NHRA Funny Car - Tasca Carries One Ford Flag Into Semifinals

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 31, 2011: Bob Tasca III flew the “One Ford” flag all the way to the semifinals in an unpredictable day of racing that saw upset upon upset Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Tasca advanced to his fourth semifinal appearance of the year in the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Funny Car on the strength of a 4.185-second finish at 307.65 mph in his second-consecutive win over rookie Alexis DeJoria and a 4.205 at 306.12 over best friend Tony Pedregon in the quarterfinals.

Then came the semifinals, where the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang struck the tires almost immediately after Tasca left the starting line. The result was a 10.799 at 86.69 finish and a loss to Countdown to the Championship spoiler Johnny Gray.

“Today you saw the unpredictable nature of these race cars,” said Tasca, who saw all four of his Ford Funny Car teammates fall in an unprecedented show of bad luck in Round 1. “Who would’ve thought Mike Neff and Robert Hight would have gone out as early as they did, but it just puts into perspective how difficult these cars are to tune, and it really shows how we’re right on the edge every single run. Certainly we’re very proud with Motorcraft/Quick Lane and FordParts.com to get to the semifinals, move up in the points, close in on that top five finish, which is really our goal at this point.

“But then we go out and smoke the tires at the hit of the throttle. Trust me, there was nothing that we did to do that. We didn’t change anything from the round before. That’s the way these cars are. When you live on the edge, you just sometimes don’t know how close you are to the edge. Unfortunately for us, we pushed a little bit too hard and went up in smoke early. We’ll take this momentum and go testing tomorrow, and head on to Pomona.”