Top Fuel eliminations on Saturday saw the track and air
get progressively colder as the night went on, but tuners
Mike Kloeber and Mike McLaughlin -- both of whom have IHRA
World Championships in Top Fuel on their resumes -- were
up to the task.
In the semi-finals Millican set low elapsed time of the
meet reeling off a 4.610 against Mitch King's game 4.961.
Louis Allison answered with a 4.622 to edge Bruce Litton's
4.663.
Unfortunately Allison's engine suffered some cylinder
head damage. The Jack Ostrander crew was used to a one
hour turn-around but with a lot of help, including that
of Texas Top Fuel legend J.E. Kristek, the team finished
up in time to go to the line but without the benefit of
adjusting the valves or firing and warming the engine,
as IHRA officials had the team on the clock. As it
turned out, the teams were forced to sit in the staging
lanes for over 30 minutes after they were called and the
Ostrander crew would have had time to finish.
After the cars staged Millican left on Louie with a .076
light to Louie's late .211 RT and ran away from a tire
shaking and smoking Allison and recorded a fine 4.700/304.
Allison coasted through the lights. After one race Millican
leads Allison by just one point after Millican was penalized
for an oil-down infraction.
PRO MOD
It had been nearly four years since one of the original
group of Pro Mod racers, Ed Hoover, had been in an IHRA
Pro Mod winner's circle. After last season he and team
owner Paul Trussel decided they needed some help and
hired veteran tuner and former IHRA World Champ Jimmy Rector
after Mitch Stott's team broke up. That move paid dividends
at the first race of the 2005 IHRA season. All that the
Hoover/Rector duo did was qualify on the pole with a
lap of 6.197, get both the low ET and Top Speed honors
with a lap of 6.162 during eliminations and a 232.23
lap during qualifying, and then run the table in eliminations
defeating arch rival and nitrous racer Shannon Jenkins
in the finals.
In the final Jenkins left first by nine thousandths of
a second but almost immediately shook the tires, pedaled,
and watched Hoover drive to a winning 6.218/227.84 over
Jenkins' shutoff 7.765/118 lap.
Both the semi-final and final rounds saw supercharger
versus nitrous for every match up. It should be noted that
Hoover's 6.16 was four-hundreths quicker than the quickest
nitrous racer, Jim Halsey, who ran a 6.20 in eliminations.
Hoover leads the points chase by 22 points over Jenkins.
Qualified nitrous cars outnumbered supercharged racers
by a margin of nine to seven at San Antonio and the top
four qualifying spots were divided equally between nitrous
cars and supercharged cars, with the blown cars occupying
the top two spots and nitrous cars the next two. Interestingly,
defending World Champ Mike Janis was unable to get his
brand new Dodge Stratus down the track quickly enough to
make the 16-car field that had a soft bump of 7.06.
PART 1: TOP
FUEL & PRO MOD |
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