Timing is everything and with summer on the horizon Joe Hartley has picked an opportune moment to return to competition on the NHRA circuit.

With just 15 competitors on the entry list for the upcoming O'Reilly NHRA Summernationals at Heartland Park, Hartley has a better than even chance of making the field when you consider how well he performed lat year at what he considers his home track.

“This race is one we’ve typically done poorly at,” joked Hartley. “It’s going to be tough to live up to what we did last year. The only thing we can do is go some rounds, which is probably better then qualifying No. 1 like we did. Without the night session last year, it was a little easier for us to hold down the No. 1 spot.”
Timing is everything and with summer on the horizon Joe Hartley has picked an opportune moment to return to competition on the NHRA circuit.

With just 15 competitors on the entry list for the upcoming O'Reilly NHRA Summernationals at Heartland Park, Hartley has a better than even chance of making the field when you consider how well he performed lat year at what he considers his home track.

“This race is one we’ve typically done poorly at,” joked Hartley. “It’s going to be tough to live up to what we did last year. The only thing we can do is go some rounds, which is probably better then qualifying No. 1 like we did. Without the night session last year, it was a little easier for us to hold down the No. 1 spot.”

Hartley added, “If it’s not in the car to be No. 1 qualifier, we’d much rather be No. 16 and go some rounds on Sunday. This is really a low pressure weekend all in all. We don’t have very many races on our schedule this season. We’re going to go out and have some fun and show we can still do this.”

Hartley believes what the team has learned while testing and the new qualifying format should help them get into the field and hopefully go for the gold on Sunday.

“We did some testing earlier,” said Hartley. “We tried some new stuff that showed some promise, but we put our old tune-up back in it. It showed it was back on track and able run at the same level of performance as we did last year [in Topeka].

“I think our game plan right now is to go into this race and try to get something conservative so we can go from A to B. We would like to end up somewhere in the middle of the pack (after first round qualifying), which is a good position going into the night run. Hopefully then we can crank it up and shoot for the No. 1 spot. Right now, there are only 15 cars entered, so everyone will be shooting for the No. 1 spot so they can have a by-run first round. If nothing else we are just looking for A to B runs and the low car count guarantees us to make the show, so it does take a little pressure off. We just want to try something consistent that will allow us to go some rounds on Sunday.”