:::::: News ::::::

ROUND-BY-ROUND PRO RESULTS FROM CHICAGO

Final round-by-round results from the 11th annual Torco Racing Fuels
Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway, the tenth of 24 events in
the  NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series:

TOP FUEL:

ROUND ONE -- Hillary Will, 4.539, 314.17 def. Cory McClenathan,
4.590, 321.04; Rod Fuller, 4.540, 309.34 def. Doug Kalitta, 4.560,
327.59; Morgan Lucas, 4.599, 316.90 def. Alan Bradshaw, 4.653, 304.74;
T.J. Zizzo, 4.668, 313.07 def. Antron Brown, 7.549, 122.47; Tony
Schumacher, 6.698, 190.59 def. Bob Vandergriff, 6.765, 288.09; Larry
Dixon, 4.787, 261.57 def. Troy Buff, 4.877, 308.35; Doug Herbert,
4.686, 293.86 def. J.R. Todd, 8.718, 98.14; David Grubnic, 5.132,
284.15 def. Brandon Bernstein, 5.936, 173.54;

QUARTERFINALS --
Herbert, 4.722, 302.01 def. Grubnic, 5.276,
190.03; Lucas, 4.654, 307.02 def. Dixon, 4.829, 265.06; Schumacher,
4.565, 326.56 def. Will, 4.599, 325.14; Fuller, 4.602, 323.58 def.
Zizzo, 4.647, 313.88;

SEMIFINALS -- Fuller, 4.678, 316.45 def. Lucas, 6.345, 214.08; Schumacher, 4.568, 330.23 def. Herbert, 19.449, 85.55;

FINAL -- Schumacher, 4.499, 329.83 def. Fuller, 5.259, 223.14.

CHICAGO HIT BY T-STORMS

A thunderstorm approached during the middle of the second round of Top
Alcohol Dragster eliminations to delay racing at the 11th annual Torco
Racing Fuels Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway in Chicago.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning for
thunderstorms and strong wins in Will County, Ill. Track drying and
racing will resume after the storm blows through.

NHRA DIVISION 1 WINS JEGS ALLSTARS

For the third straight year, and sixth time overall, the $20,000 top prize in
the team competition in the annual JEGS Sportsman Allstars race went to the team
from NHRA’s Northeast Division. At the end of the competition, which features
the best sportsman drag racers from each of NHRA’s seven geographic divisions,
the teams from Division 1 (Northeast) and Division 2 (Southeast) were tied with
900 points each but the Division 1 team claimed the title via a tie breaker,
which factored the overall performance of each team. The Division 4 (South
Central) team finished third.

OSWALD NEVER MISSES A BEAT

0824-03695.jpgWith only 24 hours notice that he would be driving in the Torco Race
Fuels NHRA Route 66 Nationals, former Funny Car world champion Mark
Oswald stepped back into the driver's seat and through the course of
qualifying blasted his way in the A&R Transport Dodge Charger R/T
to the No. 2 spot - just behind his teammate Melanie Troxel.
 
Until Thursday evening, Mark Oswald was planning to assume his usual
duties as co-crew chief on Troxel's nitro Funny Car, but his plans were
changed with one phone call from team co-owner Mike Ashley. Oswald has
been out of competition since 1997, but his return netted a personal
quickest and fastest run of 4.757-seconds at 328.46 m.p.h. in the final
qualifying session of the day.
 
“I didn’t have a lot of time to get prepared for this race - I got the
call from Mike at like midnight Thursday night letting me know that I’d
be driving, but this car is so good that it made the move back behind
the wheel easy for me,” Oswald said.
 
“This was a great day for the entire Gotham City Racing team. My
teammate Melanie Troxel is number one qualifier and one of our
sponsors, A&R Transport, is based right here in Joliet, so we’ve
really been able to put on quite a show for them, too,” he said.

MELANIE TROXEL - HISTORY MAKER

0824-02579D.jpg

ProCare Rx driver Melanie Troxel made history Saturday as the first female to take the top qualifying position in Funny Car as

Image
Melanie
Troxel might have let the first victory by a female slip by but there
was no way she was going to miss out on the first No. 1 qualifier.
(Roger Richards Photo)

she raced to the head of the pack with a blistering 4.752-second 327.27
m.p.h. quarter-mile in qualifying at the Torco Race Fuels NHRA Route 66
Nationals.
 
The final qualifying session originally scheduled for 4:00 p.m. was
postponed more than three hours due to severe thunderstorms and tornado
warnings. When the track was finally cleared and racing resumed, the
atmospheric conditions had improved dramatically, giving crew chief
Brian Corradi the opportunity to push Melanie's ProCare Rx Dodge
Charger R/T to the limit and all the way to the top spot.
 
“If we had run this session on time, I don’t think you’d have seen a
lot of .70s – maybe a couple, but we really needed it to cool off and
the track to tighten up like it did in order for us to go full bore at
it and give the track everything we had,” Troxel said.
 
"We went up there to try a few different things, and just get down the
track, and, honestly, I had never run a .70 before, so I wasn’t really
anticipating that we were going to take that number one spot away, but
I knew the second I hit the throttle that the car was on a seriously
good run, and it was quite a handful out there. It was a pretty wild
ride,” she said.

 

 

ADRL GOING 'OLD SCHOOL' IN MICHIGAN

Kenny1.jpg
Surrounded
by ADRL racers, series president Kenny Nowling demonstrates some of the
hand signals he'll be using to stage and signal the start of each pair
of elimination-round competitors at the 4th annual ADRL Pizza Hut Sumer
Drags in Martin, MI. (ADRL Communications photo)

In an
unprecedented move for major-league drag racing, the Flowmaster
American Drag Racing League presented by the National Guard is
returning to the sport's roots with hand-signal starts at its 4th
annual Pizza Hut Summer Drags at Knoll Gas Motorsports Park in Martin,
Michigan.

ADRL RACING RESUMES SUNDAY

Eliminations for the Pizza Hut Summer Drags will resume today with the schedule as follows.

Spectator Gates open - 9:00 am

Racing resumes - 10:00 am

All free tickets will be honored and all spectator parking will be free.

SUNDAY'S ELIMINATIONS PAIRINGS

First-round pairings for professional eliminations Sunday for the
11th annual Torco Racing Fuels Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66
Raceway, the tenth of 24 events in the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing
Series.  Pairings based on results in qualifying, which ended Saturday.
DNQs listed below pairings.

Top Fuel -- 1. Tony Schumacher, 4.513 seconds, 331.69 mph  vs.
16. Bob Vandergriff, 4.789, 307.51; 2. Antron Brown, 4.516, 331.53  vs.
15. T.J. Zizzo, 4.756, 318.62; 3. Larry Dixon, 4.525, 325.61  vs. 14.
Troy Buff, 4.631, 307.09; 4. J.R. Todd, 4.555, 328.14  vs. 13. Doug
Herbert, 4.622, 318.62; 5. David Grubnic, 4.565, 317.87  vs. 12.
Brandon Bernstein, 4.616, 325.30; 6. Alan Bradshaw, 4.571, 319.14  vs.
11. Morgan Lucas, 4.613, 317.57; 7. Doug Kalitta, 4.574, 319.52  vs.
10. Rod Fuller, 4.602, 319.60; 8. Hillary Will, 4.594, 324.67  vs. 9.
Cory McClenathan, 4.598, 324.75. Did Not Qualify: 17. Luigi Novelli,
9.850, 210.44.

NHRA FINAL QUALIFYING - CHICAGO

TROXEL BEATS FORCE TO FIRST NO. 1 QUALIFIER; SCHUMACHER, COUGHLIN, RIVAS TOP FIELDS AT ROUTE 66 

troxel_saturday.jpg
Let the record reflect that Melanie Troxel is the first female Funny Car driver to qualify No. 1 in an NHRA event.

After Friday it looked like Ashley Force would become the first woman
in NHRA history to qualify No. 1 in Funny Car. Only Melanie Troxel –
the only other woman currently competing in the category - could beat
her. On her last chance, Troxel did it.


Troxel and her ProCare Rx Dodge Charger team would need an almost
heroic effort to pull it off, and the run itself was no less dramatic.
High temperatures and humidity early in the day produced a string of
strong thunderstorms and at least one powerful tornado near Route 66
Raceway, delaying the final round of qualifying for Funny Car at the
Torco Racing Fuels Route 66 NHRA Nationals until evening. What the
track conditions would yield would be anyone’s guess, and while Troxel
crossed the finish line at 4.752-seconds at 327.27 mph, Tony Pedregon’s
Q Horsepower ride suffered a spectacular explosion in the lane next to
her. Pedregon was uninjured.

MCCLENATHAN QUALIFIES NO. 9 ON LAST TRY IN CHICAGO

Top Fuel dragster driver Cory McClenathan waited until his final
qualifying attempt to lay down a good lap to qualify No. 9 for the
Route 66 NHRA Nationals.
 
McClenathan was 16th going into the final qualifying session after
three difficult attempts. Just before a rain delay halted the action
for over three hours, he blasted to an elapsed time of 4.598 seconds at
324.75 mph to move into No. 8 at the time and solidly into the field.
Following the delay, the Top Fuel session was completed and “Cory Mac”
ended up No. 9 going into eliminations.
 
He struggled on his first three runs, posting a 9.134/85.28,
4.984/199.46 and a 7.972/88.95, before his final straight charge down
the quarter-mile.

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