After qualifying ninth for Sunday’s final eliminations of the 50th annual Kragen O’Reilly Winternationals, Jason Line and the Summit Racing team looked to repeat their winning performance from a year ago. To do so, however, they knew they would need to more closely match their race car to the tricky surface at The Auto Club Raceway, with their assignment further complicated by being delegated to the less-preferred right hand lane for their first round encounter against starting-line specialist Greg Stanfield. Finally, as the first pair of Pro Stock cars to run in final eliminations, they would not have the benefit of making final adjustments based on the performance of others.
Even so, the KB Racing crew responded by posting the quickest run of the round in the right lane at 6.624 seconds with a top speed of 209.75 mph. Unfortunately, this gallant effort fell just shy of overcoming their opponent’s starting-line advantage, who used a 6.635-second pass to gain the round win. Although naturally disappointed, Line was encouraged by his race car’s performance, which he looked forward to fine-tuning even further in a test session before heading to next weekend’s race in Phoenix.
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“You’re never happy when you lose, but I do feel good about how our Summit Racing Pontiac ran in the first round, especially considering we were in the dreaded right hand lane,” said Line. “We may not have won the round, but that run gave us a starting point for when we go testing this week before Phoenix. Even though this was only one race, we need to get our act together, finding a way to get better. With Greg (teammate Anderson) making it to the final, we were able to salvage a decent weekend, but we’re not satisfied with that. We’re here to win, so we have to work to get better before the next race. It’s a short week, but we have to make the most of it.”
Even so, the KB Racing crew responded by posting the quickest run of the round in the right lane at 6.624 seconds with a top speed of 209.75 mph. Unfortunately, this gallant effort fell just shy of overcoming their opponent’s starting-line advantage, who used a 6.635-second pass to gain the round win. Although naturally disappointed, Line was encouraged by his race car’s performance, which he looked forward to fine-tuning even further in a test session before heading to next weekend’s race in Phoenix.
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“You’re never happy when you lose, but I do feel good about how our Summit Racing Pontiac ran in the first round, especially considering we were in the dreaded right hand lane,” said Line. “We may not have won the round, but that run gave us a starting point for when we go testing this week before Phoenix. Even though this was only one race, we need to get our act together, finding a way to get better. With Greg (teammate Anderson) making it to the final, we were able to salvage a decent weekend, but we’re not satisfied with that. We’re here to win, so we have to work to get better before the next race. It’s a short week, but we have to make the most of it.”
