Coughlin Bags Second Top Qualifier Award Of The Season

NORWALK, June 27, 2010: Racing to the top in his home state, Jeg Coughlin Jr. of Delaware, Ohio, has proven to have the quickest Pro Stock car on the property at the NHRA tour stop in Norwalk, Ohio. Coughlin cruised to a 6.592 at 208.97 mph Friday evening in his JEGS.com Chevrolet Cobalt and managed to hold onto the position through Saturday's final two sessions to lock up the top position on the elimination grid.

"Weather could really play a role in this race tomorrow," Coughlin said. "We ran that 6.59 Friday night in what is usually the hero session, but this morning when we had that cloud cover we saw plenty of cars running good numbers. If we get that again tomorrow morning it could be really interesting."

In addition to this weekend's national event, Coughlin took part in the $50,000 K&N Horsepower Challenge where he raced to a semifinal finish, worth $3,000. Coughlin was the defending champion of the event, a race he's won three times in the past.

"As soon as I let the clutch out against Mike (Edwards, semifinal opponent) the car immediately decelerated so we thought we had an engine problem," Coughlin said. "We swapped out motors before Q4 and it did the exact same thing again, so obviously the problem lies elsewhere.

"I'm a little shocked. Typically when you have a problem like this you can diagnose it right away with the RacePak data we collect and fix it. We weren't able to do that this time so we'll go over this thing from front to back and triple-check everything to make absolutely sure we're ready for tomorrow."

When eliminations begin, Coughlin will take on No. 16 qualifier Justin Humphreys, who squeaked into the field with a 6.679 at 205.98 mph. Humphreys and Coughlin have not raced one another this season.

In Pro Mod, Troy Coughlin became the last driver in the class to have qualified for all seven races this season when he posted a 13th-best 6.018 at 235.43 mph in his JEGS.com Chevrolet Camaro. Unfortunately, a faulty transmission ended his run in Saturday's first round of eliminations, where he lost to Pat Musi.