Schumacher Electric Suzuki Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Chip Ellis lost the first round of eliminations at the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals when he fouled out against Peggy Llewellyn. It was the first red light for Ellis since Memphis in 2007 and only his 10th career foul start in 58 races.
Ellis’ red light disqualified his elapsed time of 7.416 seconds at 177.07 mph, which was quicker than Llewellyn’s winning 7.500/176.35.
“I think the track here has a short roll-out (the distance you can roll before the staging beam reconnects), because I red-lighted on every run except one in qualifying (red lights do not count in qualifying),” said Ellis, who fell to third in the point standings. “All the red lights were within a hundredth of a second of each other and I told (crew chief) Steve Tartaglia this morning that I was concerned. When you see Funny Cars cutting .020- and .030-second reaction times (.000 is perfect) and the bikes all going double 0s, that’s not typical.
“It is what it is,” continued Ellis. “I watched the video of the run and it’s not like I was guessing or anything. I saw the yellow light and I went. I struggled with it since we got here. Typically I’ve had late lights because I’ve been afraid of red-lighting and I said I wasn’t going to have any more late lights, but it just bit us today. Unfortunately, we had the faster bike and I just hate letting the guys down.
“The Schumacher Electric Suzuki was awesome all weekend. The good thing is that we’re going to get to go to Sonoma in two weeks and try it again. We’ll keep on digging.”
The next national event for Ellis and the Schumacher Electric Suzuki team will be the FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals in Sonoma, Calif., July 25-27.
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