Las Vegas: Powers Motorsports Pit Crew Challenge summary

Powers Motorsports Wins Pit Crew Challenge

LAS VEGAS, NV 4/17/05 Powers Motorsports, headed by Crew Chief Richard Hogan, won the Full Throttle-sponsored Top Fuel Pit Crew Challenge at the NHRA Summitracing.com Nationals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend. The Challenge award goes to the team producing the best average elapsed times through four rounds of qualifying. With driver "Hot Rod" Fuller of Las Vegas at the controls the David Powers Motorsports entry racked up an average elapsed time of 4.668 seconds, with a best of 4.557 seconds that qualified the team in the Number 4 position entering eliminations. Fuller's 4.557 was a Personal Best in his still-young Top Fuel career. Other winners of the Pit Crew Challenge at the event included 13-time champion John Force's team in Funny Car and six-time champion Warren Johnson in Pro Stock.

"That's pretty elite company for us to be with," commented Hogan after hearing who the other winners were. "We're a brand new team in Top Fuel, so this is pretty special for us. I'm just sorry that things didn't work out better for us in eliminations."

After steadily improving performances had resulted in a quarter final round finish at the O'Reilly Spring Nationals in Houston just one week ago, things went bad for the team in the first round when a mechanical malfunction resulted in almost instantaneous tire smoke in their first round match up with POWERade champion Tony Schumacher.

Fuller was less than pleased after the loss, noting "This is the third straight time I've lost to Tony, and we're determined that this won't happen again. I hope we get another chance at him at the Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol in two weeks."

Although he was disappointed by the loss, David Powers still acknowledged the team's progress. "This has been our best qualifying position of the season, so we're happy about that. In our last two races we've been in the top half of the field, and that gets you lane choice in the first round, which can be critically important. I have confidence in our people, and confidence in Rod behind the wheel. Richard Hogan and all of the guys pulled together this weekend and really had a handle on what turned out to be a very hot and sometimes slippery race track.

"We had some mechanical problems in that first round, but I know we're going to solve that problem in short order. It was disappointing because not only is Las Vegas Rod's home town, we also had some very important support from Ken Black's KB Framers for this race, and we wanted to put on a good show for Ken and all of his employees. We certainly did that through qualifying, but not in eliminations. KB Framers has a great deal of involvement in drag racing, so they understood that sometimes these things happen. We'll do better next time, and that means at Thunder Valley in Bristol in two weeks, where we'll be running in complete Valvoline livery. That's going to be our third straight race that's extra special for our young team. Houston was my homecoming race, this one was Rod's, and the next one is the first of our two races for Valvoline. Believe me, we're going to make some noise in Tennessee!"

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