Championship Drag Racing

Schuck's Auto Supply NHRA Nationals
Seattle, WA
(July 20-22)

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Driver Profile

Cory McClenathan Rapisarda Racing

Seattle, prerace: Cory McClenathan doesn’t mean to sound redundant, but as the NHRA POWERade Series season moves toward its first elimination round in the new Countdown to the Championship, all he thinks about is winning rounds on Sunday. This Sunday, the site is Pacific Raceways in Kent, near Seattle, and the event is the 20th annual Schuck’s Auto Supply NHRA Nationals.

McClenathan is one of eight drivers who covet a top eight spot but is not among them yet. “I know I’ve been saying this for awhile, but we are now four races away from the end of the first segment of the Countdown,” said McClenathan, driver of the Scott Griffin Motorsports FRAM Top Fuel dragster. “We need to start winning more rounds if we want to stay in championship contention.”

He is 10th in points (570), four round wins away from the final field of eight that will move on to the next round still clutching their title hopes. The others must wait until next year.

He and the team are very happy to be back at sea level following Sunday’s race at Denver. The mile-high atmosphere required a totally different tune-up on the often-finicky nitromethane-fueled engines. It’s a different story here.

“Being at sea level, with all the trees around the track, enables our motors to make more horsepower easier, and that makes the motors more efficient,” said McClenathan. “Wes and Tony (Cerny and Shortall, crew chief and assistant crew chief, respectively) had to put a lot of stress on the superchargers at Denver, but we should be able to get down the track much better at Seattle.” In his 16th full season of competition, McClenathan has won 29 times, including at once at Seattle. He was runner-up here three times. He was runner-up at St. Louis in May.

“We need to find our consistency again. We need to get past the first round on Sunday or we’ll be on the outside looking in when the top eight start the second part of the playoffs.”  

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