GEICO rider Stoffer suddenly heats up in Norwalk

GEICO Suzuki rider Karen Stoffer roared to the No. 4 qualifying position in the final qualifying session for the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals on Saturday at Summit Motorsports Park.

Stoffer was outside the top half of the field before Q4, but crew chief/husband Gary Stoffer put a solid setup on the bike, and Karen rode it to a pass of 6.992 seconds at 192.52 mph.

"We kind of waited to the midnight hour, didn't we?" Stoffer said. "I think Gary and I were still on vacation for the first three hits because he wasn't exactly on his game tuning and I wasn't exactly on my game riding. We finally put it all together and realized why we were here, I guess, on the last hit."

Stoffer was being self-deprecating, of course, as her and husband Gary are veterans of the sport who have won numerous races at the national level. Fresh off a vacation to Sweden and Finland, Stoffer made plus-7-second runs in each of Friday's first two sessions, and then Stoffer got out of the throttle early in Q3.

"We struggled. It's a hot, slippery track out there," Stoffer said. "If you look at the Pro Stock bike class, there were a lot of us who improved in the hottest session, and that shouldn't happen unless you were way off on your tuneup. We were definitely in the majority, but luckily we were able to figure it out."

Stoffer said the GEICO team hesitated even making a run in the final session but decided they needed the data for a hot-weather setup.

"The strange thing is we finally got the tuneup for this weather, and now we're going to have wacky, cooler weather tomorrow," Stoffer said. "We'll have a totally different tuneup in the bike, but Gary's pretty comfortable going in to tomorrow. And we needed to figure out hot, slippery tracks. We've got a few more in front of us."

In the first round of eliminations Sunday, which should take place around noon,

Stoffer faces Matt Smith, who qualified No. 13 with a pass of 7.086 seconds at 189.28 mph.

Summer madness arrives for Stoffer, GEICO Suzuki team

The NHRA schedule has eased the Pro Stock Motorcycle class into the 2012 season, but as summer comes into full-swing, the pace is picking up for Karen Stoffer and the GEICO Suzuki team.

This weekend's Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals is the second race of the first back-to-back race weekends of the season for the bike class. Stoffer said the compressed timeframe has its advantages and disadvantages.

"Racing back-to-back is tough," she said. "But it doesn’t give you a lot of time to sulk and think about things for weeks on end. You get the chance to get right back out there on the bike."

However it doesn't allow teams to make major repairs while away from their shops. Stoffer's brand new motor broke during her second round loss in Chicago last weekend and the GEICO team has been left scrambling a little bit.

"I'm not sure what direction we're going to go with our engine program," Stoffer said. "(Crew chief Gary Stoffer) is going to talk with Vance & Hines where we get our motors, and figure out what we're going to do.

"Overall the bike has been good; we've just suffered a few breakages here and there."

Stoffer is in seventh place in bike points and has gone to at least the second round in four of five races this season. Stoffer said the team needs to find some stability before they can push forward.

"We started the stretch with two really good motors and one pretty decent one," she said. "Now we're down one of the good ones. We've been working with Vance & Hines closely to make these motors better. Hopefully we can get to Norwalk and be strong.

"These Suzukis have to run on the ragged edge every single second to be competitive and there's not of room for error right now."

Parts failure trips up GEICO's Karen Stoffer in Englishtown

Karen Stoffer could have used another run Sunday to tune her GEICO Suzuki after a difficult weekend at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park. But there are no freebies in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class.

Stoffer, who suffered through transmission troubles in qualifying, had a sensor fail on her Suzuki during her first-round matchup against three-time NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series champion Andrew Hines in the Toyota NHRA SuperNationals.

Stoffer, the No. 11 qualifier, made a pass of 6.990 seconds at 191.40 mph but fell to Hines' 6.946 at 190.89 mph.

"You're racing multi-time champion Andrew Hines over there," Stoffer said. "Anybody with that Screamin' Eagle logo on the side is tough. Anybody out here is tough, no matter who you line up against on Sunday. You've got to give your A-game, and we didn't have an A-game all weekend. We’ve got to find our A-game again and make sure we bring it to Chicago."

Stoffer reached the final round in Englishtown a year ago, but transmission problems hampered her in 2012. Her GEICO Suzuki wouldn't shift into high gear on two of the four qualifying passes, and the team decided to change the engine/transmission combination after Q4.

"Englishtown has always given us ups and downs," Stoffer said. "This happens to be a down year for us. We came in here with a good motor, but there are a couple of pieces to a motor. There's a transmission, and that's the part that failed on us all weekend long.

"We really wanted to run that motor, so we kept with it. That's the loyalty of our team. We pulled the transmission out and went through it, and we had some other people look at it. We put it back in, and it actually worked for one hit."

But after it wouldn't go into high gear again in Q4, the team had a decision to make. Crew chief Gary Stoffer decided to take the engine named "Wilson" out and replace it with "Dirty Harry."

"Dirty Harry's usually been a good go-to motor for us," Stoffer said. "Unfortunately, we just had a sensor go bad. That's one of the things that happens when you have a backup motor."

Stoffer remains sixth in the points standings in Pro Stock Motorcycle, which runs again June 29-July 1 at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill., for the O'Reilly Auto Parts Route 66 NHRA Nationals.

"We still feel comfortable going into Chicago," Stoffer said. "Hopefully, we'll have our motor and transmission and sensor program all in tune for the Windy City."

Stoffer has the quickest Suzuki in Atlanta

GEICO Suzuki rider Karen Stoffer was willing to try anything to improve her time during Saturday's final day of qualifying at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals at Atlanta Dragway.

In the end, Stoffer made runs a tick over seven seconds in both rounds of qualifying, but neither was enough to move her up and out of the No. 7 qualifying position, which she secured with a Friday night run of 6.996 seconds at 191.02 mph.

"It wasn't a great qualifying day, but it wasn't bad either," Stoffer said. "We tried something pretty radical on that last hit. But 6.99 twice, back-to-back, we had to try to squeeze more out because when you got those V-motors running low 90s and 80s, we knew we had to do something. We tried a couple of radical things knowing it was probably going to be hotter without too much changing on the top half of the ladder."

It was hotter Saturday, as the track reached close to 138 degrees in the final session of the day, something Stoffer knows is going to be the norm going forward.

"The way the weather has been, especially last year in the winter, we know this is going to be a tough summer," Stoffer said. "This is just a precursor of what we are up against so, we are going to try some crazy things to figure it out. But we know at the end of the day, the GEICO Suzuki is going to put down the best pass and hopefully we are going to be the No. 1 Suzuki and that will help us go rounds on Sunday."

Stoffer is on the top half of the ladder for Sunday's final eliminations, and was once again the top Suzuki in all four rounds of qualifying. She sits one spot ahead of Suzuki rider LE Tonglet, whose best pass on Saturday was a 7.051 at 188.02 mph, and four ahead of Suzuki's Steve Johnson.

"We are No. 7, but I think we are still No. 1 for the Suzuki program," Stoffer said. "I know LE (Tonglet) ran a better pass in that last session, but again we were trying some different stuff to squeeze a little bit more out of our Suzuki."

Stoffer will match up against John Hall, whose top qualifying run of the weekend was a 7.012 at 192.44 mph, in the first round on Sunday.

"All in all we like our bike," Stoffer said. "Vance & Hines is doing everything they possibly can with what they have. There is no room left on R&D, but they keep scraping and finding us a little more power and a little more power."

Eliminations for the 32nd annual Summit NHRA Southern Nationals begin at 11 a.m. EDT.