NHRA Rte. 66 Fram Nat'l Update
5 June 1999
CHEVROLET NOTES AND QUOTES ROUTE 66 RACEWAY JOLIET, ILL. FRAM NATIONALS NHRA WINSTON DRAG RACING SERIES SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1999 PRO STOCK TRUCK -- CHEVY S-10 -- DOMINATOR DUEL Chevy S-10 drivers BRAD JETER, BOB PANELLA JR., JERRY HAAS, and RANDY DANIELS advanced to the semifinals of the inaugural Holley Dominator Duel for a $20,000 prize. MARK OSBORNE, RCL COMPONENTS CHEVY S-10, was defeated by RANDY DANIELS, DANIELS MOTORSPORTS CHEVY S-10, when he redlighted, 7.772/173.58 for Daniels, 7.701/175.66 for Osborne. OSBORNE: "The (Christmas) tree has to be awfully tight on that side (left). Panella went .405 right in front of me and I pulled up and it went red, a .394. I actually thought I saw it was time to go. It wasn't that I was in there that deep, so I don't know. I'm bummed about it, I guarantee that. I hate beating myself. It's the first time I did that in a long time. It's one of those things that happen." WHAT WILL YOU DO TO PREVENT THAT THE NEXT TIME?: "I'm going to go up there and do the same thing at the same time. If it turns red I wil have to do something different for this race track." LARRY KOPP, SPEEDCO TRUCK LUBE CHEVY S-10, was defeated by BOB PANELLA, PANELLA MOTORSPORTS CHEVY S-10, 7.728/174.23 for Kopp, 7.637/175.80 for Panella. Panella, in usual form, had an oustanding reaction time, .405 to Kopp's .512. This round also counted towards qualifying and Kopp got himself into the field after failing in the first two rounds of qualifying. KOPP: "We're in the field, thank God. That was our first run this weekend that we actually made a full pass. We were trying to make just a conservative run to get down the track. We felt we could go faster in our next qualifying runs, but I didn't want to take any chances on getting into this field. We knew we had to be conservative to be in this field. At that point getting into the field was more important than winning a round of the Dominator Duel for me. We think we found the problem with our S-10, now we can start racing to go faster not just to ry to fix a problem. It's really hard when you are trying to fix a problem and race the truck at the same time. Now we feel we can start tuning the S-10 and make it faster. Next session hopefully we will be faster. That session we were probably the second or third fastest of all the trucks that went down the track, which is pretty good." TIM FREEMAN, BLUEGRASS TRANSPORTATION CHEVY S-10, broke at the starting line and was eliminated by JERRY HAAS, TEXAS HARLEY-DAVIDSON CHEVY S-10. Haas' numbers were 7.744/174.30. FREEMAN: "It broke a valve, it blowed up. I hope we can get an engine from somebody, maybe Larry Kopp or Jerry Haas. Kopp's got another (Bill "Grumpy") Jenkins spare (motor). If not, maybe Randy Daniels or somebody else will let me run something tomorrow, but we're done for today. It came at a bad time -- in the shootout, the big money race." SEMIFINAL ROUND BRAD JETER, JETER MOTORSPORTS CHEVY S-10, No. 1 qualifier for the Holley Dominator Duel, was defeated by BOB PANELLA MOTORSPORTS CHEVY S-10, in the semifinal when he red-lighted with a .386 to Panella's .497. Panella won with an elapsed time of 7.684 seconds at 175.82 mph to Jeter's 7.758/174.82. Panella is famous for his excellent reaction times. JETER: "We went up there behind the 8-ball. He (Panella) was seven hundredths (of a second in e.t. in the previous round) quicker going into that round. I knew I had to do something. I had to pull out an old trick. I just knocked that top bulb out hoping he'd look at it, I could turn on the green, and he would be late. It just didn't work out. I deep-staged, hoping it would distract him. But I turned it red instead. He would have been good on the tree if that hadn't happened. Bob's a good driver. I guarantee you he would have done a .420 or .430 or maybe a .410. He's been known to do .400s. They have done an excellent job all weekend and I knew he was going to be tough. I knew it would be a hard nut to crack to run him. I had to do whatever was possible to do as a driver to beat him and it didn't work out. It would have been an honor to win the first Holley Denominator Duel, but the Man upstairs didn't want it to happen, so we will take our Chevy S-10 and race it tomorrow when it counts. All in all, I'm not disgusted about it, I still have a positive attitude for the weekend. We've got a points championship we're after." RANDY DANIELS, DANIELS MOTORSPORTS CHEVY S-10, two-time national title winner this year, was beaten by JERRY HAAS, TEXAS HARLEY-DAVIDSON CHEVY S-10, with an elapsed time of 7.736 for Haas at 174.48 mph to Daniels' 7.773/173.83. DANIELS: "This (hot) weather is killing us, we just never got it figured out. We've not been able to tune our motor. We've been playing around with the carburetion, but don't seem to be getting anywhere with it. The race track is pretty tricky too. It's a little slick downtrack. You feel the S-10 moving around and spinning the tires in third and fourth gear. It's basically in the right lane; I haven't been able to have lane choice, that's hurting some too." DOES COMPETING IN A RACE AT THE SAME TIME AS QUALIFYING AFFECT YOU? "You really only get two chances to qualify in one weekend because it does hurt your qualifying effort. We were not able to try anything as far as changing parts on the S-10. That threw a total wrench in my combination; I had to stay with a basic setup. I would have probably done things differently if I wasn't racing somebody."