TOPEKA GETS A FACELIFT

Heartland Park Topeka is currently undergoing the largest renovation in the track’s history.  The road course, paddock areas, and drag strip (after the concrete launch pad ends and the asphalt begins) are all getting a fresh layer of asphalt for the first time since

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the facility opened in 1988. The dragstrip is getting 25,000 square feet of fresh asphalt at a depth of seven inches, the road course, 80,000 square feet at six inches depth, and a new paddock area is being built that is approximately 22 acres in size. [7-27-2005]

LUCAS NOT A ROOKIE ANYMORE

The FRAM-Autolite Nationals at Sonoma will be Morgan Lucas’s unofficial last race as a NHRA rookie. Sonoma is the last NHRA track on tour that the phenom hasn’t raced on. After 14 events in 2005 on the NHRA tour, he finds himself fifth in the NHRA POWERade Top Fuel standings and 170 points out of the points lead with nine races remaining on the schedule. [7-27-2005]

THE MARSHALL RIDES AGAIN

Impressed with the initial successes of its first forays into NHRA drag racing at the Las Vegas event in April and again in Englishtown, N.J., in June, cosmetic brand StriVectin-SD will once again be the major sponsor of a Kalitta Motorsports Top Fuel dragster. Ben Marshall will wheel the Kalitta Motorsports fueler at this weekend's FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals in Sonoma, CA. [7-27-2005]

EUROPE CALLING ALL MECHANICS

Sweden's Andréasson Motorsports team came out on top in the Kamasa Tools Mechanic Challenge for Top Alcohol Funny Car teams in Stockholm last Saturday. Held in the Kungsträdgården, a public square in the middle of the Swedish capital, the Mechanic Challenge pitted six of Europe's best TAFC teams in an elimination contest designed to bring the role of crew into the spotlight. The Andréasson team took the win by starting with an intact engine then pulling the blower, oil pan, valve cover, rocker assembly and cylinder head on one side, removing one piston and showing it to the referee, putting it all back together and firing the engine in an astounding five minutes and forty-one seconds. (photo courtesy Tog at www.eurodragster.com)  [7-27-2005]