Toliver Misses Funny Car Field at NHRA Mid-South Nationals

For only the second time this season Jerry Toliver in the CANIDAE/Lucas Oil/WileyX Chevy will miss Sunday eliminations at an NHRA Full Throttle Series event after failing to qualify for this weekend's 22nd annual O'Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals at Memphis Motorsports Park. The California native also missed qualifying for the Funny Car field at Las Vegas in April.

Toliver made a solid pass of 4.184 seconds at 295.21 mph in Friday's first qualifying session which was good for ninth on the provisional Funny Car sheet, but the Jim Dunn Racing team missed a golden opportunity to move up the grid during the cooler conditions of Friday night's second round when the CANIDAE lost traction and slowed to a 7.092 e.t. at 97.67 mph while several drivers improved their times. Unfortunately Saturday was more of the same as Toliver ran a 7.161 e.t. at 96.69 mph in the third qualifying session, a 6.970 e.t. at 93.10 mph in the fourth and final session, and he failed to qualify for 16-car Funny Car field.

"We tried to go for it Friday night and run a really good number, but it was too much," Toliver said, "so we backed it way down for the first session on Saturday to the tune-up we ran the 4.18 with in the same lane. It should have gone down but it shook, and then we just overpowered the track on that last pass. It was just too much for the track.

"Except for that first run on Friday we just had a problem of shaking it before it got to the 'tree'. Unfortunately we got to a spot there Jim (team owner/crew chief Dunn) just couldn't tune out, no matter which way we went."

The next stop on the 24-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series is the 4th annual Virginia NHRA Nationals on Oct. 9-11 at Virginia Motorsports Park just south of Richmond in Parkersburg, Va., the fourth of six races in the NHRA Countdown to 1 for the 2009 Full Throttle Series championship.

Kirk Weeks