Jason Line Drives Pontiac GXP to Second Pro Stock Victory of The Season at Pacific Raceways -
Tony Bartone Captures First Career Funny Car Win
KENT, Wash., July 20, 2008 - A remarkable double-up afternoon of racing victories for GM at the 21st annual Schuck's Auto Supply NHRA Nationals included Pontiac's eighth win of the season in the Pro Stock category, and Chevrolet's ninth victory of the year in Funny Car - a red bowtie win that equals a mark set back in 1998 for the most by Chevy Funny Cars in a single season.
After qualifying his Summit Racing Pontiac GXP in the No. 3 position, Jason Line marched through a tough Pro Stock field this afternoon to capture his second national-event victory of the season - his first ever at Pacific Raceways. Line's Pontiac set top speed of the meet during Friday time trials at 210.14 mph, and on race day, he defeated Warren Johnson in the opening round with a 6.652 e.t. at 207.11 mph, Kurt Johnson in the quarterfinals with a 6.639 second run at 208.04 mph and Greg Stanfield in the semifinals with a 6.657 e.t. at 208.04 mph.
After giving up lane choice to Allen Johnson for their final-round matchup, Line's Pontiac GXP jumped out in front of Johnson's Dodge at the starting line with a solid .026 light, and then never relinquished the lead, crossing the finish line with a winning 6.659 second run at 208.10 mph. Johnson's Dodge followed with a 6.664 e.t. at 207.78 mph. The margin of victory for Line's Pontiac GXP was .056 of a second or approximately 17 feet at the stripe.
"It feels great to win, especially here in Seattle," Line said. "I've been out here, I don't know how many times, and never had any success whatsoever even when I raced in Stock eliminator. It feels really good to win here and it felt really good to drive well today. We didn't have the greatest car in qualifying - we had some issues. We tested some parts along the way, which is kind of cool, although you don't want to be testing at national events. But it all worked out and the guys did a great job, especially getting down that left lane, which was a little bit tricky.
"I was nervous about racing Allen Johnson. He's been pretty good these last two weeks, but I felt like we had a chance. Before the race I asked Greg (Anderson) if he thought we could get down that left lane and he just said, 'I don't know.' Whenever he says that it usually means that we can, and fortunately it worked. I looked over in high gear and didn't see Allen's Dodge there. I knew he wasn't going to catch this Pontiac."
It marked the 15th career victory for the 2006 NHRA POWERade Pro Stock champion and his fifth final-round appearance this season. It was also the fourth straight win by the Summit Racing Pontiac tandem of Line and teammate Greg Anderson dating back to the Lucas Oil SuperNationals last month in Englishtown, N.J.
"Any time you win, it's perfect," Line said. "We didn't run as good as we wanted to this weekend. We ended up swapping motors a couple of times and that created some situations we don't usually go through. We felt like we were having trouble getting a hold of the race track and we wanted to change engines because of the different power curves. So we swapped, and it was a gamble but it worked."
Although he struggled in qualifying, Greg Stanfield still managed to place the Attitude Apparel Pontiac GXP in the No. 15 spot for race day. During today's eliminator the Bossier City, La., native defeated Greg Anderson in round one, and Mike Edwards in round two before losing to Line in the semifinals. It marked the fourth time this season that Stanfield has advance to no less than a semifinal-round appearance.
"All things considered it wasn't a bad day," Stanfield said. "When you make four qualifying runs, and you have four engines in your car, it's usually not a very good race. We came out today, though, went a couple of rounds and kind of turned things around. We probably got a little too aggressive against Jason (Line) in the semifinals because our performance was down, but all in all, it was a good race, especially when you consider what we went through to get here. Now we'll fly home tonight, and work 24 hours-a-day for three days to try and put something back together for Sonoma. We're getting everything boxed up and over-nighting it back to the shop. We're getting on a plane and we'll be at the shop in the morning. We hurt our two best motors - we killed them. We were down to our No. 4 engine, but hey, it got us to the semis."
Jim Yates kept his Countdown to One hopes alive with a round one win over Ron Krisher. Yates qualified the Wiley X Pontiac GXP in the No. 12 position and advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to V. Gaines.
"We're trying to get our program refined a little bit," Yates said. "We're making progress. It's slower than we'd like to see, but we're learning how to tune the engine, we're learning how to tune the car and we're learning what gears to use with this combination. There are a lot of factors involved when you switch to a different engine program. Richard's (Maskin) engines have a lot more torque than what we're used to seeing. Then we come up here to Seattle where the air is so good - the barometer is good, the temperature is cool and the air is dry and we're making a lot of power. We're excited about going to Sonoma. What we learned here will apply there and we're looking to build on the success we had here."
In Funny Car, Tony Bartone earned his first career national-event victory as a professional competitor by driving the Canidae All Natural Pet Foods Chevrolet past a formidable foursome of opponents that included two multiple POWERade championship winners.
"This is what you dream about, this is what you work for in your career - to win in the pro ranks," Bartone said. "Winning was great in the alcohol classes, we won a championship and a lot of races, but this is a special moment - a culmination of what you try to accomplish as a pro racer.
"Looking back last week in Denver we had an extreme amount of trouble getting down the track. We were able turn our program around, put together a pretty good race car to race with today and we went the four rounds and brought home the bacon. Even though we sat out Saturday qualifying, we were still able to come up with a good race day tune that wasn't perfect, but it went a lot of rounds."
Bartone entered race day with his Chevrolet qualified in the No. 5 position after running 4.092 seconds at 303.37 mph. In round one of Sunday's eliminator, Bartone defeated 2005 POWERade Funny Car champion Gary Scelzi with a 4.181 e.t. at 298.01 mph, Mike Neff in round two with a 4.367 second run at 241.58 mph and defending POWERade champion Tony Pedregon in the semifinals with a 4.252 e.t. at 287.29 mph. In the championship heat against Ron Capp, both cars struck the tires hard near halftrack, but Bartone's Chevrolet hooked up first and held on to take the win light with a 4.454 second run at 238.17 mph. Capps' Dodge finished with a 4.708 e.t. at 227.46 mph.
"It doesn't get any better than this," Bartone said. "First win in a fuel car and I probably won't sleep for three or four days. Then we'll try to do this again next week in Sonoma. It will be another hot race track, hopefully we'll have something for them and we can go some rounds again. They say the first one is the toughest. Maybe we have the monkey off our back. We'll see.
"Funny Car, in my opinion, is as competitive as it's ever been. Just look at some of the drivers who don't make these races. On any given weekend there are a number of top teams that don't get in the show and that speaks volumes about the competitive nature of this category is. There are a lot of great cars and a lot of great teams out here."
In addition to Bartone, three drivers in Chevrolet Funny Cars advanced to the semifinal round of today's eliminator including Tony Pedregon and Gary Densham. Pedregon qualified the Q Horsepower Chevy Impala SS in the No. 9 position and defeated Melanie Troxel in round one, and Robert High in round two before losing to Bartone in the semifinals. Densham qualified the Racebricks Chevrolet 11th, Jerry Toliver in round one and Jack Beackman in round two before losing to Capps. This weekend's effort helped to move Pedregon around Robert Hight in the POWERade points standings and into second place, while Densham's solid showing has him in eighth place.
"The name of the game is going to be consistency," Pedregon said. "A semifinal finish is encouraging for us. We know now after Denver we have the capability of qualifying the Q Horsepower Chevrolet on the pole so we need to accumulate as many good qualifying positions that we can. We were able to qualify ninth and get to the semifinals, but on top of that, Wilkerson was beaten in the first round, we beat Robert (Hight) in the second round, and John (Force) didn't qualify, so we're gaining on the guys ahead of us and the ones right behind us, we're keeping them at bay. This was a good weekend for us. We tried to fix whatever the little glitch was - it looks like it spun the tires a little bit down track which was enough to let Bartone get around us. Jim Dunn's a pretty crafty old guy but I feel good about the weekend. We can go to Sonoma and race when the conditions are good, and I know we can race when the conditions are warm. Who knows what it will be there - it could be either. It was a good weekend for Q Horsepower, Chevrolet and I think we made some progress.
"We got off to a rough start this year but I always knew and felt that we were underachieving for the first several races until Gainesville. I think it's important for us to start to peak when it really counts, and with four races to go is when it really is starting to count. If we can gain on Wilkerson - I don't know if we can realistically catch him before Indy unless he hits a few hiccups, but right now we're shooting to stay in front of Robert (Hight). We've kind of switched positions the last couple of races - they're going to be tough. We know that when we're on our game we're pretty tough to beat. Our goal is to be second and at least in the top three and it's going to take some more work, but hey, two Chevrolets in the top three that's pretty impressive."
The next stop on the 24-race NHRA POWERade circuit is the 21st annual FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals on July 25 - 27, at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.
PRO STOCK
Winner - Jason Line (Pontiac GXP), 6.659ET/208.10MPH
Runner-up - Allen Johnson (Dodge), 6.664ET/207.78MPH
No. 1 Qualifier - Dave Connolly (Chevy Cobalt), 6.573ET/209.49MPH
Top 10 - 1. Greg Anderson (Pontiac GXP), 1033 (clinched position in the NHRA POWERade Countdown to 1; 2. Kurt Johnson (Chevy Cobalt), 954; 3. Jason Line (Pontiac GXP), 944; 4. Jeg Coughlin (Chevy Cobalt), 851; 5. Allen Johnson (Dodge), 803; 6. V. Gaines (Dodge), 728; 7. Mike Edwards (Pontiac GXP), 724; 8. Greg Stanfield (Pontiac GXP), 698; 9. Ron Krisher (Chevy Cobalt), 696; 10. Warren Johnson (Pontiac GXP), 596.
FUNNY CAR
Winner - Tony Bartone (Chevrolet), 4.454ET/238.17MPH
Runner-up - Ron Capps (Dodge), 4.708ET/227.46MPH
No. 1 Qualifier - Robert Hight (Ford), 4.056ET/304.39MPH
Top 10 - 1. Tim Wilkerson (Chevy Impala SS), 1,009 (clinched position in the NHRA POWERade Countdown to 1); 2. Tony Pedregon (Chevy Impala SS), 822; 3. Robert Hight (Ford), 821; 4. Cruz Pedregon (Toyota), 772; 5. Ashley Force (Ford), 772; 6. Ron Capps (Dodge), 723; 7. John Force (Ford), 705; 8. Gary Densham (Chevy Impala SS), 704; 9. Mike Neff (Ford), 655; 10. Jack Beckman (Dodge), 581.
TOP FUEL
Winner - Tony Schumacher, 3.902ET/309.98MPH
Runner-up - Brandon Bernstein, 4.056ET/291.19MPH
No. 1 Qualifier - Tony Schumacher, 3.802ET/316.90MPH
Top 10 - 1. Tony Schumacher, 1297; 2. Antron Brown, 940; 3. Larry Dixon, 901; 4. Rod Fuller, 852; 5. Cory McClenathan, 840; 6. Brandon Bernstein, 834; 7. Hillary Will, 751; 8. Doug Herbert, Doug Herbert, 738; 9. Dave Grubnic, 617; 10. Doug Kalitta, 598.
Tony Bartone Captures First Career Funny Car Win
<img src="http://www.nitromater.com/gallery/files/5/GMLogo_99390.jpg" alt="GMLogo_99390" />
KENT, Wash., July 20, 2008 - A remarkable double-up afternoon of racing victories for GM at the 21st annual Schuck's Auto Supply NHRA Nationals included Pontiac's eighth win of the season in the Pro Stock category, and Chevrolet's ninth victory of the year in Funny Car - a red bowtie win that equals a mark set back in 1998 for the most by Chevy Funny Cars in a single season.
After qualifying his Summit Racing Pontiac GXP in the No. 3 position, Jason Line marched through a tough Pro Stock field this afternoon to capture his second national-event victory of the season - his first ever at Pacific Raceways. Line's Pontiac set top speed of the meet during Friday time trials at 210.14 mph, and on race day, he defeated Warren Johnson in the opening round with a 6.652 e.t. at 207.11 mph, Kurt Johnson in the quarterfinals with a 6.639 second run at 208.04 mph and Greg Stanfield in the semifinals with a 6.657 e.t. at 208.04 mph.
After giving up lane choice to Allen Johnson for their final-round matchup, Line's Pontiac GXP jumped out in front of Johnson's Dodge at the starting line with a solid .026 light, and then never relinquished the lead, crossing the finish line with a winning 6.659 second run at 208.10 mph. Johnson's Dodge followed with a 6.664 e.t. at 207.78 mph. The margin of victory for Line's Pontiac GXP was .056 of a second or approximately 17 feet at the stripe.
"It feels great to win, especially here in Seattle," Line said. "I've been out here, I don't know how many times, and never had any success whatsoever even when I raced in Stock eliminator. It feels really good to win here and it felt really good to drive well today. We didn't have the greatest car in qualifying - we had some issues. We tested some parts along the way, which is kind of cool, although you don't want to be testing at national events. But it all worked out and the guys did a great job, especially getting down that left lane, which was a little bit tricky.
"I was nervous about racing Allen Johnson. He's been pretty good these last two weeks, but I felt like we had a chance. Before the race I asked Greg (Anderson) if he thought we could get down that left lane and he just said, 'I don't know.' Whenever he says that it usually means that we can, and fortunately it worked. I looked over in high gear and didn't see Allen's Dodge there. I knew he wasn't going to catch this Pontiac."
It marked the 15th career victory for the 2006 NHRA POWERade Pro Stock champion and his fifth final-round appearance this season. It was also the fourth straight win by the Summit Racing Pontiac tandem of Line and teammate Greg Anderson dating back to the Lucas Oil SuperNationals last month in Englishtown, N.J.
"Any time you win, it's perfect," Line said. "We didn't run as good as we wanted to this weekend. We ended up swapping motors a couple of times and that created some situations we don't usually go through. We felt like we were having trouble getting a hold of the race track and we wanted to change engines because of the different power curves. So we swapped, and it was a gamble but it worked."
Although he struggled in qualifying, Greg Stanfield still managed to place the Attitude Apparel Pontiac GXP in the No. 15 spot for race day. During today's eliminator the Bossier City, La., native defeated Greg Anderson in round one, and Mike Edwards in round two before losing to Line in the semifinals. It marked the fourth time this season that Stanfield has advance to no less than a semifinal-round appearance.
"All things considered it wasn't a bad day," Stanfield said. "When you make four qualifying runs, and you have four engines in your car, it's usually not a very good race. We came out today, though, went a couple of rounds and kind of turned things around. We probably got a little too aggressive against Jason (Line) in the semifinals because our performance was down, but all in all, it was a good race, especially when you consider what we went through to get here. Now we'll fly home tonight, and work 24 hours-a-day for three days to try and put something back together for Sonoma. We're getting everything boxed up and over-nighting it back to the shop. We're getting on a plane and we'll be at the shop in the morning. We hurt our two best motors - we killed them. We were down to our No. 4 engine, but hey, it got us to the semis."
Jim Yates kept his Countdown to One hopes alive with a round one win over Ron Krisher. Yates qualified the Wiley X Pontiac GXP in the No. 12 position and advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to V. Gaines.
"We're trying to get our program refined a little bit," Yates said. "We're making progress. It's slower than we'd like to see, but we're learning how to tune the engine, we're learning how to tune the car and we're learning what gears to use with this combination. There are a lot of factors involved when you switch to a different engine program. Richard's (Maskin) engines have a lot more torque than what we're used to seeing. Then we come up here to Seattle where the air is so good - the barometer is good, the temperature is cool and the air is dry and we're making a lot of power. We're excited about going to Sonoma. What we learned here will apply there and we're looking to build on the success we had here."
In Funny Car, Tony Bartone earned his first career national-event victory as a professional competitor by driving the Canidae All Natural Pet Foods Chevrolet past a formidable foursome of opponents that included two multiple POWERade championship winners.
"This is what you dream about, this is what you work for in your career - to win in the pro ranks," Bartone said. "Winning was great in the alcohol classes, we won a championship and a lot of races, but this is a special moment - a culmination of what you try to accomplish as a pro racer.
"Looking back last week in Denver we had an extreme amount of trouble getting down the track. We were able turn our program around, put together a pretty good race car to race with today and we went the four rounds and brought home the bacon. Even though we sat out Saturday qualifying, we were still able to come up with a good race day tune that wasn't perfect, but it went a lot of rounds."
Bartone entered race day with his Chevrolet qualified in the No. 5 position after running 4.092 seconds at 303.37 mph. In round one of Sunday's eliminator, Bartone defeated 2005 POWERade Funny Car champion Gary Scelzi with a 4.181 e.t. at 298.01 mph, Mike Neff in round two with a 4.367 second run at 241.58 mph and defending POWERade champion Tony Pedregon in the semifinals with a 4.252 e.t. at 287.29 mph. In the championship heat against Ron Capp, both cars struck the tires hard near halftrack, but Bartone's Chevrolet hooked up first and held on to take the win light with a 4.454 second run at 238.17 mph. Capps' Dodge finished with a 4.708 e.t. at 227.46 mph.
"It doesn't get any better than this," Bartone said. "First win in a fuel car and I probably won't sleep for three or four days. Then we'll try to do this again next week in Sonoma. It will be another hot race track, hopefully we'll have something for them and we can go some rounds again. They say the first one is the toughest. Maybe we have the monkey off our back. We'll see.
"Funny Car, in my opinion, is as competitive as it's ever been. Just look at some of the drivers who don't make these races. On any given weekend there are a number of top teams that don't get in the show and that speaks volumes about the competitive nature of this category is. There are a lot of great cars and a lot of great teams out here."
In addition to Bartone, three drivers in Chevrolet Funny Cars advanced to the semifinal round of today's eliminator including Tony Pedregon and Gary Densham. Pedregon qualified the Q Horsepower Chevy Impala SS in the No. 9 position and defeated Melanie Troxel in round one, and Robert High in round two before losing to Bartone in the semifinals. Densham qualified the Racebricks Chevrolet 11th, Jerry Toliver in round one and Jack Beackman in round two before losing to Capps. This weekend's effort helped to move Pedregon around Robert Hight in the POWERade points standings and into second place, while Densham's solid showing has him in eighth place.
"The name of the game is going to be consistency," Pedregon said. "A semifinal finish is encouraging for us. We know now after Denver we have the capability of qualifying the Q Horsepower Chevrolet on the pole so we need to accumulate as many good qualifying positions that we can. We were able to qualify ninth and get to the semifinals, but on top of that, Wilkerson was beaten in the first round, we beat Robert (Hight) in the second round, and John (Force) didn't qualify, so we're gaining on the guys ahead of us and the ones right behind us, we're keeping them at bay. This was a good weekend for us. We tried to fix whatever the little glitch was - it looks like it spun the tires a little bit down track which was enough to let Bartone get around us. Jim Dunn's a pretty crafty old guy but I feel good about the weekend. We can go to Sonoma and race when the conditions are good, and I know we can race when the conditions are warm. Who knows what it will be there - it could be either. It was a good weekend for Q Horsepower, Chevrolet and I think we made some progress.
"We got off to a rough start this year but I always knew and felt that we were underachieving for the first several races until Gainesville. I think it's important for us to start to peak when it really counts, and with four races to go is when it really is starting to count. If we can gain on Wilkerson - I don't know if we can realistically catch him before Indy unless he hits a few hiccups, but right now we're shooting to stay in front of Robert (Hight). We've kind of switched positions the last couple of races - they're going to be tough. We know that when we're on our game we're pretty tough to beat. Our goal is to be second and at least in the top three and it's going to take some more work, but hey, two Chevrolets in the top three that's pretty impressive."
The next stop on the 24-race NHRA POWERade circuit is the 21st annual FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals on July 25 - 27, at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.
PRO STOCK
Winner - Jason Line (Pontiac GXP), 6.659ET/208.10MPH
Runner-up - Allen Johnson (Dodge), 6.664ET/207.78MPH
No. 1 Qualifier - Dave Connolly (Chevy Cobalt), 6.573ET/209.49MPH
Top 10 - 1. Greg Anderson (Pontiac GXP), 1033 (clinched position in the NHRA POWERade Countdown to 1; 2. Kurt Johnson (Chevy Cobalt), 954; 3. Jason Line (Pontiac GXP), 944; 4. Jeg Coughlin (Chevy Cobalt), 851; 5. Allen Johnson (Dodge), 803; 6. V. Gaines (Dodge), 728; 7. Mike Edwards (Pontiac GXP), 724; 8. Greg Stanfield (Pontiac GXP), 698; 9. Ron Krisher (Chevy Cobalt), 696; 10. Warren Johnson (Pontiac GXP), 596.
FUNNY CAR
Winner - Tony Bartone (Chevrolet), 4.454ET/238.17MPH
Runner-up - Ron Capps (Dodge), 4.708ET/227.46MPH
No. 1 Qualifier - Robert Hight (Ford), 4.056ET/304.39MPH
Top 10 - 1. Tim Wilkerson (Chevy Impala SS), 1,009 (clinched position in the NHRA POWERade Countdown to 1); 2. Tony Pedregon (Chevy Impala SS), 822; 3. Robert Hight (Ford), 821; 4. Cruz Pedregon (Toyota), 772; 5. Ashley Force (Ford), 772; 6. Ron Capps (Dodge), 723; 7. John Force (Ford), 705; 8. Gary Densham (Chevy Impala SS), 704; 9. Mike Neff (Ford), 655; 10. Jack Beckman (Dodge), 581.
TOP FUEL
Winner - Tony Schumacher, 3.902ET/309.98MPH
Runner-up - Brandon Bernstein, 4.056ET/291.19MPH
No. 1 Qualifier - Tony Schumacher, 3.802ET/316.90MPH
Top 10 - 1. Tony Schumacher, 1297; 2. Antron Brown, 940; 3. Larry Dixon, 901; 4. Rod Fuller, 852; 5. Cory McClenathan, 840; 6. Brandon Bernstein, 834; 7. Hillary Will, 751; 8. Doug Herbert, Doug Herbert, 738; 9. Dave Grubnic, 617; 10. Doug Kalitta, 598.
