oklahoma in October.

NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster
drivers, Kate and Diana Harker have been selected along with sixteen other young
women drivers across multiple arenas of motorsport for consideration of the Lyn
St James ‘Project Podium’ Scholarship Grant. Each applicant will be reviewed by
a volunteer panel of motorsports and business professionals with recipients
being announced late-May.

The 25 year old identical twins
applied for the scholarship program which aims to help young women drivers
achieve their goals of reaching the top spot on the podium, winning races and
championships and moving onto the top levels of their chosen motorsports.

“This is a wonderful opportunity
that Lyn St James and the ‘Women in the Winners Circle Foundation’ is providing
for young females in Motorsports, really giving them the chance to develop their
skills both as professional drivers and savvy business women ” comments
Kate

Cory McClenathan will represent Don Schumacher Racing and the NHRA Thursday
evening, May 15, at the 6th annual 2008 Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA)
Muscle Team event at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, which is open to the
public. The driver of the FRAM Top Fuel dragster in the NHRA POWERade Drag
Racing Series will lend his support to help provide opportunities for local
children living with neuromuscular disease to interact with some of their
favorite athletes.

Muscle Team® 2008 pairs children with neuromuscular
diseases and celebrity athletes as “buddies” for the evening. In addition to
mingling with athletes in an intimate setting, the evening will include live
entertainment, food and silent and live auctions. Other athletes scheduled to
participate include NASCAR luminaries Matt Kenseth, Jeff Burton, Greg Biffle,
and others.

According to the organizers, this is not a formal, sit-down,
black-tie affair; rather, it is an interactive, casual and fun evening where
guests have access to their favorite professional athletes. Professional
athletes and celebrities will put their muscle behind the fight against
neuromuscular disease. By playing on the same team and shooting for one very
special goal, they are expected to score big and raise funds to help children in
the Greater Charlotte area who are living with a neuromuscular
disease.

For FRAM Top Fuel dragster driver Cory McClenathan Bristol Dragway has been
feast or famine. The feast came when he won $200,000 in the Top Fuel-vs.-Funny
Car Invitational "Showdown" in 1999. The famine came when his dragster was
destroyed in a spectacular accident in 2006.
 
McClenathan will be looking
to turn things around with his first victory at Bristol Dragway this weekend at
the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, the eighth stop on the 24 race NHRA POWERade
Drag Racing Series tour.
 
The driver of the second Don Schumacher Racing
Top Fuel dragster this year enters the Bristol event No. 5 in the Top Fuel point
standings with one win (Las Vegas) and one runner-up (Atlanta).

Hernandez scored his 100th round win in NHRA Pro Modified en route to beating Tony Pontieri in the final round. (Roger Richards)

Josh Hernandez's victorious final-round pass against Tony Pontieri at the
recently-completed O'Reilly Midwest Nationals in St. Louis marked his 100th
elimination round in the JEGS ProMod Challenge. The win capped a weekend where
Hernandez improved many of his long-established class records, including most
wins (14), most top qualifiers (10), and best overall race day record
(77-23).

"One hundred rounds? The first word that comes to mind is 'wow,'
" said Hernandez, driver of the Team Rage Camaro sponsored by Interlinc Mortgage
and Tommy Lipar Racing. "I don't really stop to look at the numbers very often
but when you hear something like that or look at the stats on JegsProMod.com, it
is mind-boggling.

"Credit (team owner) Tommy Lipar, who is my wife
Amber's uncle. When he put this team together he said if we were gonna do this
thing then we needed to do it right. We want for nothing and our success is the
result of many, many people, but none of it would have happened without Tommy."

Mike Ashley's first round experience at St. Louis can be traced back to his first Pro Modified win. (Roger Richards)

Winning is always relevant to two-time Pro Modified World Champion Mike
Ashley regardless of which car he drives in competition.

Case in point, two weeks ago at the NHRA Midwest Nationals in St.
Louis, Mo., Ashley’s day behind the wheel of his nitro Funny Car
appeared to be over when he smoked the tires early in the race. His
opponent Scott Kalitta was well on the way to victory when he also
smoked the tires. A resourceful Ashley settled down his Dodge Charger
and re-engaged the throttle, never lifting from that point.

The end result was a victory by only inches. The lesson was a mile
long. Ashley exited the car and proclaimed, “You know what the moral of
the story is, you never quit. You just never, never, ever quit.”

Shortly after uttering the telltale statement, Ashley remembered a
similar day which set in motion his career of vast successes in drag
racing. He returned to the setting of his first national event victory.

With his most recent Pro Stock win at St. Louis last week, Chevy driver Kurt
Johnson will not only enter the gates of Bristol Dragway for this weekend's 8th
annual O'Reilly NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals with at least one win in each of
the last 14

Kurt Johnson has won at least one race in the last 14 seasons and leads all Chevrolet Pro Stock drivers. (Roger Richards Photos)

seasons, but the driver of the ACDelco Chevy Cobalt now has 27 wins
behind the wheel of a Chevrolet, the most by any Chevy racer in the history of
the Pro Stock category. Johnson's St. Louis win broke his tie with the legendary
Lee Shepherd for most Chevy wins and moved him up to third in the NHRA POWERade
Pro Stock standings, less than a round win behind points-leader Jason
Line.

"It's brutal out there; every run's a challenge," Johnson said.
"But it's great to win 14 years in a row; it's been a long time since (the win
in) Phoenix last year. This is the seventh race of the season and we now have
six different winners, so that just shows you how tough it is, and it's great
for the fans."

NASCAR great Randy LaJoie will be the special guest of four-time NHRA champion
Jeg Coughlin Jr. at this weekend's eighth annual O'Reilly Thunder Valley NHRA
Nationals at Bristol Dragway. The longtime round-track racer and Coughlin became
fast friends in January at the third annual Chevy Geoff Bodine Bobsled Challenge
in Lake Placid, N.Y., when they raced against one another in the charity event.
They've kept in contact ever since.

Jack Beckman is braced to compete at both the famed Bristol Dragway and Bristol
Motor Speedway during this weekend's NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.

As a
contender in the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Funny Car class, he will
drive the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge Charger R/T down the
quarter-mile aiming for his second victory of the season. As a circle-track
newbie, he will compete against his NHRA peers in the NHRA Circle Track
Challenge on the half-mile paved oval across the way Saturday night.

The
affable cancer survivor, former Air Force sergeant and instructor at Frank
Hawley's Drag Racing School is stunned that he garnered 33 percent of the fan
votes so far which will likely put him on the pole for the Circle Track
Challenge once the voting is over.

"We put Bristol Dragway's release
about voting for the polesitter on our nhra.com blog and it just went nuts. My
dad sent it to two friends, and so on and so on and so on," explained Beckman.
"Sitting on the pole may be the last time I lead that event. It's pretty cool.
It will be fun. It will give me a great opportunity to get spun out early in the
race, I think," he laughed.

With the theme of the season being to take it one step at a time for Bob Tasca
III and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane/Custom Accessories Shelby Mustang team, the
rookie heads into this weekend’s NHRA race
at Bristol Dragway eager to capture his team's
first win.

“This weekend
is a real important race for us,” said Tasca. “If you look back at the last few
races; in Vegas we qualified our season
best in the No. 3 position, Atlanta was our best showing with making it to the
semi-finals, and St. Louis was hands down our most consistent performance of the
season with getting the quickest ET of my career. So you can just see that at
each race, we establish a new high point
for the program.”

The one step
at a time approach has allowed the team to put together a solid collection of
data through the first seven races of the season, and to successfully make more
and more consistent runs down the
track.

“Going into
Bristol, you kind of want to pull it all together,” said the Rookie-of-the-Year
contender. “We want to qualify in the top half of the field, we want to have an
extremely consistent car throughout qualifying and we want to go to the finals
and ultimately win the race.”