Whit Bazemore drove his David Powers-owned Matco Tools dragster to a first-round finish Sunday at Virginia Motorsports Park to complete the second annual Torco Racing Fuels Nationals. The 20-time NHRA winner now ranks seventh in the NHRA Countdown to the Championship standings.
After qualifying his Matco Tools rail fourth for the fifth time this season with a 4.574-second elapsed time, Bazemore was pitted against Melanie Troxel for the second time this season. The veteran racers used identical reaction times and put on a great show for the fans at V. M.P. Bazemore’s Matco Tools rail lost a spark plug down track and clocked a run of 4.632 seconds at 314.75 mph, while Troxel made the quickest pass of the round. She powered to a lap of 4.569 at 327.59 to score the round win. Bazemore has never advanced passed the second round of eliminations at the Richmond race.
“The Matco car ran well in qualifying, but we figured we’d have to go quicker than our 4.57 to beat her (Melanie Troxel), ” crew chief Lee Beard said. “We were well on the way to running quicker, but we had a spark plug fail. It shot out a spark plug at 1.5 seconds into the run and still ran 4.63 on seven cylinders. To have a cheap part fail really ruins the day. We had high hopes of winning this race. ”
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