Championship Drag Racing

ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals
Las Vegas, NV
(October 26-29)

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Driver Profile

Tom Bradford The Sportsman Channel Buell

Las Vegas, Saturday: Tom Bradford and the Hal's Speedshop/Balbayis Asset Consulting Buell went into the fourth and final round of qualifying for the ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals at The Strip in Las Vegas still on the outside looking in. "Talk about a bag of nerves," said Bradford, who none-the-less ran his best lap of the weekend to make the Pro Stock Motorcycle field.
 
qualifying round 1
10th, 7.190 at 185.82 mph
 
qualifying round 2
12th, 7.178 at 185.97 mph
 
qualifying round 3
17t , 7.202 at 186.87 mph
 
qualifying round 4
15th, 7.161 at 187.70 mph
 
"I hate doing it like that," Tom said at the end of the day. "I probably should be more excited about it because it was a really strong run for the conditions. The barometer got worse, the density altitude got worse.
Everybody else dropped off and I think we were the fourth quickest of the session and best of the Buells."
 
Tom and the team are learning how to work with a new clutch on the bike this weekend. "We've got an entirely different system, and that was only our fifth run. It takes a while to break those things in. Our 60 foot time is terrible-a 1.12 on out best run and that's awful. But our back half numbers are strong.
 
"We feel like we've still got the same motorcycle that qualified on the pole and ran 6 seconds, but we've just lost the tune-up a little bit. But we'll get out of this slump-if we can call it a slump. But when you taste the top half of the ladder, that's all you want."

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