NHRA (POMONA) - Season Ends for Morgan Lucas in the Quarterfinals

Morgan Lucas completed his 2007 POWERade Top Fuel season with a quarterfinal finish at the 43rd annual Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona Raceway.

In the first round of Sunday eliminations, Lucas won his opening stanza after posting a time of 4.562 seconds, 322.04 mph against Doug Foley, who ran a competitive time of 4.572 seconds, 325.92 mph resulting in a margin of victory of 052-thousandths of a second separating them. Lucas defeated Tony Schumacher in the last two races (Richmond and Las Vegas) and was paired up alongside of him again in the NHRA Finals quarterfinals. With Lucas leaving first (.035 – 064), it took everything Schumacher had to chase him down, and unfortunately for Lucas, he did. Schumacher ran an elapsed time of 4.501 seconds, 330.96 mph to Morgan’s good time of 4.552 seconds, 327.90 mph. Their race ended with a separation of .022-thousandths of a second as the margin of victory. Lucas qualified in the No. 9 position for the race after running a pass of 4.541 seconds at a new career best speed of 330.47 mph on Saturday. He will end the season in the in the No. 15 spot in the NHRA POWERade standings with 790 points.

He totaled a 20-24 win/loss record for 2007 and has competed in 69 NHRA National events.

His Top Alcohol program at Pomona gave him a semi-finals finish defeating Joey Severance, Jim Whiteley before losing to Duane Shields. Lucas will be quite busy in the off-season with driving duties in the Baja 1000 beginning at Ensenada, Mexico on Nov. 13-14, and the Bodine Bobsled Challenge on January 3-5, 2008, respectively. The next NHRA National event will be the CarQuest Auto Parts Winternationals at Pomona, Calif. on Feb. 7 – 10, 2008.