NHRA - It's Indy...Troxel Having Fun Again
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Contact: Jay Wells
(704) 662-3525 – Office
(704) 281-5678 – Cell
Torco.com
IT’S INDY…TROXEL HAVING FUN AGAIN
CLERMONT, Ind. (Sept. 2) – Melanie Troxel is having fun again in her Vietnam Veterans POW/MIA Top Fuel dragster and it shows with her dazzling qualifying drive at NHRA’s premier event, the 53rd annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals.
First off, she celebrated her birthday on Friday by partying in grand elegance when she lit up the O’Reilly Raceway Park quarter-mile with her run of 4.520 seconds along with a significant speed of 329.18 mph in securing her position as the No. 4 seed. Just to show how tough it was entering the highly competitive roster of 16 cars, it required a 4.595 elapsed time just to make the field.
“Definitely, our Friday night pass was the big one for us in qualifying – first pass out of the box was the one that kept our position and I think it was that way for a lot of teams,” said Troxel. “Conditions were really good that night, it continued to warm up through the weekend, so those ended up being the best conditions we had. It was great to get that No. 4 qualifying spot, but better than that we ran well in the heat of the day on Sunday, so I feel confident going into race day.”
Playing off the gap of milliseconds in qualifying will play a noteworthy cause, as all factors will be equal in dealing with Monday’s temperatures predicted to be in the 90s raising the track temperatures to over 130 degrees. Her patented final pass in the heat of the day produced a run of 4.617 seconds, 325.85 mph, which was the second quickest pass of the round.
“Our run in the afternoon was way more important than running those big numbers in qualifying,” she said. “It’s nice to be qualified in the top half of the field, but consistency is way more important on race day. This is a big weekend for us, not only is it the U.S. Nationals, but we have Evan Knoll and Latrell Preston and a lot of different people from Knoll Gas out here. We want to put on a good show for them. There’s a lot of people on our team that are really looking forward to going out and winning this race and definitely continue to run well for the rest of the season. We had a little disappointment by not making the top eight, so, we’ve altered our focus and plan to win races.”
When she puts her head on her pillow tonight all Troxel will want to dream about is etching her name on the Wally as the 2007 Mac Tools U.S. Nationals champion and nothing could compare the euphoria of taking NHRA’s biggest race on her birthday weekend.
“Winning Indy, it’s ‘The Big Go’, it’s incredible, that’s the one thing everybody wants to do, short of winning a championship and that is you want to win Indy, said Troxel, who claims nearby Avon as her residence. “I’ve been coming here since I was a little kid celebrating my birthday at the U.S. Nationals and now it’s my hometown track. I couldn’t think of a better way to really cap off the last part of our season than a win at Indy and really go out in style.”
ESPN2-HD will air six hours of drag racing coverage of the U.S. Nationals on Labor Day Monday in two different versions. The first segment starts at 12 p.m. followed by the final round results beginning at 7 p.m.
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Jay Wells
(704) 662-3525 - Office
(704) 281-5678 - Cell
Lucas Oil Racing
jaywell1@ix.netcom.com
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