On the strength of a 6.717-second, 205.66 mph pass recorded on his opening attempt on Friday afternoon, Jason Line qualified his Summit Racing Pontiac in the ninth position for Sunday’s final eliminations of the NHRA Ford Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tennessee.
Although the 2006 Bristol winner came close to matching his initial performance on his final attempt at 6.719-seconds, 204.76 mph he quickly admitted that further improvement would be necessary in order to contend for his fourth win of the 2011 season, starting with his first round encounter with sophomore runner Shane Gray.
“Every team in the pit area has had to deal with their share of adversity,” said Line.
“What’s important is how you battle back from it. For some reason, we’ve struggled with my car so far this weekend, never making what we would consider a good run. As a result, we’ll start outside the top half for the first time since Pomona. It’s certainly not the type of performance we were looking for, but it’s also not the end of our race.”
“The good news is that we have all the parts and pieces to get the job done and put this Summit Racing Pontiac in the winner’s circle. What we have to do now is figure out which knob to turn to make it run the way it should. The bottom line is that we have about twelve hours to try and understand what we’ve been doing wrong and fix it in time for the first round. We certainly have our work cut out for us, but we’re more than capable.”
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