40th United Association NHRA SuperNationals Old Bridge Township Raceway Park

Funny Car driver Jerry Toliver and his Jim Dunn Racing teammates have been working hard and making strides with their CANIDAE/Lucas Oil Chevy, and they look to see some of the fruits of their labor at this weekend's 40th annual NHRA SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.  

Despite the requisite growing pains after implementing a new clutch system two races ago at Topeka, Toliver and team owner/crew chief Jim Dunn have seen marked improvement in the CANIDAE car's ability to get down the track and look to continue to build on the car's performance.

"We've been working on the new clutch system the last two races and now we feel we can get down the track on all four qualifying runs," said the Hall of Famer Dunn.  "You can't learn anything if you go out and smoke the tires; there's not a lot of data when you're only going 300 feet.  You've got to go under the line, go slow, and then start coming up to the line.  

"When it smokes the tires it shuts the car off and we can't get a full-run read.  We'd rather go a tenth slower and see where we're weak.  That's what we've been doing.  We've just got to get more aggressive with it.  We'll get after it a little more this weekend at Englishtown."

Toliver had good side-by-side runs in eliminations both at Topeka and last week at Chicago, and despite first-round losses, the team is encouraged by both A-to-B runs and now looks to step up its learning curve.     

"We still need to get the timing and the clutch together," Dunn said.  "We put everything under the line to be safe until we get a good run.  We've just got to get more aggressive with it.  We'll start stepping it up to hurt it a little bit now." 

A one-hour telecast of qualifying coverage for the NHRA SuperNationals can be seen on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD on Saturday, June 13, beginning at 7:00 p.m. (ET).  Coverage on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD continues on Sunday, June 14, when NHRA Race Day will kick off eliminator coverage starting at 11:00 a.m. (ET), and concludes with three hours of final-eliminations coverage beginning at 10:00 p.m. (ET).