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While the Lucas Oil Northwest Nationals was a rough initiation
for the new and hard-working management at Pacific Raceways, it ended
up being a happy memory for Darrell Russell, Tony Pedregon and Jeg Coughlin
Jr.
But even they weren't unscathed in this weekend with an
abundance of both aggravation and achievement.
Russell, the 2001 Rookie of the Year who has undergone
an unusually severe sophomore skid in the Bilstein Engine Flush Dragster,
earned his second straight victory and his third in the last six races.
His victory over Kenny Bernstein -- with a 4.657-second
elapsed time at 308 miles an hour to the top qualifier's 5.788/159.12
-- would have lifted him into fourth place in the NHRA Powerade Drag
Racing Series standings. But Russell was fined $1,000 and given a 10-point
penalty for oiling the track in the semifinal round victory over points
leader Larry Dixon. The Hockley, Texas, driver remains in fifth place,
but has his sights set on a third-place finish this season.
He said he and crew chief Wayne Dupuy have clicked quickly
- remarkable, he said, "for what this team has had to overcome." He
said with his current string of successes, his miserable April weekend
in Las Vegas "feels like it's been three years (ago)." That was the
race he entered with no round-wins, a broken trailer that required three
industrial forklifts and two cranes to haul from the Arizona desert
and position it the pits, and a makeshift crew because the most of the
regular wrench-twisters had quit in a tiff with new crew chief Dupuy.
Dupuy said at Englishtown, N.J., in May that their goal
was "to build-build-build-build-build. We're not going to worry about
championships. We're going to keep building until we're a championship-caliber
team. Then, when we are, it'll just fall into place."
It's starting to. "Wayne's tuneup works so well with my
driving," Russell said. The $40,000 Seattle victory, following wins
May 26 in Topeka, Kan., and the previous weekend in Denver, proved Russell
right.
Team owner Joe Amato won five times at Seattle but was
not present to see Russell win for the first time since last Oct. 28
at Las Vegas.
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