IHRA President Aaron Polburn smiled as he chatted during the IHRA Motor
City Nationals in Milan, Michigan about his take on the impending nitro
crisis that

IHRA President Aaron Polburn says the IHRA will face no shortages of nitromethane because of early planning. (Roger Richards)

threatens
drag racing’s supply. He explained that he got a call asking him if he
feared having enough nitro to finish the season.

“I asked them if they were talking about 2008 or 2009,” Polburn mused.

Polburn has assured his nitro racers the lifeblood supply concerns will
not affect the IHRA whatsoever. Their eight-car fields and 11-race
schedule significantly reduce their demand. IHRA nitro cars only have
three sessions.

This weekend’s O’Reilly Summer Nationals will mark the continued
relationship with Pedregon Racing and the Herzog Family as the race
will feature a unique paint scheme on the Q Horse Power Chevy Impala
for this event and possible future venues. For the past three seasons 
Herzog Contracting Corp. has supported the two time NHRA POWERade Funny
Car World Champion, Tony Pedregon.   The Herzog corporate office
proximity to Topeka will allow for over 500 employees and guests to
attend this event.

"The NHRA fan base, combined with our employees and customers in the
transportation construction business makes further involvement in NHRA
drag racing a natural for us.  Tony and Cruz Pedregon are personal
friends, great racers and businessmen.  We are pleased to continue and
grow our support for the quality equipment and personnel they
represent" stated Stanley Herzog, Executive Vice President of Herzog
Contracting Corp.

Former Top Fuel racer Jim Bailey once asked if there would be life
after nitro racing. Eight years later he’s answering the question with
a resounding, “Yes!”

Bailey once drove a second dragster on Doug Herbert’s Snap-on Tools Top
Fuel team in the 1990s and today he spends most of his time assisting
Jim Head and in the little extra time he has, brings out his classic
Mopar to race IHRA Stock. 

“I’ve got a 1963 Dodge Max Wedge, Stage 2 car,” Bailey said. “It's not
an original car, it's a clone that I started to build as a street rod
and it kind of evolved into a race car after my professional drag
racing career ended.”

L&M Motorsports is comprised of one team race car, and two very
capable drivers. Co-owned by Jay Marshall and Bob Luttrell, the pair
shares seat time while driving their attention-getting 54 Studebaker.
The car was built in 2006 by Jay Marshall's own enterprise, MRC Race
Cars in Monroe, NC. The car has been spotted all over the southeast,
including IHRA National Events, divisional races as well as heads-up
leagues such as Mad Dawg, just to name a few.
 
Jay Marshall handles driving duties while competing in national events
and various Quick-8 races, while Bob Luttrell takes his turn in the
Studebaker at divisional meets along the IHRA circuit. Always a crowd
favorite, the L&M Motorsports Studebaker has received a recent
award for best engineered, as well as a feature article in Drag Race Action magazine.

NASCAR superstar Kenny Wallace will represent JEGS.com for the second straight
year at the annual Old Spice Prelude to the Dream, which takes place June 4 at
Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. Winner of the inaugural charity event in
2005, Wallace is hoping to reclaim past glory at this year's event when he'll
compete against some of the best race car drivers in the world.

"Man, I'm
so excited I can hardly stand it," Wallace said. "This is the one event everyone
talks about all year long and it's going to be the biggest and best one yet in
2008."

Wallace and the rest of the star-studded field will pilot
800-horsepower Late Model Stock Cars around the famed dirt oval, where legends
like A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti learned to drive. Wallace's 2,300-pound racer
will be easy to spot in the familiar yellow-and-black of JEGS.com, the
high-performance mail-order parts giant.

Jack Beckman is ready to see the Valvoline/Mail Terminal Services Dodge
Charger R/T rebound at this weekend's NHRA Summer Nationals at
Heartland Park Topeka, where a semifinal finish in 2007 kicked off a
string of successes which led to back-to-back victories and a steady
move up the rankings. He landed a berth in the battle for the Countdown
to Four, finishing his first full Funny Car season in the NHRA POWERade
Drag Racing Series in fifth place.

This season he enters the Topeka event following two straight DNQs
after one victory in the first eight events. Beckman is not
discouraged. With 21-car tight Funny Car fields this season, several
other top contenders have also failed to qualify. Last year, Beckman
suffered two DNQs before the Topeka event, yet moved into second in the
standings by the 19th event of 23 that year.

"Usually I say how exciting it is to go to the next track," said
Beckman, who is No. 11 in points, just seven markers out of the top 10.
"And Kansas is cool because it's the birthplace of NHRA's
national-event schedule, but the excitement I've got, along with a
little bit of anxiety, is we are starting to get our Valvoline/MTS
Dodge back on the track that it needs to be on. We're just a step off
right now.

Hurst Jaws of Life announced the renewal of its sponsorship with the
National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). With the new three year agreement,
Hurst will be titled as the “Official Rescue Tool of the NHRA.”  As
part of the agreement, the NHRA will use Hurst Jaws of Life at all of
its events which run nationwide.  

Hurst’s roots were established in auto racing when George Hurst, the
inventor of the modern hydraulic rescue tool, saw a need with high
speed car crashes on the racetrack.  Hurst developed the Hydraulic
rescue tool by working with prototypes in the 1960s, finally bringing
the tools to fire and rescue departments in 1972.  Hydraulic rescue
tools such as the Jaws of Life are used to extricate personnel from
vehicles in a crash that would cause them to be trapped inside.

Castrol EDGE Winternationals was launched at Warner Bros. Movieworld on
the Gold Coast today, with the announcement the Willowbank Raceway
Event will host the largest ever Top Fuel field in Australian drag
racing history.

Three generations of the legendary Bray racing family, Brisbane Top
Fuel driver Aaron Lynch and Willowbank Raceway Managing Director Steve
Bettes joined together at Warner Bros. Movieworld to announce the
milestone of 12 Top Fuel entries for the largest drag racing event held
outside of North America.

To celebrate, Victor and Ben Bray – who have never before stepped
aboard any kind of show-ride – Victor’s 11 year old grandson and Junior
Dragster Josh McClennan, Lynch and Bettes took their seats on the
Superman Escape – twice voted the Southern Hemisphere’s number one
rollercoaster and at 0-100kmh in two seconds, the closest feeling to
being at the wheel of one of their racing machines.

Melanie Troxel is
on a roll, and heading into this weekend's O'Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at
Heartland Park Topeka, the most recent winner on the NHRA tour is hoping to ride
the momentum all the way to the winner's circle.
 
Troxel won the last
event in Bristol, Tenn. and added her name to an elite list of only 14 drivers
who have won in both nitro Funny Car and Top Fuel Dragster. She also holds the
honor of being the first woman to achieve that feat.
 

The Flowmaster American Drag Racing League (ADRL) presented by the
National Guard has added RSS Feed capability to its www.ADRL.us Web
site. Essentially, RSS (Rich Summary Site or Really Simple Syndication)
offers an easy, free, scheduled method of distributing a concise list
of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to subscribers
using personal computers, laptops and even palmtop devices.

“This is just one more step toward making ADRL.us a daily ‘go-to’
destination for our fans and racers,” ADRL Vice President of
Communications Ian Tocher said. “Our online readers are very
Internet-savvy and this means they’ll now be able to learn of ADRL.us
updates more quickly and easily. I hope many, many readers will take
the opportunity to explore what the new ADRL RSS feed has to offer.”