It was fairly nerve-wracking Saturday last week at Houston when Jerry Toliver had his CANIDAE/Lucas Oil Funny Car qualified 17th before his final qualifying run, but he made his best qualifying pass of the weekend and bumped into the field. Today it was Toliver who was on the bump spot for that final qualifying session, and unfortunately he was bumped out of the 16-car Funny Car field for this weekend's 10th annual SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Toliver had a weekend-best qualifying run of 4.340 seconds at 268.44 mph, but two days of hurting engine parts finally took its toll. Del Worsham was able to claim the 16th and final spot in the Funny Car field with an elapsed time of 4.278 seconds at 283.61 mph. Tony Pedregon claimed the No. 1 qualifying position with an elapsed time of 4.100 seconds at 302.62 mph.
"When you're floating down there on the bottom of the ladder on your last qualifying lap, it's bound to bite you sooner or later," Toliver said. "We just had a bad, bad weekend. We couldn't do anything right and we hurt a lot of stuff. It's just one of those deals."
Toliver made one last effort to improve his 16th position in the field on his final qualifying run, but the car lost the motor and blew up just past halftrack and then Worsham bumped into the field.
"On that last run, the car got out there and got loose, it spun the tires and then, 'Bang!'," Toliver said. "We had some motor problems all weekend and we think we cured that, but then it blew up on that last run. It shouldn't have blown up like that, but it just annihilated that motor. I don't think there is anything left of it. I'm just disappointed for the CANIDAE folks and Lucas Oil, but we'll put this behind us, march on to Atlanta and go from there."
Next stop on the 24-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Series is the 29th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Spring Nationals at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Ga., from April 16 - 19.
Kirk Weeks
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