Charlotte: Jason Line Friday notes

Fourth on Friday in Charlotte, Line Looks to Pick Up the Pace on Saturday

Although morning rain at zMAX Dragway threatened to cut short the first day of qualifying for the Carolinas NHRA Nationals, NHRA officials quickly shuffled the schedule to ensure racers in the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series would be able to make their allotted two attempts. Jason Line and the Summit Racing Pro Stock crew came in to the day looking to get off on the right foot in the championship playoff, and opened with a strong 6.659-se cond, 207.94 mph pass, missing the top spot by two thousandths of a second.

In the evening session Line was able to make a competitive 6.669-second, 207.82 mph run. However, his opening effort remained his run of record, placing him fourth midway through the qualifying procedure. With additional rain in the forecast, the Terrell, NC resident was relatively pleased with his placement, although he was definitely determined to better his standing should they be able to run on Saturday.

"Looking at things positively, our Summit Racing Pontiac is fourth, which not only gives us something to work with but also means we'll have a good starting spot if rain were to wash out Saturday," said Line. "However, we know there is lots of room left for improvement. We started off with a20pretty decent pass, which, looking at the data afterward, had a few things I could pick out of it, but it wasn't too bad, with about a hundredth left in it.

"We had hoped to improve in the evening session, but I knew it wasn't going to be good right away. It just blew the tires off, which cost us about four hundredths. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll have two more shots at the track tomorrow. In any case, we'll come back in the morning, regroup and get things in order for race day."

-credit: kbr