LUCAS RACES TO QUARTERFINALS FINISH

LAS VEGAS (April 13) – Morgan Lucas advanced to the quarterfinals of the Summitracing.com Nationals on the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway before bowing out to veteran Cory McClenathan in a very close match up.

Lucas was defeated by the small margin of only five-thousandths of a second (.005) after banking a hefty reaction time lead of .030-hundredths (.071-.101) at the starting line while running an elapsed time of 4.815 seconds, 305.91 mph to McClenathan’s equally quick time of 4.780 seconds, 304.25 mph.

“It was a great run, but just came up short,” said Lucas on his quarterfinals run. “We had him pretty much off the starting line and didn’t see him until just before the finish line. I thought we were going to see another win light, but it just wasn’t meant to be today.

“It’s very encouraging to see the progress we’ve made in this race and the Atlanta event should prove to be a lot of fun.”

His opening round of competition on Sunday placed the Brownsburg, Indiana, based driver up against Switzerland’s Urs Erbacher where he swept away his competition leaving the starting line first (.063 - .106) and remaining in the lead with a time of 4.765 seconds, 310.77 mph.

Lucas qualified in the No. 4 position with a time of 4.579 seconds, 325.22 mph.

The NHRA POWERade Top Fuel points standings now finds Lucas in the No. 11 spot with 203 markers.

The next NHRA National event will be the Summit Equipment Southern Nationals at the Atlanta Dragway slated to run of April 25 – 27.