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Drag Racing Story of the Day!
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The Chicken Choker Chronicles: Cecil
County
World's longest qualifying session! Closing performance gap!
Number 2 by 1 point!
By Len Cottrell
Cecil County, MD -- After a Friday night qualifying session including 14 cars, the top 3 Federal Mogul Dragster points leaders were the top 3 qualifiers: Cliff Bozzelli at 5.60, Billy Gibson at 5.65, and us (Tim Slagle) at 5.65. Saturday provided the longest qualifying session in the world. We all pulled into the staging lanes at 2:45 and after one crash (Fred Ahrberg, who is OK), one violent engine explosion (Craig English), and 11 miscellaneous oil downs, we made our first pass of the day at 7:30 pm! Then just to add some humor to the long day, the clocks malfunctioned and there was no time recorded.
Cliff Bozzelli has been enjoying about a half a tenth performance advantage over us for most of the season so we started this weekend with a new tune up combination. It is definitely paying dividends to help us close the performance gap. We matched his 5.63 ET in the first round in 93-degree weather when we both advanced to the semi finals.
In the semis, Bozzelli took out Rich McPhillips' fuel car with a 5.74 over a quicker 5.73. We drew Billy Gibson, who ran a 5.623 to our slightly quicker 5.622 to advance to the finals.
Cliff won the final round with a 5.65 over Gibson's 5.67. This makes the points chase interesting in that we are still in the number two spot, but Gibson is only one point behind us. This will make the last
Division 1 race at Englishtown in two weeks that much more exciting. See ya then...
len.cottrell@lmco.com
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