Englishtown will be
honoring one of their homebuilt legends next weekend during their 5th
annual Shakedown at Englishtown event. The two-time Pro Mod Champion
and
current NHRA Funny Car driver/owner has been named the Grand
Marshall. 

Ashley's career, which began at Etown as a sportsman racer, led to the
2004 and 2005
NHRA AMS Pro Modified Championships along with numerous Pro Mod event
wins. Currently competing with
his Skull Gear/Torco Race Fuels Nitro Funny Car in the NHRA Funny Car
division, Ashley is ranked number 7 in the Countdown to the
Championship, just 15 points
away from the coveted number 4 spot.

Ashley is expected to spend the day at Englishtown with his family and friends,
rekindling friendships from years past.

"All of us at Raceway Park
couldn’t be happier as we welcome Mike back to his home track for this once a
year, record setting, heads up extravaganza," said Michelle Marchese, event co-ordinator.

Ron Capps will run a special Valvoline paint scheme on the Dodge Charger Funny
Car he will race at this weekend's Torco Racing Fuels NHRA Nationals at Virginia
Motorsports Park.

For the second time this season, the Brut Dodge Charger
will sport the red, white and blue theme of the team's sponsor, representing
Valvoline's longtime association with the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing
Series.

"We are once again proud to feature Valvoline on one of the Don
Schumacher Racing Funny Cars," said team owner Don Schumacher. "Valvoline is
such an icon of the sport, and their products are unsurpassed. Our crew chiefs
swear by their quality and attribute longer parts wear to these
products."

Next Generation Racing team hopes to make a real statement in their debut at
Richmond, VA - site of the NHRA Torco Racing Fuels Nationals October 5-7. Driver
George Landis is no stranger to going fast, he's just been doing it at other
events. The team car, a blown Hemi Stratus is no stranger to going fast either.
Last year, while the car was still owned by Jim Oddy, the Dodge smashed the IHRA
speed record with a 238 mph blast. The record stood up until two races ago.

This weekend's Richmond event will mark the team's first participation
in NHRA Pro Modified racing, via the AMS series. In fact, driver George Landis
has never so much as laid eyes on the track in northern Virginia. "We're excited
about competing in this event", stated Landis, adding that if sponsorship could
be secured, the team would like to run the full schedule of AMS events in 2008.
"We're diving into this race to basically see where we are and what we need to
work on over the winter", explained Landis.

Rickie Smith thought he was in big time trouble. He had just made what he thought was a strong run when an IHRA official walked up to his car and told him “they want to see you on the starting line.”
 
“What for?” Smith asked.
 
The official said nothing as he attached a towrope to Smith’s 1978 Mustang II and proceeded to tow him to the starting line. Every conceivable thought ran through his head as the ATV slowly churned its way up the return road in front of the crowd.
 
Smith gradually noticed the cheers of the crowd gathered at Rockingham Dragway for the 1980 IHRA U.S. Open Nationals. He surmised that he had done something “pretty good.”
 
What Smith didn’t know immediately is that he’d performed a feat that no other Pro Stock driver had been able to accomplish in national event-legal trim. Not even Bob Glidden, Bill Jenkins, Ronnie Sox, or Warren Johnson had pulled off what he did.
 

Pontiac's Jim Yates is hoping some midyear performance improvements in his Wiley
X Eyewear GTO will be just what the doctor ordered to secure a 15th career
top-10 finish. The veteran driver needs to get around a pair of pretty
formidable opponents with only three races remaining on the NHRA schedule, and
putting together a string of round wins at this weekend's 2nd annual Torco
Racing Fuels NHRA Nationals would go a long way in securing the desired outcome
for the resident of nearby Occoquan, Va.

"Right now we're excited," said
Yates. "We've come down to the end of the year, and we're in position to get a
top-10 finish and maybe get a race win. It's the same excitement you get at the
beginning of the season. It's so close that we feel like we can achieve it, and
we're going to do our best at the next three races to get there. 

"One
of the exciting things for us is to be a player in the Countdown. Not that we
are actually competing for the championship, but if we perform to our potential
we can have a lot of fun, and make or break it for some of the racers in the
Countdown. Being a spoiler is certainly a good reason to get out of bed and go
to work everyday. It makes it kind of fun. They put these Countdown cars up on a
pedestal, and we want to knock the legs off those pedestals and bring them back
down to earth a little bit. The last six or seven races we've had a pretty
strong showing. Bill Jenkins is working up there in Malvern, Pa., rebuilding
engines and giving us a good strong horse to ride." 

Since late June,
the Wiley X Eyewear Pontiac has run markedly better than it did during the first
half of the season and the results have put Yates in position for a strong
finish to 2007. Currently 11th in the standings, Yates has advanced beyond the
first round in five of his last six starts including a semifinal round run at
Memphis and a No. 2 qualifying effort, his best of the year, at Indianapolis.
That has moved him to within 10 points of 10th-place V. Gaines and to within 52
points of ninth-place Richie Stevens Jr.

UPDATE 10 - 2  10:30 PM, CST - John Force got a reality check Tuesday and the 14-time NHRA Funny Car Champion
found he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Miller Electric Mfg. Co. has been
named the “Official Welding Equipment supplier of Cagnazzi Racing”.

"With our in
house chassis fabrication department it is important to have the best welding
equipment in the industry," Dan Pikarsky, Team marketing Manager said. "Our Chassis department takes pride in the workmanship
as well as the craftsmanship on each race car chassis we build. We don’t have an
assembly line operation here at Cagnazzi Racing, we hand fabricate each part of
our race cars in house. When it comes time to secure the pieces with smooth
welds and proper heating for maximum strength and safety we choose Miller
Welders. "

As the twentieth season draws to a close for the Midwest Super Comp
Series, with one race left remaining, Dave Livesey clinched the 2007
championship. Livesey led the points standings from the first of the
season by winning four of the first five races.

Connie Swingle, one of the true pioneers of drag racing, passed away Sept. 29, peacefully in his home in Oklahoma City, Okla.,
the city of his birth. He was 72. Swingle had health problems for the
last 10 years and finally succumbed to cancer. His faithful nurse,
Virginia, was at his side.

After serving in the Air Force in the late 1950s, he moved to Tampa Fla.,
and arrived at Garlits Automotive Inc. in 1960 and began welding and
became one of the best welders in the world. Don Garlits' Swamp Rat
III-A had been started, so “Swingle,” as he liked to be called,
finished the project and took the new chrome moly car on tour. Swingle
won many races with the car, the biggest being the Hot Rod Drags at
Riverside Raceway in 1962.

Swingle was instrumental in the success of the Garlits chassis
business from 1961 through 1964, at which time Garlits relocated to Troy, Mich., a suburb of Detroit.

Swingle went west and joined up with the
“Old Master,” Ed Pink. Driving Pink's AA/FD, Swingle enjoyed his
biggest win at Fontana Dragstrip in the fall of 1965, when he beat
Garlits in the final for the Mickey Thompson 200 mph Meet and took home
all the gold, about $10,000, a very large purse for that era.