Mike Neff is well on his way to redeeming himself from his tough weekend in Atlanta where he missed the qualifying field. Tonight at Heartland Park Topeka under ideal conditions he tuned and drove his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang to the No. 3 provisional spot with a strong 4.063 second pass at 311.05 mph. He led the quartet of John Force Racing Ford Mustangs but his teammates will all carry times over into the final day of qualifying.
“We have had a string of bad luck and that run was not surprising. We were on track to run 4.15 in the first session. We have just had some weird stuff happen,” said Neff, the No. 2 driver in the Funny Car Full Throttle point standings. “We know it is all there and we just need things to go our way. I am not talking about anything special we just need to have a couple normal runs. It was nice to get a good run. Tomorrow we are going to go out and run as hard as we can under the track conditions. I feel good about where we are going into tomorrow and into Sunday.”
Full Throttle points leader Robert Hight was third quickest of the first qualifying session and will go into Saturdays final day of qualifying spot as the No. 8 Funny Car. His Auto Club Ford Mustang covered the 1,000 ft race track in 4.110 seconds at 306.88 mph. Hight will be looking to pick up a three-peat victory at the Dollar General Summer Nationals. As the defending event champion Hight has a lot of confidence in his Jimmy Prock tuned Mustang.
“We got the Auto Club Ford definitely qualified. We were on the bump right there. Jim Head was out in front of me on that run and this thing didn’t sound very good. It was popping and banging on the starting line,” said Hight. “We’ll fix it and we might change engines. Jimmy has a really good handle on this Funny Car. I don’t think we could have run a 4.04 like Cruz (Pedregon) but we definitely could have been up there with Neff and (No. 2 qualifier Bob) Tasca (III).”
Rookie of the Year candidate Courtney Force powered her Traxxas Funny Car to the provisional No. 9 spot on Friday night. Her time of 4.116 seconds at 308.64 mph improved over her first session time and gave the daughter of 15-time Funny Car champ a comfortable feeling going into tomorrow’s final day of qualifying.
In addition to her driving duties this weekend Courtney will be penning a daily diary for the Topeka Capital Journal. Fans will be able to check it out in the paper edition each day as well as online at www.cjonline.com.
John Force and his Castrol GTX HIGH MILEAGE Ford Mustang blazed the path for the Force Funny Cars in the second session. They went out and posted a 4.136 second time in his side by side run with Alexis DeJoria. For Force the seven-time Summer Nationals champion getting back on track is an important key to his success going into the summer months.
“Guido and Danny (co-crew chiefs Dean Antonelli and Danny DeGennaro) are really pulling together and getting my hotrod turned around. We are making some changes and it takes some time but we are running more consistently and we are making progress,” said Force. “Our goal for all our sponsors from Castrol, Ford, Auto Club, BrandSource, Traxxas, Mac Tools, and Freightliner is to get all our Funny Cars qualified and we are in good shape right now.”
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