NHRA (LAS VEGAS) - Densham oh-so-close to victory in Vegas eliminations

LAS VEGAS (Apr. 15) - Veteran Funny Car drag racer Gary Densham showed everyone the results of weeks of hard work during Sunday's final eliminations of the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals.

After wowing the crowd with a best-of-round performance during Saturday's fourth round of qualifying at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Densham and the Torco Racing Fuels / Racebricks Collectable's team earned another match-up with Del Worsham.

Densham's roll of the dice came up snake-eyes in the first round of eliminations, dashing his hopes of a repeat win in a mere blink of the eye.

It was so close, Densham said. "I could hear him, but I couldn't see him. That's how close it was."

Worsham edged out Densham at the quarter-mile stripe by only three feet, in a race that saw the former high school teacher stop the timer in 4.804-seconds at 317-mph. Worsham's slower, but winning time was clocked at 4.842-seconds and 325.69-mph.

"The car drifted just a few inches out of the groove," Densham said, wondering what would have happened if it had gone the other way. "That's all it takes these days to find yourself on the trailer.

"I hope Evan Knoll at Torco and all the great folks at Racebricks Collectibles - our sponsors and supporters - know how hard we're working because I know it's going to pay off soon with a win. This is only the fifth of 23 events and we've come a long way in a short amount of time in getting this Chevy Monte Carlo in victory circle.

"I think we put everybody on notice this weekend," Densham said. "We've come to play, and now it's a matter of a little luck before we get the win that our team so deserves."