Australian Richie Crampton is not going to win the NHRA Countdown to the Championship, but he still hopes to be making a speech at the annual NHRA Champion’s Banquet.

The first-year Top Fuel driver, who sat atop the qualifying sheet after Friday qualifying at the Toyota NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas, hopes his rookie campaign will earn him the NHRA Rookie of the Year Award for the 2014 season.

Australian Richie Crampton is not going to win the NHRA Countdown to the Championship, but he still hopes to be making a speech at the annual NHRA Champion’s Banquet.

The first-year Top Fuel driver, who sat atop the qualifying sheet after Friday qualifying at the Toyota NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas, hopes his rookie campaign will earn him the NHRA Rookie of the Year Award for the 2014 season.

“I have my eye set on that and really hope I’m in contention for it,” Crampton said after his 3.764 at 322.42 miles per hour put him at No. 1. “I’d really love to win that award. It’s tough and I know, bottom line, that we need to do better and I have to go some rounds to solidify my approach at it this season.”

Crampton, who was 10th in points standings, knows he has tough competition for the award…especially from Pro Stocker Jonathan Gray.

“If we can get some round wins here and in Pomona I think we’ll be sitting pretty good, but it’s not over until it’s over,” he said. “Jonathan Gray’s doing a heck of a job and hats off to him starting the season late and being where he’s at right now in the points. The way he can drive a race car is fantastic. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s pretty exciting for us.

“We’re not in the championship hunt so my main priority is to win that rookie of the year award.”

Crampton has yet to earn top qualifier honors at an NHRA Mello Yello Tour event this season, despite sitting first after Friday once before this season. He said his team has a plan for the rest of the weekend.

“It’s pretty exciting to leave Friday night, sitting on top of the ladder, but we’ve done that before and ended up getting bumped on Saturday,” he said. “We’ll see how tomorrow pans out.”

Crampton ran early in the Friday evening session, and did not expect his number to hold up with so many big hitters behind him.

“After Schumacher ran so good in Q1 I thought he was going to put together a stellar number this evening,” Crampton said. “With that many good cars behind us I thought for sure we were going to get bumped back a bit. The .764 was a good run, but I know how good the alAnnabi team and the Army team can be, so I really didn’t think that number was going to hold up.

“That just goes to show that we hit everything right and got away with it for now.”

He expects a tough battle from the rest of the field Saturday.

“We’ve struggled with consistency, so I think tomorrow we’re just going to try to make good, solid runs,” Crampton said. “Obviously we’re going to try to run well, but we need to get the consistency back that we’ve been lacking since the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.

“I’m sure the team will get everything figured out. What we did here this evening has given us some great information for tomorrow. If we can put together some high 3.70 runs tomorrow we’ll be ecstatic.”

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