Morgan Lucas Racing
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Mon, Feb. 25th 2008
What a weird race.
In every class, the cars that ruled qualifying were no-shows when the day was over. But let’s just stick with Top Fuel where the stars of qualifying (except for David Grubnic) were back in the barn when the final round was taking the stage at around 4:30 MST.
But long before then, Morgan and J.R. were spectators. And both of them weren’t very happy about it.
Morgan got tripped up by Larry Dixon in the first round thanks to tire smoke just before the eighth, and J.R. got edged by Hot Rod Fuller in the opener. End of the day. Morgan didn’t even have the consolation of running his alcohol car since they don’t compete at this event. If you watched the coverage of the race on ESPN2, you probably saw Morgan’s dad, Forrest, standing at the starting line after Morgan lost, just shaking his head in bewilderment. Can you blame him?
First round losses really bite. You absolutely, positively cannot lose in the first round if you have any intentions at all of winning the championship. ESPECIALLY if you lose to a slower qualified car. And that’s the hurt that magnified J.R’s loss. Fuller only managed to qualify 11th and J.R. was the No. 6 driver. You HAVE to win those matchups because at the end of the season, all it would take would be five or six of those bad boys to torch any hopes of winning the Big Prize.
Morgan, of course, was in the very first pair to race in the first round and that’s the pair nobody wants to be in, and even more so when you end the qualifying in the sun and begin eliminations under the clouds. A major bitch to tuners.
Let me stop myself here. It sounds like I’m making excuses for the guys and that’s not what I’m getting at. I’ll just go back to my original premise. It was a weird race.
Other weirdness:
Doug Kalitta was late on the chutes in Saturday’s final qualifying session and tried to make the turn-off at the end of the track at Firebird. He swerved left and nearly took out a couple of Safety Safari trucks as he went up on two wheels and lurched to a stop in the only open space you could find down there. Next time, Doug, take the escape road. It’s long and smooth and has been used a million times by other racers.
V. Gaines won Pro Stock. I like V. but watching him beat four drivers who represent 11 NHRA championships to pick up his (!!!) third career national event win out of (!!!) eight final rounds is beyond weird. He beat Greg Stanfield in Round 1. Greg won four Super Stock world championships before turning pro. V. beat Greg Anderson in Round 2—the three-time POWERade champion. Then he beat the reigning champion who also won the Pro Stock title in 2002 and a Super Gas championship 10 years earlier, Jeg Coughlin Jr. In the final, he beat 2006 champion Jason Line. (Weird music up.)
Jack Beckman beat the best car and driver in the class of late in the Funny Car final round, Robert Hight. And Jack had the flu. He sounded like crap all weekend and couldn’t take any medication. Then he wins the race. Had enough weirdness?
Now we have to wait three weeks (!!!) before the next race in Gainesville. Someone needs to talk to the NHRA schedule maker.
Three weeks. Weird.