Super Comp - T.J. Coughlin Scores $20,000 Payday In South Georgia

ADEL, April 23, 2012: Third generation drag racer Troy Coughlin Jr. scored one of the biggest victories of his career when he banked $20,000 Sunday at the Super Spring Buck Blast at South Georgia Motorsports Park.

Racing his JEGS.com-branded dragster, Coughlin won the main event. The victory was extra special for Coughlin as he defeated his friend, mentor and JEGS.com teammate, Kenny Underwood, in the final round.

"Winning any race is great but to be able to race Kenny in the final makes it even better," Coughlin said. "He’s one of the best racers in the country and it’s an honor just to line up against him. We raced each other for the first time last year and I was lucky enough to beat him. I told him he owed me one. Now, he owes me two and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before he evens the score.

"This was a great race and we really enjoyed coming down here. [Track operator] Rowland Wood and his staff should be very proud of this event. It was awesome."

In the ninth and final round of the marathon event, Coughlin put together a nearly perfect run with a .011 reaction time and an elapsed time just four-thousandths of a second off his dial-in time. Underwood, driving the Bertozzi, Underwood and Coughlin Tennessee Rattler Camaro, was close behind after a competitive .016-second reaction time before running a hundredth of a second over his dial-in.

"I had a lot of very close races this weekend but the final round was one of the best," Coughlin said. "When you race someone like Kenny, you have to be focused and do your very best. We won a lot of money and we got this really cool trophy with an Eagle on it. Kenny says it looks like a chicken, but it’s really an Eagle.

"Seriously, a race like this shows that our JEGS.com team is a world-class racing operation," Coughlin said. "We have a lot of great people on our team including Rick Rossiter, Greg Cody, Tony Collier and his girlfriend Tracy Newman, my dad Troy Sr. and my uncles, John, Mike and Jeg Jr., and of course, Kenny and his girlfriend, Michele Perry. They all played a part in this. I also have to thank Mark Horton at American Race Cars for building an awesome dragster, Sonny Leonard engines, George Rupert carburetors and Jim Hughes and Kevin Kleineweber of Hughes Performance for all their assistance."

Coughlin’s $20,000 victory on Sunday was the culmination of a great weekend for the JEGS.com driver as he also reached the semifinal round in two other races during the multi-day event. This strong performance comes on the heels of another solid showing at a high stakes E.T. bracket event last weekend at Piedmont Dragway in Greensboro, N.C.

"Kenny and I are doing really well right now," Coughlin said. "We’ve both gotten to make a lot of runs lately and all that seat time has helped with our consistency. These big bracket races are so hard to win, and the competition is so tough that when you get on a little bit of a hot streak, you’ve got to ride it for all it’s worth because you never know how long it’s going to last.

"This has been a goal of mine for a long time and it's hard to believe it's really happened."

Hoping to keep his hot streak going, Coughlin will now head to Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis next weekend for the traditional NHRA North Central Division Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series season opener. Troy Jr. will be racing in Top Dragster and Super Comp and will be joined by his uncle Mike in Top Sportsman and his sister-in-law Samantha, who will also be racing in Super Comp.