Championship Drag Racing

Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals
Brainerd, MN
(August 9-12)

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Driver Profile

Morgan Lucas GEICO/Lucas Oil dragster

Brainerd, Sunday:  Morgan Lucas proudly reached the semi-finals of his family sponsored event, the Lucas Oil Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway and he couldn’t be any happier with the performance of the his Lucas Oil Top Fuel team led by veteran crew chief, Richard Hogan. 

It marked the first time since April in Las Vegas that the 23-year old driver from Brownsburg, Indiana, has seen a professional win light and on this Sunday, he came so close to reaching the finals.

Morgan Lucas defeated Hillary Will in the opening round of competition on a hole-shot. (.055 - .110).  His time of 4.610 ET, 326.48 mph measured up to her quicker elapsed time of 4.604 seconds, 325.61 mph to snag the round win.

In the quarterfinals, he won again, this time over Whit Bazemore.  His time of  4.622 seconds, 328.38 mph to Bazemore’s tire-smoking pass of 6.052 seconds, 147.79 mph moved him onward to the semi-finals.

In a close race in the semi-finals, Lucas was against good friend and rival, Brandon Bernstein, who only won by the small margin of .047 thousandths of a second after Lucas posted a time 4.582 seconds, 319.75 mph to Bernstein’s quicker ET of 4.536 seconds, 326.00 mph

“We’re just having fun,” said a perceptive Lucas.  “When you not in the points and your teammate is, you’re trying to do everything you can to help her out.  I want the best for Melanie and her team over there.  I want to see her win the POWERade championship and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get her there.  It would be a nice thing for everybody.

“This weekend has been a big turning point for us.  We’ve talked about that before the race to find out what we need to do in being a contender.  We ran our best of what we thought we could at that point and dropped a hole (cylinder) right at the finish line.  That might have slowed us down a little bit, but it did knock us down a couple of mile per hour.  Overall, I’m very happy.  The car shows a lot of progress and I’m proud of our team, Melanie’s team, and our whole group as an organization.  We’ll keep going and hopefully that will make this a good deal for us. 

Lucas posted a qualifying time of 4.602 seconds at a speed of 327.19 mph to position his Lucas Oil dragster into the No. 6 seed.

In Lucas’ Top Alcohol program, he manage to reach the finals again after winning last weekend at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, only to come up short against Spencer Massey.  Lucas ran a time of 5.376 seconds at a speed of 268.54 to Massey’s winning run of 5.266 seconds, 276.13 mph. 

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