Championship Drag Racing

SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals
Las Vegas, Nev.
(April 10-13)

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Driver Profile

J.R. Todd ProtectTheHarvest.com/MAVTV dragster

Las Vegas, Sunday: The Summitracing.com Nationals on the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be a good prospect to transform the Torco/Lucas Oil dragster team’s luck after a disheartening start to the 2008 NHRA season that hasn’t turned out to be quite the year Top Fuel driver, J.R. Todd had predicted.

“It’s been a shaky start of the year for us,” said Todd.  “Las Vegas is definitely a good place to change your luck.  The track is always good despite the weather conditions.  It’s usually one of those tracks that will take whatever you want to give it.  That’s great for our tune-up because we make a lot of power.  It’s a good place to apply it and we had a successful test the Monday after the Houston race that has the team’s morale back up.  That’s got everyone pumped and we’re hoping to attain our first round win of the year there.”

To start a productive weekend, you must first qualify and Todd is quite aware that a couple of good runs on Friday could set his aim on the target of attaining his sixth National event win of his young career.

“The main thing for us is to get the car into the show,” Todd said.  “After that we’ll start tweaking and tuning up on it some more getting it into race trim.  It would be nice to come out to the box and stick it in the show early and that way you can tune it up for Friday night, so you can really get after it.  We’re struggling and when you miss that first round of qualifying, it puts you behind the rest of the weekend.

“Vegas is probably the nicest track we go to all season long.  It’s the entire facility that’s first-class and it picks up your spirit with one of the best racing surfaces we run on.  That leaves you to focus more on your driving, keeping it in the groove and having Stew’s (crew chief, John Stewart) tuning come into play.”

Saturday night, Todd volunteered to participate in a 15-lap match race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s 3/8-mile Bullring oval with fellow NHRA drivers, Gary Scelzi, Alan Johnson, Jeg Coughlin, Jr. along with his racing teammate, Morgan Lucas.

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