Gray never caught up from an early miss
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/j_gray.jpg" alt="j_gray" align="left"borders="0"/>
LAS VEGAS, Saturday: 14 years ago, Johnny Gray raced a Pro Stock for the first time at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Since that time he has raced in several classes, including Funny Car. But this weekend he returned to The Strip for the ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals to compete again in Pro Stock.
Gray is fresh off of one of his best outings of the season a few weeks ago at the Virginia NHRA Nationals. He ran the quickest and fastest run of his Pro Stock career and went to the semifinals. So, he was optimistic that the problems he and his team have been struggling with all season were finally getting straightened out. But his qualifying effort fell short and he DNQ’d for a discouraging tenth time.
“We thought we were done not qualifying,” expressed Gray. “We ran really good in Richmond, and then we came here and things were different. We made a bad decision right off the bat and missed a tune-up. So, then we started chasing it and never got the car to 60 foot all weekend. We ended up chasing our tails and never got the car off the starting line.
On Friday’s runs, Gray ran 6.801 at 203.43 mph in the first session. And in the evening, he was able to step up a little to post a 6.762 at 203.25 mph. On Saturday, Gray first ran a 6.841 at 203.09 mph and followed it up with another 6.801. But these runs weren’t good enough for him to get his Dodge Stratus in the show and he finished in the 19th qualifying spot.
“We’re going to stay here and test tomorrow and try to figure out where we’ve got a miss,” said Gray. “I hope we can find something. Then we’ll go to Pomona with a smile on our face and see if we can improve on things.”
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/j_gray.jpg" alt="j_gray" align="left"borders="0"/>
LAS VEGAS, Saturday: 14 years ago, Johnny Gray raced a Pro Stock for the first time at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Since that time he has raced in several classes, including Funny Car. But this weekend he returned to The Strip for the ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals to compete again in Pro Stock.
Gray is fresh off of one of his best outings of the season a few weeks ago at the Virginia NHRA Nationals. He ran the quickest and fastest run of his Pro Stock career and went to the semifinals. So, he was optimistic that the problems he and his team have been struggling with all season were finally getting straightened out. But his qualifying effort fell short and he DNQ’d for a discouraging tenth time.
“We thought we were done not qualifying,” expressed Gray. “We ran really good in Richmond, and then we came here and things were different. We made a bad decision right off the bat and missed a tune-up. So, then we started chasing it and never got the car to 60 foot all weekend. We ended up chasing our tails and never got the car off the starting line.
On Friday’s runs, Gray ran 6.801 at 203.43 mph in the first session. And in the evening, he was able to step up a little to post a 6.762 at 203.25 mph. On Saturday, Gray first ran a 6.841 at 203.09 mph and followed it up with another 6.801. But these runs weren’t good enough for him to get his Dodge Stratus in the show and he finished in the 19th qualifying spot.
“We’re going to stay here and test tomorrow and try to figure out where we’ve got a miss,” said Gray. “I hope we can find something. Then we’ll go to Pomona with a smile on our face and see if we can improve on things.”
