Monday, July 13, 2009

Toliver Loses First-Round Match-up with Beckman at Mile-High NHRA Nationals

Final eliminations for the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals at Bandimere Speedway were completed today and Funny Car driver Jerry Toliver lost in the first round to Schumacher Racing's Jack Beckman. Toliver qualified the CANIDAE/Lucas Oil Chevy 13th with an elapsed time of 4.269 seconds at 296.50 mph and was facing Beckman for the first time this season. In their first-round match-up Toliver launched the CANIDAE car first off the line but lost traction just short of the 330-foot mark and pedaled to an elapsed time of 5.143 seconds at 168.41 mph. Beckman had a solid pass of 4.267 seconds at 294.31 mph to turn on the win light.

"The car just went out there and shook," Toliver said. "Jim knew we had to speed it up a little bit going against Beckman and try and move a little quicker, but the car just didn't like it. All in all, we didn't hurt anything this weekend. We'll just come down off the mountain back to sea level and move on. I thought a hot, sunny day and hot track might even the playing field a little, but I don't think the today's cloud cover worked against us. We hopped it up quite a bit and the car just didn't like it."

Next stop on the 24-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Series is the second leg of the three-race Western Swing, the 22nd annual NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways in Seattle from July 17-19. The Jim Dunn Racing team is the defending event champ in Funny Car at the NHRA Northwest Nationals where Tony Bartone drove the CANIDAE car to his first professional Top Fuel Funny Car victory there last year.

Kirk Weeks

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