Luke Crowley made his NHRA debut, Rhett Lougheed made his NHRA return and Richie Cramtpon reached the second round at the NHRA Toyota Nationals in Las Vegas over the weekend.
Pro Stock Motorcycle
Luke Crowley made his first ever appearance at an NHRA event but just missed the field by a tenth of a second.
Crew Chief Andrew Budgeon said it was a good learning curve and they now a have a baseline heading into the NHRA World Finals at Pomona.
“We haven’t run an engine this big at a race meeting before so we struggled to get the extra power to the track for the first two qualifiers,” said Budgeon.
“It just blew the tyre off it on the hit and couldn’t recover. Then on Q3 we had an ignition battery failure of all things and it wouldn’t fire. Q4 left us with one attempt to make it into the biggest Pro Bike field in over 10 years.
“We ended up running a 7.13 which is a personal best for us but still not quick enough to make it into the field resulting in a DNQ. But at least now we have a base line tune up for our next event in Pomona.”
Rhett Lougheed was also in action testing a new engine combination and running a best of 7.215 as his team also prepare for the World Finals in Pomona.
Top Fuel
Richie Crampton qualified strongly in fifth position with a 3.752 at 317.94 mph to set up a first round matchup with Troy Buff.
Buff left the line first but Crampton quickly reeled him in and took the lead almost immediately. The Lucas Oil dragster never looked back taking the win on a 3.819 at 303.64 mph from a 3.888 at 311.70 mph.
Crampton then met Doug Kalitta in round two giving up the startline advantage once again, but this time he could not overcome the Mac Tools fueler in a race decided by 0.0133 seconds. Crampton recorded a 3.801 at 322.50 mph to Kalitta’s 3.796 at 317.05 mph.
That loss eliminated Crampton from the Championship hunt.