Melanie Troxel rolled into the historic Bristol Dragway for last year’s O’Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals as the POWERade points leader and on an unbelievable NHRA record-setting pace of five consecutive final round appearances, celebrating two wins along the way. Also, to add to that momentum, she grabbed the No. 1 qualifier with an elapsed time of 4.539 seconds at a speed of 324.59 mph to set herself up for a great Sunday. Unfortunately, she departed the scenic Tennessee track in the quarterfinals seeing red after a false start ending her strong streak.
This year she feels Bristol Dragway owes her Vietnam Veterans POW/MIA team more and she’s bound and determined to change her course of direction at this reschedule event in the Volunteer State.
“That was a red light start last year and it broke our string of final rounds, ” said Troxel. “It was a little disappointing there, but we ran well. I’m hoping we have some good data that we can take there and get a head start from that. This time it will be a different part of the year from where we ran last year. I’m thinking the weather forecast is calling for some cool evening weather. That will give us a nice advantage and hopefully we can build from there.
“I don’t know if there is a reason, tuning-wise, that we haven’t done well there. The track is beautiful and I love going up there. The fans and especially the Bristol Dragway staff have been great to us. I just hope we get the performance to go along with that. ”
Troxel tested on Monday in Norwalk in developing the consistency that is so necessary along with Top Fuel teammate Morgan Lucas. The entire plan is to balance the motorsports program of Morgan Lucas Racing in taking delivery of true identical information offering them twice as much feedback from every pass.
“We feel we’re going in the right direction even though we don’t see the immediate results in our round wins, ” said Troxel, who is No. 8 in the Countdown to the Championship. “We raced the No. 1 qualifier last Sunday and it was a very close race. If we can get a little bit ahead of the game with some Monday testing, I think we’ll have a great race car for Bristol. ”
The start of the seventh annual O’Reilly Thunder Valley Nationals begins at the Bristol Dragway on Friday, July 6 with two qualifying sessions starting at 5:30 p. m. (EDT) with a second session at 8:00 p. m. Saturday’s time trials start at 1:00 p. m. for the nitro classes followed by a second session at 3:30 p. m. The race starts promptly at 12 p. m. on Sunday, July 8.
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