The inaugural Carolina Nationals signifies a motorsports revitalization with the advent of the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing teams finally returning to the Tar Heel state. For Lucas Oil Stabilizer driver, Morgan Lucas, he’s raring to go about breaking in the brand new all-concrete state-of-the-art Carolina Dragway @ Concord. When qualifying starts on Friday, this will be one driver anxiously awaiting his first run down the super-smooth surface in hopes of adding his name to the fresh record books.
“From all I’m hearing about how great the new Carolina Dragway really is, I can’t help but get excited about running 300 miles per hour in Concord,” said Lucas, a five-time runner-up finisher. “If it lives up to its reputation then it really deserves being call the ‘Bellagio of Drag Strips’. I have a lot of friends in the Charlotte area and it’s in the heart of NASCAR, so we want to do our best that weekend.”
Lucas, now driving in the start of his fifth season of Top Fuel competition, knows the new all-concrete track surface will be an added advantage. However, he also recognizes that when the groove forms, the narrow racing surface will be very much like the Texas Motorplex making every run as an opening to discover newer data for a future set up. Finding the proper tune up is beneficial in understanding where to set the clutch timers implementing the different stages of the clutch system in laying the rubber to the road.
“Finding the groove and negotiating it are two different things,” said Lucas. “We’ll only get four chances to find out what our tune-up should be. We’re confident after some recent testing that that we feel that we should be able to get down the track with a basic set up. From there, we’ll have to either get aggressive or just tickle the set-up. The main thing is we don’t want to waste of session of qualifying by being too forceful and end up smoking the tires.”
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