Each year the staff of South Georgia Motorsports Park and Torco's CompetitionPlus.com team up to present the largest as well as the quickest test session on the east coast. Over 100 professional teams converge on the Valdosta, Georgia-based event for six days of testing prior to the NHRA Gatornationals and the IHRA Texas Nationals. 

		DRAG RACE CENTRAL - UP TO THE MINUTE RESULTS			THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY & BEYOND

 

---

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

 

---

 

 SUNDAY NOTEBOOK

 

Sportsman classes: are star-makers -- Morgan Lucas had nothing but compliments for young Floridian Lindsey Wood, who is driving the Darien-Meadows Top Alcohol dragster that he, Brandon Bernstein, and, most recently, Ashley Force used to drive.
 
"She Super Comp raced. Now she's A-Fuel racing. I guarantee she's going to be in a Pro Stock car or a Top Fuel car in a couple of years," he said. "She's young. She's nice, well-mannered. And she will have a big presence in this sport, just like Ashley and everybody else."
 
He also had lavish praise for the sportsman ranks in drag racing.
 
"Sportsman racing," Lucas said, "is not just teaching people how to steer a car anymore. It's not about that. We're teaching  people how to be a role model. We're teaching people how to talk to TV cameras and do magazine interviews, how to carry themselves. It's not just go out, race your car, and at night have a couple of beers with your buddies and have a great time. It still is that, but you're talking budgets of 4- or 500,000 dollars. I mean, I can go out and buy a really nice house with that kind of money -- but we just waste it on race cars."
 
'I Love Boris' -- Morgan Lucas, in Valdosta to help with Evan Knoll's A Fuel dragster team that Dyno Dave Heitzman is headlining, told 1320 TV about his bobsledding experience and mentioned how much he enjoyed meeting stock-car drivers Brendan Gaughan, Randy LaJoie, Kevin LePage, and Boris Said at that Lake Placid, New York, adventure -- especially Boris Said..
 
"I'm a huge Boris Said fan," Lucas said. "If he ever watches this, he's probably going to think I'm a weirdo. But I'm a huge Boris Said fan. He drives anything and everything. Anything he gets into, he can steer it and make it work."
 
Mentoring . . . sort of -- Top Fuel crew chief Lee Beard, in a question-and-answer exercise with David Powers Motorsports' Ted Yerzyk, said driver Whit Bazemore has "done exactly what we expected" in adjusting to a dragster after years ina Funny Car.
 
"We knew he's a top-notch, high-skilled driver. He has a great understanding of the car," Beard said. "We knew there would be a little adjustment with him not wanting to oversteer. With a little mental preparation, he got better and better, and by the time we got to Pomona, he was driving as well as anybody out there."
 
Beard is bringing along another eager, young racer -- this one from his own household. Sixteen-year-old son Zach has graduated from the junior division of go-karting and is in his third year of racing karts.
 
"His first year he ran in the junior division, and he raced on a local three-state basis. He was fortunate to get with the right team and won a championship in his first year," the proud papa said. "In his second year, we moved him up to the seniors and began to run him on a national level. He finished fifth in the United States in the Stars of Karting series in the spec racer division. The fact that he was 15-years-old racing against guys 16-30 was pretty exciting.
 
"This year, he's a factory driver for First Kart North America. The karts are manufactured in Italy and imported into the United States by a Canadian company, and they recently set up shop in Brownsburg, Indiana," Beard said, alluding to the fact that their shop isn't too far away from the new digs David Powers Motorsports is scheduled to move into. "In just his second race with the team, he won at Homestead (Florida).
 
"It's exciting to see him take these steps to try and be a professional race car driver," he said. "He's really devoted to doing that. My deal with him is that as long as he gets good grades in school and puts out a solid effort that I would back him in whatever form of racing he wanted to go into."

 

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK
 

Extended warranty -- NHRA Pro Stock driver Allen Johnson, testing here at South Georgia Motorsports Park to erase the effects of his disastrous trip to Phoenix that included a DNQ, talked about how father Roy Johnson is recovering from the heart attack he suffered at Firebird International Raceway two weeks ago.

 

"It's amazing," the Greeneville, Tennessee, native said. "One day he's fighting for his life, and 72 hours later we're on a plane home. The next day I go to the shop and he's there. The Good Lord's looking after him, and I think maybe he's got him another 15- or 20-year warranty."
  
Roy Johnson's mechanical magic is key to the Dodge Stratus engine program that includes Don Schumacher Racing driver Richie Stevens.

 

"Dad's really, really focused right now," Allen Johnson said. "I think [we have] some more good things to come this year." 

 

 

'Best Crew Chief' knows place -- Allen Johnson said he'll be more of a factor in the Pro Stock championship chase "if we get more consistent." And right now, that's the task that's making crew chief Mark Ingersoll crazy.

 

"Mark's about to cut his throat with my new car," Johnson said. "He'll get it. He's a good crew chief. He's the best out here, and he'll figure it out. And we'll be fast."

 

Ingersoll's Pro Stock peers elected him best crew chief in a National Dragster poll, and even before the results were published in the March 2 issue, he figured that was the kiss of death. "I think that jinxed me!" he joked. Seriously, though, he said of the car's problem, "We've got some ideas, and we're going to get it fixed before Gainesville."

 

The second-generation racer-tuner, whose dad Buddy was one of the class' most distinguished pioneers, said he sometimes will drive the Stratus.

 

"I do some testing when Allen can't be there," he said. "But I pretty much gave that up to devote all the time to the car. [If] I get in there I want to do it too much. It's pretty awesome to do, though."

 

For the record, according to National Dragster, Ingersoll received 41.18 percent of the vote among Pro Stock chiefs answering the question: "Other than you own, who is the best crew chief?" The article said that he received as many votes as KB/Summit Racing cornerstones Rob Downing and the departed Jeff Perley combined. The KB/Summit team of Greg Anderson and Jason Line has won the past four championships.

 

Mark Ingersoll took his hands out of the engine long enough Saturday to chat about dad Buddy Ingersoll and the influence he has had on him.

 

"He's the one who got me interested in it a long time ago. He's awesome," Mark Ingersoll said. "He did about anything you can do with a car. He won a ton of races. That's all he cared about. He was wantin' to win. He worked his butt off. And it showed, too. You go into his house, and the whole wall is full of trophies that he has won. He's a pretty, pretty awesome guy."

 

Said Allen Johnson,  "He was really innovative. He was one of the pioneers of the sport. Both of our dads are. That's pretty neat." 

 

 

Too early to worry -- Only two NHRA races are in the books, and Allen Johnson admittedly hasn't done anything spectacular. He didn't even make the grid for Race No. 2, at Chandler, Arizona. But the Team Mopar Dodge Stratus driver said he and dad Roy Johnson and the team might have a few tricks up their sleeves, so they aren't worried yet at all about how that affects their chances for the Countdown to the Championship.   

 

"We got this new car. Got another new car coming. Dad's working on some stuff, some new combination. We're just continuously going to gain ground hopefully this year and get more consistent where we can challenge at the end of the year," Allen Johnson said.

 

Crew chief Mark Ingersoll said the Countdown, with its Final Eight format, "is going to be good for us."

 

He said, "We got off to a little bit of bad start. But even if they get out on us, it's not going to be that bad."

 

 

Litton's new look -- Bruce Litton, with Nicky Boninfante at the helm, is surrounding himself with the Top Fuel crew he had in 1999, when he finished third and established his reputation as a top contender in International Hot Rod Association competition. But a new look in the pits is not all that's different for the Clermont, Indiana, resident.

 

"It's quite a bit different from last year. It's a new Brad Hadman car. It's got a one-piece body on it, which we've never run before," Litton, who also competes in the Powerade Drag Racing Series, said. "I think it's going to pay us dividends, because it's so much easier to take it off and get down to the bare chassis.

 

"We've changed supercharger. We've changed fuel systems. We've changed injector. We changed quite a bit over the winter," he said.

 

 

Dear Dad -- Morgan Lucas joined Mark Ingersoll and Allen Johnson in recognizing the contributions their fathers have made to the sport, as well as to them personally.

 

"I love my dad," the 23-year-old Lucas said of his father, Forrest. "He has given me a great opportunity and takes care of a lot of drag racers. I think I've got three or four dads out here. Evan Knoll, he takes care of me like a dad. This whole thing is a great family sport. That's why I like to be involved in it."

 

He said he loves South Georgia Motorsports Park, too: "This place is the cat's meow, if you ask me."

 

A-Fuel focus -- Morgan Lucas is in Valdosta, not to fine-tune his Lucas Oil Dragster or even get extra laps on his own Top Alcohol dragster.

 

He's here, along with his own Top Fuel crew chief John Stewart, and Funny Car crew chiefs Mark Oswald Brian Corradi, helping "Dyno Dave" Heitzman with his Evan Knoll-owned A-Fuel car.

 

"This is his first week running a car this year, and he needed a little help getting things straightened out. So he had all these crew chiefs come in, and I know a little bit about an A-Fuel car," Lucas said. "So I came in just to be one of the guys in the background. We're just here, having fun. I talked to my dad and said, 'Hey, do you have a problem with me going down there?' And he said, 'Oh, no -- go for it. Anything Evan needs!' "

 

He said he is enjoying working with this group, calling them "class-act people." Added Lucas, "You get to learn a lot, just seeing how they perceive things. There's so much to know about how somebody addresses things above and beyond just how they tune a car. They might be completely book-smart, but if they address things a certain way, it's real interesting to see that type of person."
 

 

Addicted -- Morgan Lucas admitted Saturday that he's addicted -- to the Top Alcohol Dragster class, that is. 

 

He said his own car "is pretty mean right now. Thing is, we've finished three races and we've got a second-round and first-round win. The only reason we have a second- and first-round [win]  is we've got this car that's making so much power compared to a lot of these cars in the class that we're having a hard time containing it. We're going to get it worked out in the next couple of weeks. Steve [crew chief Boggs] is a genius. He has a really good method how to do it. We'll be fine."

 

He said the class definitely is a perfect stepping stone to Top Fuel, drag-racing headliner category. But he said it's more than that.

 

"When we talked about me going Top Fuel racing, this is the class to do it. But a funny thing happened along the way," Lucas said. "I became addicted to this class. It is a very fun, very entertaining, very fan-friendly sport.

 

"And this class should be one of the top [ones], because you get header flames, you get clutch dust, you get pedaling contests, you get all the stuff you get in Top Fuel . . . they're just as fun to watch, in my opinion," he said. "A fan who doesn't come to a lot of races probably wouldn't know the difference. I'm not belittling anybody. I'm saying they're that close in comparison. It's a neat class.

 

"My dad loves 'em. My mom loves 'it. My mom, God bless her, if she had enough arm strength to pull the brake back, she'd probably get in one. And Dyno loves it. And Evan.. We all do. Maybe that's one of the reasons we all get along so good. We have common ground there with the A-Fuel cars," Lucas said.

 

"To be honest with you, I was so excited to be able to come back and race this year and do this. I think that the sportsman class is really  -- the grassroots racing in drag racing, in my opinion -- is probably the best place for somebody to start. Anybody that thinks they're better than starting in something like that is completely out of line. We have a really good deal here (in the NHRA)."

 

During the offseason, Lucas joined fellow Top Fuel driver J.R. Todd in a turn at Geoff Bodine's bobsleds at Lake Placid, New York. He said people watching bobsleds on television don't fully appreciate the speed and power associated with the Winter Olympic sport.

 

"It was a blast," Lucas said. "Everybody loves roller coasters. If you don't love roller coasters, you're chicken. The sled -- it's like a roller coaster. You can control 'em. You cannot use the brake. I repeat: cannot use the brake. Bad deal. I had so much fun doing that. And what these cars [are like]. They're just fun. No pressure. You can just get in and have a blast."

 

Just like the NASCAR boys -- Lucas said he understands why NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers who are in their early 20s like he is also run in the Busch Series the day before the main event.

 

"I don't know them," he said of the Nextel Cup rising stars. "But it'd be my guess that they're doing it for two reasons: Seat time on a race track, especially since it's the same-weekend situation -- there's not a lot of difference in those cars, the way they're running them, and . . . I'm sure there's a lot of money involved. God bless 'em. They're making good money."

 

Lucas said the seat-time aspect applies to him running both his Top Fuel and A-Fuel cars at a drag race. "It's one more time you get to see the tree come down. You get the experience of getting to go down the track again," he said. "And the best part is on Sunday, you're in both cars, your attitude when you go up is it takes a lot of pressure off both of them, because you're thinking to yourself, 'All right, well, if I go up and get my butt kicked in this one, I still got the other one to fall back on.' If you lose in both of them, then you got a little bit of a problem."

 

Top Fuel points leader Hot Rod Fuller, one of Lucas' on-track rivals from David Powers Motorsports, took advantage of the off-weekend and the fact the NASCAR circus is his backyard at Las Vegas. Fuller used his Hot Pass to take in the spectacle and meet stock-car's elite drivers, including Kyle Busch.  

 

Fastest Pro Mod -- Australian Troy Critchley took the AMS Staff Leasing Barracuda to the fastest speed the Pro Modified class ever has seen -- at least on this continent. He turned in the 6.01-second, 241-plus-mph pass on the South Georgia Motorsports Park quarter-mile early Saturday afternoon.

 

He said it was only "the second hit in the '07 season for the 'Cuda. We were in Vegas last year. It did real well there. It went 238 in 12,000 feet of air. We didn't go crazy. It was a good day. Real good day. I did want to be the first to run a 240 in North America."

 

Critchley was runner-up to John Russo in the day's ESTN Chicago-style competition.

 

He and teammate Josh Hernandez plan to run in the exhibition-class AMS Staff Leasing-sponsored Pro Modified competition at NHRA events and at IHRA pro-class Pro Mod events as scheduling permits. 

 

Russo's The Man -- Massachusetts racer John Russo, who had the second-quickest time Saturday, was paired against Troy Critchley in the unnamed competition in front of the crowd that filled up about 60 percent of the grandstands at South Georgia Motorsports Park. And in his unadorned red Vanishing Point car with Al Billes horsepower underneath -- in this car which used to carry the name "The Dragonslayer" --  Russo won the eagle-festooned trophy and bragging rights for knocking off  the Australian who had just set the unofficial North American speed record for the class.

 

It was Russo's first victory, except for a local event at New England Dragway in Epping, New Hampshire. "This is unbelievably exciting!" he said, as he celebrated with wife Sue. "What a way to kick off a racing season!

 

"I had no expectations running here this weekend in this show," Russo said. "With a new Al Billes motor program, we weren't quite ready to run it out. We kept going in the middle of the day . We made a good run, a 6.30 (-second elapsed time). Finally we stepped it up. We ran a 6.05. That was good for No. 2 (ranking of all the cars in his class). And here in the finals, we ran another 6.05."

 

He called his Jim Geese-built '68 Camaro "the best car on the planet."

 

Russo has a custom kitchen cabinet-building job. As a boy, about age 15 or 16, he used to drive his brothers home from their 100-hour-a-week jobs at the family's two busy restaurants, well before he had earned his driver's license. "You're forced to grow up quick. The benefit of it is today I work hard . . . and it paid off."   

 

 

Making passes, getting results -- Rodger Brogdon made a respectable debut in the Pro Stock class this year after five seasons in the Comp Eliminator class.

 

He opened the season at Pomona, California, by qualifying 12th at the Winternationals and advancing to the second round. In the next race, the Checker, Schuck's Kragen Nationals at Chandler, Arizona, he was No. 14 qualifier and lost in the first round by just .0068 of a second, or by about two feet. While he qualified in the bottom half of the field,  veterans Ron Krisher and Larry Morgan failed to make the cut at both races. So the skilled sportsman-level driver who's a rookie in Pro Stock has made the lineup in an especially difficult class.

 

Brogdon indicated he doesn't feel all that much like a novice.  

 

"We ran Comp Eliminator for five seasons. The actual transition from that to this car wasn't all that difficult," he said. "We ran small-block Chevrolets with five speeds. The main difference with this car is a bigger engine with a lot more power."

 

Handling is all-important, Brogdon said: "It's real important to keep the car in the groove. Otherwise, you just give up two-hundredths so easily it's incredible."

 

After preseason testing in his native Houston, the home builder prepared for Pomona by attending the Last-Chance Test Session at Las Vegas. Then between the Pomona and Phoenix races, he did some more testing at the divisional race at Houston. Once again, he finds himself testing. So he has plenty of passes on his Jerry Hass-built Dodge Stratus heading into Gainesville.

 

 

---

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

 

 

---

 

FRIDAY RESULTS - CHIP ELLIS LESS THAN .01 OFF OF PSM MOTORCYCLE RECORD IN ESTN TESTING; CAR COUNT INCREASES TO 89

 

---

 

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

---

FRIDAY NOTEBOOK -  

 

Back on a bike -- The deal took root around Halloween last year, and became a reality around Thanksgiving. On St. Patrick's Day weekend, Peggy Llewelyn will compete once again, after a four-year absence, in NHRA's Pro Stock Motorcycle class.

The 5-foot-2, 115-pound San Antonio native -- small by Texas standards but the perfect size for a motorcycle racer -- has been working with a fitness trainer who coaches NFL players. Shane Maloney has left his engine-tuning duties at Roush Racing to be her crew chief, and she'll have six-time national champions George and Jackie Bryce of G2 Motorsports/Star Racing to consult with the team that Texas Ford dealer Karl Klement and his wife Kim own.

Llewelyn, who has taken several Pro Stock Motorcycle courses at Frank Haley's drag-racing school, is adding to her testing in preparation for the Gatornationals, the first race of the year for the motorcycles. She said she has about 50 passes on one bike and between 20 and 30 more on another.

"Karl did purchase what we call a trainer motorcycle, a Suzuki," Jackie Bryce said. "And when we finished the Buell, she jumped right on that."

Llewelyn said she had a whole lot o' shakin' goin' on during her first experience aboard the S & S-powered V-Twin Buell. "It was a lot of vibration. Before I got on it, Chip [Ellis]  told me, 'You're going to feel some vibration.' Well, I thought my hands were coming off the handlebars it vibrated so much," she said. "I've gotten used to it after numerous passes. It doesn't bother me like it used to."

As of Friday, she said, her best run was a 7.06-second elapsed time at 188 mph. But she has more time to prepare for the Gatornations, for which she said, "I'm expecting to qualify in the top half of the field and go some rounds. It has always been my dream to come back to the NHRA."

Llewelyn is a second-generation bike rider whose dad (who owns Southeast Cycles in San Antonio) raced a Nitro Funny Bike. She and her brother "were exhibitions at Alamo Dragway, " and their dad "semi-retired" and built her brother's bike. Peggy was a member of the pit crew, but she wanted to race, too. So she

She raises her 7-year-old niece. And going on the road to attend Hawley's school, test here, and race at Gainesville has interrupted the routine at home. But everyone in the family is making sure the grade-schooler does her homework and that the home runs properly in Llewelyn's absence.

If she's looking for a role model for managing her time, Llewelyn needs to look no farther than Klement. "He has a lot going on, but he's very organized. He knows where everything is and what's going on. We can call him at any time if we need anything. I have to give him credit for  . . . keeping everything balanced."

Pink’s blues – Annette “Pink” Summer had high hopes when she and husband Vernon drove into SGMP early this morning. Her turbocharged 1963 Corvette was running well, and all they needed to do to be ready for April’s ADRL race at Montgomery, Alabama, was to make a few more passes in order to fine-tune their combination.

Just a few hours later, however, those hopes seemed all but dashed as Summer’s ‘Vette suffered a catastrophic engine failure at the end of just its second run down the quarter-mile. Without a spare, all the team from Aiken, South Carolina, could do was pack up and head home.

“I’m so upset I feel like throwing up,” Summer said. “We’re done for a while, that’s for sure, but as soon as we get back to the shop the guys will tear the engine down and see just how bad it is. We already know that the block is cracked, and everything from the intake down is pretty well junk. Hopefully we’ll be able to salvage the heads. We have another engine – it’s a smaller one, but we think we can modify it and make it work in the Corvette.

“The good news is that the engine diaper did its job – no oil got under the tires, and we’re just taking home a trashed motor and not a trashed race car.”

Now you see him  -- Nobody has seen Chip Ellis run in NHRA competition this season, because the Pro Stock Motorcycle class won't debut until next weekend at the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida.

But for awhile this winter, nobody could find the Drag Specialties S&S-powered Buell rider who has five victories in five final rounds. And that was just the way Ellis wanted it.

An admitted motocross and trail rider, Ellis took his family on a little vacation that was a true "getaway" in every sense of the word.

"Over the Christmas holidays, I took my family, as we went down to Ocala National Forest, went about eight miles back in the woods where nobody could find us. We hung out there over New Year's and did a lot of riding. I actually rode about 80 miles on my dirt bike in two days. It was pretty exciting and it was good exercise. I'm really a family guy. I love hanging out with my family. When I'm not at the race track, you can catch me with my girls any weekend, either out in the woods or out on the lake or having fun somewhere."

Daughter McKenzie, 5, has a little motorcycle that uses a thumb throttle. "She has a four- wheeler and she has a motorcycle, but he's not too interested in riding. She's more interested in horses and stuff like that. And ice skating. She's a really, really good ice skater," he said. "I want her to do what she wants to do, and I'll help her in any way I can. I wish she wanted to ride motorcycles, but I'm not going to push it on her." 

Ellis helped in the shop, building a record three new customer bikes in the off-season. One is for Hector Arana. One is for Peggy Llewelyn. And the third is for longtime Harley-Davidson racer Junior Pippen. The Conyers, Georgia, native plans to run a few races this year.

Ellis did the electrical work and the fabrication and welding on those bikes. But he said he's ready to go back down to Florida -- this time hoping Sunday's Gainesville crowd sees him in the winner’s circle.

"I just want to go down there and have a good time. It always seems the more fun I have, the better I drive. So I'm just hoping to go down there and have a little fun. We did a little testing over the winter," he said, "and it seems to be running real good. I'm excited about it. So I'm just going to go down there and hang out."

Expecting -- Ken and Kassi Johnson are expecting a baby girl, and that is especially welcome news. Ken, crew chief at G Squared Motorsports for Chip Ellis' Pro Stock motorcycle, lost his leg in a freak bike accident, and the couple lost their dog at a race last year.

Johnson said he was hoping to have a son, but Ellis told him that "when that baby comes out and he lays his eyes on her, there's nothing else like it in the whole world. The day my little girl was born, I'll never forget it. I think he'll do the same thing. You can have just as much fun with little girls as with little boys. Ken is the last Johnson. I'm the second-to-the-last Ellis. So I know he wanted to keep the family name going. But you never know -- he might like this one so much he might have another one. But I told him for me, personally, man, it's going to be the most awesome experience he's ever witnessed in his whole life. He probably doesn't believe me right now, but I guarantee you, he will."

Motley crew? -- This season, Chip Ellis will be able to meet the fans and interact with them much more than he had had time to do before, because Ken Johnson and George Smith are going to work on the bike more and free him up. It'll be a change of pace for the quiet but personable Ellis.
 
"We're sort of a dysfunctional team," he said fondly of his Drag Specialties/S&S/D Squared group. "Our crew chief, Ken, he has only one leg. Big George has only one arm that works. And I'm just a little skinny punk with a big mouth," he said.

"We always have George Bryce to fall back on, if we need his help," Ellis said. "I'm sure throughout the year we're going to be questioning him.

"I know George's [Bryce's] deal. He likes to bring up new drivers. He's done an awesome job with Peggy Llewelyn. She's getting better and better on every run."

Not meaning to be a poet, Ellis said of his championship pursuit, "I just want to have some fun and get 'er done."   

Cannon makes dragster debut -- Scotty Cannon made his first pass ever in a Top Fuel car Friday, getting acquainted with the Evan Knoll-owned Seelye-Wright Auto Group Dragster.

The Lyman, South Carolina, native -- who said his family wasn't involved in racing and said with a shrug, "Where I got it from I have no idea" -- is a six-time IHRA Pro Modified champion. He earned four consecutive titles (1991-1994) and added two, in 1996 and 1998. Clay Millican earned six Top Fuel titles, and Mark Thomas captured his sixth last season in the Alcohol Funny Car class, but no one has equaled Cannon's Pro Mod mark.

In five years behind the wheel of Don Schumacher's NHRA Oakley-sponsored nitro-powered Funny Car, he didn't win race, and he returned to the IHRA. Last year, he helped son Scott Jr. establish himself as a legitimate contender in IHRA Torco's CompetitionPlus.com Pro Modified class.

And Friday began Cannon Sr.'s career in a dragster. Like former Schumacher Racing teammate Whit Bazemore, Cannon is making the transition to a dragster for the first time.

Before he made his first burnout, he described how his previous experience would affect his ability to excel in a longer-wheelbase Top Fuel car.

"I was running Pro Mod to start with. When I went to the Funny Car, it took me a little bit of time. I had to really  manhandle the car. The Pro Mod car you kind of finesse. You turn it just a quarter of an inch, it's going to go where you want," Cannon said. "When I quit Funny Car racing, I actually ran Pro Mod for a year. I had to learn that over again.

"The last thing I've been in is a Pro Mod car," he said. "And everybody says [of the dragster], 'The dragster, you just kind of finesse it. Don't overcorrect.' So hopefully some of my habits when I was in the Pro Mod car will [filter] down to the fuel car here.

"The main part," Cannon said, "is just don't overcorrect. It's a long automobile. So you turn it just a little, it'll make a gradual move. It's going to be a learning experience, for sure.

"The hardest thing is when we warm the car, I'm [used to seeing] the motor in front of me. I could see everything going on. It's like you can't see anything with this thing. Everything's behind you.  That's why you've got good crew guys, so they can handle all that stuff."

Jimbo Ermalovich, who has worked with Cannon in the past, is crew chief.

"It's going to be exciting," he said. "I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully we can give Evan Knoll something to be proud of. It's a new team. I look for some rough roads to start out with. We'll put our heads together and make it happen. I think it's going to be fun."

 

---

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

---

THURSDAY RESULTS

 

 

---

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

---

THURSDAY NOTEBOOK -

The Snowbird Has Landed - Promises of sunshine, warm temperatures, and a quality race track have brought many teams back for the 2007 running of the Eastern Spring Test Nationals at South Georgia Motorsports Park. Joining the returnees from last year’s inaugural event are many new faces, including three-time IHRA Alcohol Funny car champion Rob Atchison.

 

“Atch” drove his rig eighteen-and-a-half hours from his home base in London, Ontario, Canada, where the weather was decidedly worse than the conditions that greeted him upon arrival in Valdosta. Even more impressive, however, was the tidy SGMP facility.

 

“It’s cold and messy at home, so I’m really glad to be in Georgia,” Atchison said. “The track facility is fantastic – it’s a place that deserves to have a national event.”

 

“The IHRA is going to keep our class going this year, so we’re here to see what we can do about taking our championship back from mark Thomas. We have a lot of new stuff on the car, and we’re here to test it out and see if we can get a little more consistency. We know we’ve got lots of power, so we just need to see if we can control it and have some fun testing.”

 

Driving Hard To The Hoop - Former NBA standout Tom Hammonds is making his Pro Stock comeback this season, and he’s continuing to wring out his new Chevrolet Cobalt here at SGMP this week.

 

“I’ve been out of drag racing for the last three-and-half years, but I sold my Chevrolet dealership in Florida recently and now we’re back,” Hammonds said. “We’re going to start our season off in Gainesville next weekend, and we’re looking forward to a good season.”

 

This isn’t Hammonds’ first attempt at testing this year, but he hopes the results will be better. “We did some testing at Las Vegas when we went to the Pro Stock Showdown, but we really weren’t satisfied with the results, so we came back and worked on a few things,” Hammonds said. “We’ll be here in Valdosta for as long as it takes to get ready for the Gatornationals. We’re looking forward to getting some good results and going to Gainesville on a good note.

 

“We have a brand-new Rick Jones-built Cobalt, and we’re doing our own engine program this year, so that’s a big piece to bite off, but I think we have a lot of great people, and I’m looking forward to a lot of good things.” 

 

There’s a familiar face on the Hammond team this year in the person of Jerry Eckman, and Hammonds is happy to have him. “Jerry has an awful lot of knowledge. He’s been in Pro Stock for a long, long time and we’re glad to have him on board as part of our team. I think he’s going to bring us a lot of valuable experience, not only as a tuner but also as a driver, and hopefully he’ll be here a long, long time.”

 

Look Out If We Ever Get Well – Two weeks ago former IHRA champion Brian Gahm was taking his new puppy into the basement and slipped on some ice, breaking two bones in his leg just above the ankle. Instead of having pins inserted, he opted to have the bones set and a cast applied. 

 

Knowing that this weekend’s test session was coming up, he decided to let crew member Angelo Alessi drive the car. However, while working around some machinery at work, Alessi tripped and fell over a pallet, hit his head, and had to be hospitalized for a series of tests. The final option the team looked at was to let fellow competitor Doug Kirk drive, but that scenario was also in jeopardy because Gahm’s crew chief Cliff Moore’s wife was about to give birth. The stork held off, Kirk drove, and all was well – sort of. “Tell the people to look out if we ever get well,” Gahm said. “If we could get everybody on Workman’s Comp, we could run most of the year on government money.”

 

That’s A Pontiac, Not A Fjord – Lending an international flare to the testing at Valdosta this weekend is Sweden’s Michael Malmgren, two-time European FIA Pro Stock champion and FIA Pro Stock record holder.

”I’m here in the U.S. To pick up my new Jerry Bickel-built Pontiac GTO car and do some testing before going to the Gatornationals next weekend,” said Malmgren. “After that we’re going to pack everything up in a container and ship it back to Sweden so we can get ready for the European season. 

 

“We run under NHRA Pro Stock rules in Sweden, so everything is the same. I have all my guys from back home with me – I flew them all over. They’re all volunteers, taking time off from their regular jobs. We’ve been trying to take a little vacation, but we’ve only had a couple of days off in Orlando because we’ve been working on the car the rest of the time.”

 

Department Of Defense – 2006 IHRA Pro Stock champion Pete Berner is on the scene at Valdosta, putting a game plan together as he gets ready to kick off defense of his title.

 

“We’re out here at South Georgia Motorsports Park doing some testing with our new motor combination for this year,” Berner said. “It’s basically the same combination that we had last year – we’re just trying to improve it. We made some great runs with it last year, and that afforded us the championship.

 

“Hopefully we’ll be able to do that again this year so that we can capitalize on all the hard work my guys put in.

 

“We’ll be kicking off our defense of the title in San Antonio in two weeks, and we want to try to maintain the consistency that we had last year,” Berner said. “We felt that we left a little on the table last year, that we left a few races that we should have won. We’ve got a real good team, and it’s just beginning to gel. We can’t control what the other teams do. There’s a bunch of great teams out here after us that are capable of winning the championship, and we’ve just got to focus on what we have to do.”  

---

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

Click to visit our sponsor's website

---