Team Summit Shows Power in Performance

The 29th annual Menards NHRA Heartland Nationals at Heartland Park showed Team Summit is on an upswing in terms of horsepower. Reigning Pro Stock world champion Jason Line recorded top speed of the meet, while Summit Racing teammate Greg Anderson rebounded from the last race with a powerful performance.

Jason Line, currently fifth in points, had big numbers on Sunday. He delivered a solid 6.557 second/211.10 MPH pass to knock out Dave River’s 6.707/205.69.

Line went out in Round Two when he launched .034 second too early against Vincent Nobile. But the No. 2 qualifier was able to see the positive.

“My Summit Racing Chevy Camaro is certainly better than it has been the last few weeks,” said Line. “It ran great all weekend—and we kept making it better. I’m very happy with that. It was a case of driver error, that’s all.”

Line continued, “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve learned that you can’t let the highs get you too high, or the lows get you too low. Racing is like a big science project, and you just have to keep working on it.”

Greg Anderson was supposed to race Alan Prusiensky in the Round One of eliminations, but Prusiensky did not show. Then the timing system was not activated for his run after he did the burnout and staged for the single. Anderson waited and waited, but to no avail. He finally did the only thing he could do.

“I sat there and waited on the rev-limiter for quite a while, but the tree never came on,” said Anderson, who has won 732 rounds of racing in his career. “I finally let the clutch out and went down the track. I made a nice run, but I got no time. Because of that, I had no chance for lane choice in the next round. It’s was a bad break.”

In the second round, Anderson faced Tanner Gray. Although Anderson was the second-quickest car of the round, he was late off the line and it cost him. Gray took the win with a 6.575/206.69 to Anderson’s 6.568/210.34.

“The good news is that we definitely ran better this weekend with all of the KB Racing cars,” Anderson said. “We qualified 1-2-3 (including KB Racing-powered Bo Butner who is first in points), and we had a good chance. The bottom line is that we did find performance this weekend. That’s what it takes to win in this class.” Anderson is currently in second place.

Tim Wilkerson drove the Levi, Ray & Shoup Ford Shelby Mustang Funny Car to to make his best pass of the weekend, a 3.913/328.30 pass. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to beat his opponent Courtney Force in Round One of eliminations.

“I changed things around a little bit today, and it worked okay,” said Wilkerson. “I thought it would go a little bit faster than that, but we’re going to keep working on our car and see if we can make it faster.”

Wilkerson is in the Funny Car top 10, and leaves Topeka in ninth place.

Final Round Results
Top Fuel—Antron Brown (3.709/332.75) defeated Steve Torrence (3.836/256.70)

Funny Car—Ron Capps (3.924/321.42) defeated Matt Hagan (3.985/318.92)

Pro Stock—Tanner Gray (6.580/210.87) defeated Jeg Coughlin (Foul-Red Light)

What’s Next
The next race in the 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series schedule is the NHRA New England Nationals at New England Dragway in Epping, New Hampshire, June 2-4.

For more information and complete race results visit DragRaceCentral.com.