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.”

There’s a positioning going on during the first phase of the two-part NHRA Countdown to the Championship

Rod Fuller says the experience from 2007 had encouraged him to approach the championship chase in a different way.

and
no one wants to take the lead, especially last season’s early leaders
Rod Fuller and Ron Capps. Both racers led the points championships in
their respective divisions before losing the titles in the final
contracting elements.

Fuller led the Top Fuel division points up until the final round of the
season. Under the former format, Fuller would have won the title.

“The experience changed my approach a tremendous amount,” Fuller
pointed out. “Last year left a big chip on my shoulder and there’s two
ways to look at it. I know we should never hold a chip on our shoulder
but the experience has worked as a positive for me. I drive with an
extra fire burning inside because of it.

Former Pro Modified racer turned Pro Stock Truck sensation Brad Jeter has made his way back to the

Brad Jeter has found a reason to return in drag racing in working with Scotty Cannon.

professional ranks, but in a different capacity than when he won ten national event championships.

Jeter, of Greenville, South Carolina, has given up the wheel to serve
as one of Scotty Cannon’s “crew chiefs” during his return to the Pro
Modified class. He’s traded in the firesuit for the greasy confines of
the clutch can in a doorslammer and any other between rounds
maintenance needing to be done.

He’s not disgruntled with the reassignment. Instead, he’s having the time of his life helping a long time friend.

Reigning POWERade champion Jeg Coughlin Jr. has taken a big step towards
increasing driver safety in the Pro Stock category by trading in his traditional
two-piece driver's suit for a new one-piece creation from Oakley Motor
Sports.

A 52-time national event winner, Coughlin has been sporting a
prototype suit named Factory Pilot. It features three layers of protection and
is SFI rated 5. Like all of Oakley's safety gear, it is constructed with
award-winning CarbonX fabrics.

"We're seeing a big push for safety at
the moment and through our conversations with Jeg we realized there was a need
to improve what Pro Stock drivers are currently wearing," said Todd Hayes,
Oakley's Sports Marketing Manager for Motorsports Worldwide. "The evolution of
firesuits in the class just kind of went to the two-piece design, which has
since survived mainly because it's easy to take the jacket on and
off.

This weekend, Kurt Johnson will be one of countless people heading west
with the intent of winning big in Las Vegas.  However, even though he
may try his hand throughout the weekend at one of the gaming tables in
the casinos, his primary target will be the quarter-mile of concrete
and asphalt at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, as he and his
ACDelco Cobalt racing team look to take home the trophy from this
weekend’s SummitRacing.com Nationals.  After all, having learned a
valuable lesson during his runner-up performance at the last race, KJ
is confident of being able to improve his odds.

“It certainly didn’t seem like it at the time, but what happened to us
during the final in Houston was actually good for us,” said Johnson.
“It showed us something we had to fix in our ACDelco Cobalt. In the
last two races, we had blamed the car’s bad behavior on the track,
which was certainly a factor, but when we overlaid the graph from that
run with our first-round race in Gainesville (where KJ also shot to the
right at the launch), they were virtually identical.