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ENNIS, Texas (Sept. 24, 2006) - Melanie Troxel entered today's O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals at Texas Motorplex with confidence about her chances of going rounds and making a charge back to the top of the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Top Fuel point standings as cooler, more favorable conditions moved into the Dallas area.
A loss, however, in the opening stanza to David Baca proved a disappointment to the driver of the Skull Shine/Knoll Gas-Torco Race Fuels Top Fuel dragster, as there are now just four races remaining in the season for the team to improve its results and earn valuable points towards making a jump up out of fourth place.
No. 12 qualifier Troxel had the advantage at the starting line with a .097 reaction time (.000 is perfect) to Baca's .117, but her 4.736-second pass at 288.46 mph was not enough to hold off Baca's winning 4.603/323.12.
"It left good and I didn't see him for a long time," said the popular racer and Colorado native. "It was somewhere down track that we started to spin the tires a little bit and it wasn't until it actually ate the teeth off of the blower belt that he started to nose past me there in the last 100 feet of the run.
"Not having lane choice may have played a part in us losing, but, we did the same thing in Indy (U.S. Nationals), so there may be something mechanically wrong with the car, or something else that we are doing wrong," Troxel added.
"It seemed like the higher qualified cars were taking the left lane, but I don't know of anything that was wrong with the track, downtrack. People were basing their preference maybe on the starting line, and we made it through that part of the run.
"It's a tough loss like every loss is, but especially for us because we are watching any last shot that we have at winning the championship go away. We know the number of races is winding down.
"Bottom line, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We had great weather and great track conditions today. We just have to put it past us, and move on to the next race."
TROXEL MAKES EARLY EXIT IN TEXAS
ENNIS, Texas (Sept. 24, 2006) - Melanie Troxel entered today's O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals at Texas Motorplex with confidence about her chances of going rounds and making a charge back to the top of the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series Top Fuel point standings as cooler, more favorable conditions moved into the Dallas area.
A loss, however, in the opening stanza to David Baca proved a disappointment to the driver of the Skull Shine/Knoll Gas-Torco Race Fuels Top Fuel dragster, as there are now just four races remaining in the season for the team to improve its results and earn valuable points towards making a jump up out of fourth place.
No. 12 qualifier Troxel had the advantage at the starting line with a .097 reaction time (.000 is perfect) to Baca's .117, but her 4.736-second pass at 288.46 mph was not enough to hold off Baca's winning 4.603/323.12.
"It left good and I didn't see him for a long time," said the popular racer and Colorado native. "It was somewhere down track that we started to spin the tires a little bit and it wasn't until it actually ate the teeth off of the blower belt that he started to nose past me there in the last 100 feet of the run.
"Not having lane choice may have played a part in us losing, but, we did the same thing in Indy (U.S. Nationals), so there may be something mechanically wrong with the car, or something else that we are doing wrong," Troxel added.
"It seemed like the higher qualified cars were taking the left lane, but I don't know of anything that was wrong with the track, downtrack. People were basing their preference maybe on the starting line, and we made it through that part of the run.
"It's a tough loss like every loss is, but especially for us because we are watching any last shot that we have at winning the championship go away. We know the number of races is winding down.
"Bottom line, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We had great weather and great track conditions today. We just have to put it past us, and move on to the next race."
