Toliver Misses Funny Car Field at NHRA Las Vegas Nationals
LAS VEGAS, October 31, 2009 - Las Vegas has not been a place of good
fortune for the Jim Dunn Racing team this season as Jerry Toliver in the
CANIDAE/Lucas Oil/WileyX Chevy will miss Sunday eliminations at an NHRA
Full Throttle Series event at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for
the second time this year. After final qualifying today the CANIDAE car
failed to qualify for the 16-car Funny Car field for this weekend's ninth
annual NHRA Las Vegas Nationals after also missing the field at the
SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals here in April.
Toliver's first qualifying pass on Friday resulted in an elapsed time of
5.405 seconds at 118.03 mph as the CANIDAE car lost traction just past
the 330-foot mark. In the second qualifying session Toliver made a solid
4.241-second pass at 279.15 mph to place the Jim Dunn Racing entry 15th
on the provisional Funny Car grid.
Unfortunately the team couldn't build on that performance during
Saturday's two qualifying sessions with the CANIDAE car losing traction
again in Q3 and slowing to a 7.074 e.t. at 94.22 mph and then going up in
smoke right at the start in the fourth and final qualifying session.
"The only luck we've had here at Las Vegas this year has been bad,"
Toliver said. "but I felt pretty positive coming into this weekend.
We've been struggling with the car losing traction just past the 'tree'.
We just can't seem to tune it out no matter which way Big Jim (team
owner/crew chief Dunn) goes. On that last run we obviously went the
wrong way and the car lost traction right at the hit.
"We've got one more race to get it right and I know nobody on this team
is going to quit working. I've had pretty good success at Pomona and won
a couple of races there, so we'll go there and try to add one more."
The final stop on the 24-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series is
the 45th annual Auto Club of Southern California NHRA Finals on Nov.
12-15 at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona in Pomona, Calif., the last of six
races in the NHRA Countdown to 1 for the 2009 Full Throttle Series
championship.
-credit: jdr
