Friday Morning from Las Vegas

By Phil R. Elliott

Since no Pros ran, many of you may think nothing happened during the first day of the NHRA Summit.com Nationals. But, somewhere around 450 racecars went down the perfectly manicured 1320 feet of "The Strip" just northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada.

This is a race for Super Stock class eliminations and there were some decent battles there. I wish too that NHRA had chosen to run Stock classes as well because there are some rather stout machines. For example, there were ten (10!) in A/SA! That ratio is 6-4, surprisingly Chevy over Mopar.

In talking to NHRA announcer Bob Frey, he's been pushing for Competition class runoffs. We couldn't come up with a more recent class runoff for the breed since about 1983 -- when Modified was deleted and the eliminator was split between Comp and SS. I'll add my vote with Bob's and wish for those guys who run Comp to be able to see just who the baddest guy is in each class.

There were around 140 cars in both SC and SG eliminators, indexed high in the factored air – 9.05 and 10.07, respectively.

One un-named Super Comp racer will have a tough time getting home. His tow truck was repossessed from his pit area while he was in the lanes. Ooops.

Troubled getting here was Joe Amato's rig. Both the tractor and trailer broke near Phoenix and the trailer arrived late last night via lowboy trailer. A huge crane came in early this morning to un-mate one trailer from the other so that team will be playing catch-up. They also have some new crewmembers. Word is that Wayne Dupuy, hired post Gainesville to find out why the racecar is struggling and burning itself up on every pass, let at least two crew go.

By the way, Ashley Force is making her national competition debut this weekend. In her second qualifying attempt, a fuel leak occurred during the burnout and she was shutoff. Dad John was there watching and he looked none too happy, walked over to and climbed into a white Jag sedan, slammed its door, and sat inside shaking his head. A white Lincoln towed Ashley away a few minutes later with her still strapped in, helmet on and visor down. I would not want to have been part of that crew fifteen minutes later.

I'll try to post something later on tonight, but this day has night qualifying so things will get pretty late. It may be Saturday morning before I can post.

After all the rumors, it was announced today that Frank Pedregon will return to the seat of Jim Dunn's K&N Filter-backed FC. I'll let you know how the team does in a few hours.

Phil Elliott