Bob Tasca III will participate in Thursday night’s Grand Opening of the
Shelby Corner Café on the campus of Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Tasca,
along with Carroll Shelby and Don Prudhomme, will be on hand for a
driver autograph session from 7 – 8 p.m.

Pro Stock icon Bill Grumpy
Jenkins is recovering from complications related to a drop in blood pressure on
Sunday. Doctors performed a stent procedure and inserted three balloons inside
the arteries to expand passageways.

Jake Barbato of Jenkins
Competition confirmed Jenkins’ condition with the NHRA’s John Jaudaga on
NHRA.com.

Ah, Las Vegas, where fortunes are made and lost every day, providing, of course,
one frequents the many games of chance that are available.
 
Melanie
Troxel isn’t into gambling, but the driver of the Simayof Jewelers Dodge Charger
R/T Funny Car does know something about rolling the dice when it comes to
race-car combinations. 
 
Four races and several test sessions into the
2008 NHRA POWERade Series, the first-year Funny Car driver believes a
competitive combination is just a few rolls (or qualifying runs, in this
instance) away. She and the Gotham City Racing team have four quarter-mile laps
to solidify the tune-up when qualifying action commences Friday for the ninth
annual SummitRacing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor
Speedway.
 
Troxel has a special affinity for the track. Her second Top
Fuel victory came here in 2006. The Strip is where she successfully completed
her Funny Car licensing in January and put in a number of test runs following a
six-year, 86-race Top Fuel career, during which she earned four victories in 15
final rounds and series finishes of fourth (2006)and ninth (2007).
 
“The
Las Vegas track actually has been good for both Tommy (Johnson Jr., her husband
and fellow Funny Car driver) and I,” said Troxel.  “Obviously, it’s one of the
premier facilities on the tour. As drivers, that’s probably one of our favorite
tracks . . . and you are in Las Vegas, so it kind of makes for a great weekend
all around.”

Ron Capps has two positive things going for him as he heads to The Strip at Las
Vegas Motor Speedway for this weekend's NHRA Nationals: the NAPA AUTO PARTS
Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car he drives for Don Schumacher Racing is showing
promise after four straight first-round losses, and the quarter-mile at The
Strip has arguably one of the best racing surfaces in the country.

Capps
credits crew chief Ed "Ace" McCulloch and the NAPA crew for the team's newfound
confidence after experiencing a "technical" epiphany before eliminations at the
last event in Houston. Despite losing the opening round to a strong opponent,
Capps' run was solid and straight and boded well for the future.

A.J. Ashe followed up his San Antonio Raceway IHRA Top Sportsman Pro-Am victory
in March with a near duplicate finish at last weekend’s IHRA Amalie Sportsman
Nationals at the same facility. Ashe, a veteran bracket racer with several big
dollar victories under his belt, drove his All In Motorsports Grand Am into the
final round where he met up with defending IHRA World Champion Jason
Lynch.

After
a strong season-opening effort in Florida, the ROUSH® drag racing team
continued their assault on the NMRA’s index classes with another
hard-fought effort during a weekend of weather uncertainty at Silver
Dollar Raceway in Reynolds, Ga.

Susan Roush-McClenaghan followed up her final round appearance at
Bradenton (Fla.) Motorsports Park with another final round berth
against perennial tough contender Tom Motycka. After a strong 0.014
reaction time during the rain-aborted qualifying sessions landed her in
the seventh qualified spot, Susan powered all the way through the
field, missing out on the top spot by the slimmest of margins - eleven
ten thousandths of a second at the stripe.

Susan, despite not having the drag racing experience of some of her
racing peers, is quickly establishing herself as a force to be reckoned
with in the ROUSH Performance Modular Muscle class. As is the case with
any drag race, there has to be a winner and a loser, and after Susan
met up with Roush teammate Donnie Bowles in the second round, she moved
on to have a third-round bye before narrowly winning over Georgia’s
Charlie McCulloch to advance to the final against Motycka. The
heartbreaking loss in the event’s final stanza didn’t temper Susan’s
spirits; she was upbeat and cheery after cementing her class points
lead with this strong showing, the third final-round appearance of her
career.

Veteran NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster pilot Darvin Martinets and the Main
& Martinets Motorsports/DragRaceHose.com team will be gunning for a
berth on the prestigous Jeg's Sportsman All-Star Team during this
weekend's Division 4 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event at the Texas
Motorplex just south of Dallas.  Martinets enters the final event to
earn points towards the All-Star team a mere 32 points out of first and
needs to at least make the finals to overtake Brandon Pierce and
Spencer Massey.
 
Martinets, from Lake Jackson, Texas, has a cautious optimism going into
this weekend's event.  While the Will Hanna tuned machine has ran good
numbers in qualifying, the team's opponent has stepped up to run low
elapsed time of the round at both of the races they have attended. 
Still, Martinets cites he has always had luck on his side at the Texas
Motorplex.  The last time Martinets competed there, they reached the
finals of last year's O'Reilly Fall Nationals in September.

The Management Committee of Willowbank Raceway has named Castrol
performance brand Castrol EDGE as the naming rights sponsor of the 2008 Tin Top
Titles, to be held at Willowbank Raceway on April 18 and 19.

The 2008 Castrol
EDGE Tin Top Titles will feature, amongst an action-packed support program, the
powerhouse Group One categories of Top Doorslammer and Pro Stock, with 16 car
fields seeing double the usual amount of competitors battling it out.

Willowbank Raceway and
oil lubricant giant Castrol have enjoyed a long-running relationship and the
naming right’s sponsorship of the April event will nicely complement the
company’s continuing support of the Castrol EDGE Winternationals (June 5-8).

Willowbank
Raceway Managing Director Steve Bettes said he was pleased to announce the
extension of Castrol EDGE’s association with the Raceway.

IHRA Announcer Bob Unkefer was convinced he’d reached the pinnacle of success in his driving career when

NHRA Stock racer and IHRA announcer Bob Unkefer reacts to an admiring fan in the winner's circle. (Roger Richards)

he
won the Stock eliminator crown recently during the NHRA
Springnationals in Houston, Texas. As the elated Unkefer stood on stage
and hoisted his trophy high into the air, he saw it.

As Unkefer admitted, you couldn’t miss it among his cheering fans comprised of fellow sportsman racers.

Unkefer got mooned.

Yes, someone dropped trouser to show their posterior as Unkefer stood on stage.

“It was definitely not a sight to behold,” Unkefer admitted. “I had a
friend tell me that it’s memories from the winner’s circle that I will
never forget. I don't know that that's what I don't want to forget.”