MOMENTUM BUILDING AT MORGAN LUCAS RACING
 |
More than ever, Morgan Lucas can hardly conceal his excitement about the upcoming 24th annual Checker Schuck’s Kragen Nationals at Firebird International Raceway.
After a great preseason of testing, he exemplified his Lucas Oil team’s notion of being competitive with a No. 4 qualifying position, resetting his career best speed to a thrilling 333.33 mph and rounding out the race weekend at the season-opening Pomona race with a semifinals round finish.
“It’s so great to be consistent, especially having that competitive edge,” said an appreciative Lucas. “We ran great times in qualifying and on race day, we kept it up with more consistent times and advanced with three rounds of racing.”
Now with that scurry of events over, it finds Lucas in the enviable position of being No. 4 in points and is only 41 points out of the top position on the NHRA POWERade Top Fuel points roster.
“That’s the way you want to start your season off being in the mix and it’s a great feeling to know we have a race winning car,” said Lucas, who has five runner-up finishes in his career that began in 2004. “This could be our season to finally get our first win and I can’t imagine what that is going to feel like when it happens, but we’re a lot closer than we’ve been in quite some time.
Crew Chief, Richard Hogan has engineered a racing package that gives his Forrest Lucas-owned Lucas Oil team some aggressive numbers to play with having elapsed time passes of 4.54, 4.56, and 4.61-seconds in eliminations at Pomona and is likely to see the same in Phoenix.
“It’s a great way to start the year and I can’t thank my crew enough for their hard work and it’s through them I get to race a great car,” said a positive feeling Lucas. “It’s great seeing both my team and my teammate, J.R. Todd’s dragster run competitive. We found some things out in testing and now we’re getting to prove them on the track which should make Phoenix a quite interesting race for us.”
The start of the 24th annual Checker Schuck’s Kragen Nationals begins at the Firebird Sports Park on Friday, Feb. 22 with two nitro qualifying sessions starting at 2:00 p.m. (MST) and 4:30 p.m. Saturday's time trials start at 12:30 p.m. for the nitro classes followed by a second session at 3:00 p.m. The race starts promptly at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 24.
ADD 1-1-1
LUCAS OIL RACING DRIVER NOTES:
Morgan Lucas has five runner-up finishes, which the Brownsburg, Ind. driver reached in only his seventh (04 Las Vegas2), eighth (04 Pomona2), 10th (05 Phoenix), 20th (05 St. Louis) and 21st (05 Denver) starts. He finished fifth in the 2005 NHRA Top Fuel Point standings with 1,357 points after completing his first full season on the competitive 23-race NHRA circuit. He finished 11th in 2006 and 15th in 2007.
Lucas' quickest elapsed time is 4.474 seconds, set on Feb. 12, 2005 at Pomona Raceway. He sped to his fastest top speed of 333.33 mph on Feb. 9 in the final qualifying round of qualifying at the 2008 CarQuest Auto Parts Winternationals in Pomona, Calif. He has won two low qualifier awards. His first on May 14 at the Atlanta Dragway recording a time 4.541 seconds and Oct. 22 on ‘The Strip’ at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway setting the pace with his run of 4.508 seconds. Morgan Lucas’ first Top Fuel event came behind the wheel of the Joe Amato-owned dragster at the 2004 Lucas Oil Nationals at the Brainerd (MN.) International Raceway on August 15, 2004. DOB: November 27, 1983.
CHECKER SCHUCK’S KRAGEN NATIONALS
TELEVISION ADVISORY
(ALL TIMES EASTERN – ALL PROGRAMS ON ESPN2 HD)
QUALIFYING HIGHLIGHTS
Saturday, February 23
2:00 A.M. – 3:30 A.M.
QUALIFYING HIGHLIGHTS REPEAT
Sunday, February 24
11:00 A.M. – 12:30 P.M.
NHRA RACE DAY
Sunday, February 24
12:30 P.M. – 1:00 P.M.
FINAL ROUND COVERAGE
Sunday, February 24
7:00 P.M. – 10:00 P.M.
Encore Performance
Wednesday, February 27
3:00 A.M. – 5:00 A.M