Melanie Troxel: “We qualified right out of the box fourth and ran down the track”
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Clermont, Ind.
Sep 04, 2007
Torco Race
Melanie Troxel raced to the semi-finals in her Vietnam Veterans POW/MIA Top Fuel dragster at the running of the 53rd annual Mac Tools U. S. Nationals, NHRA’s most prestigious event, at O’Reilly Raceway Park before being defeated by Tony Schumacher.
With temperatures reaching the 90-degree mark on race day, the Forrest Lucas-owned dragster led by veteran crew chief, John Stewart overcame the difficult heat and slippery conditions, which made the quarter-mile very difficult to negotiate in making their three rounds of racing.
“It was a great weekend for us, ” said a smiling Troxel. “We qualified right out of the box fourth and ran down the track in the heat of the day. We were confident coming into today’s race. ”
Troxel’s began her day with her opening round stanza that placed her against the Lucas Cattle company-sponsored car of Bruce Litton where she soundly defeated him with an ultra-quick run of 4.556 seconds, 329.34 mph to Litton’s time of 4.678 seconds, 302.41 mph.
She motored around Brandon Bernstein’s Budweiser/Lucas Oil Elvis 30th Anniversary dragster in the quarterfinals with a firm run of 4.606 seconds, 325.77 mph to Bernstein’s pass of 4.620 seconds, 319.82 mph.
In the semi-finals against Schumacher, Troxel was on her game, but came up short after spinning her tires as she approached the finish line. She recorded a time of 4.839 seconds, 284.03 mph to her opponent’s time of 4.641 seconds, 325.45 mph.
“I think we made some really smart runs today, ” said Troxel. “We didn’t’ go up there trying to run an unreasonable number against Schumacher. There was not anyway we could have run that quickly in the right lane and we still gave them a pretty good race. It did spin the tires hard further down the track, but we would have been there if something had happened to their car. We made a race out of it and we didn’t smoke the tires at the hit of the throttle. I think our crew did a great job at this race. It’s still disappointing because we all wanted to win Indy. We had a good car today and in a few hours, I think we will all agree it was a good weekend for us. It’s still too close after the round, so it still stings a little bit. We’re happy and feeling confident ready to head to Memphis. ”
Troxel moved up to ninth in the NHRA POWERade points standings with her additional three rounds of Monday racing in accumulating the sum of 841 points.
