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Alexis DeJoria Las Vegas final report

Alexis DeJoria Racing Team press release

Alexis De Joria, Tequila Patron Monte Carlo

Alexis De Joria, Tequila Patron Monte Carlo

Ted Rossino

The Alexis DeJoria Racing Team Sees Best Racing Numbers Yet on the Vegas Strip

Alexis De Joria, Tequila Patron Monte Carlo
Alexis De Joria, Tequila Patron Monte Carlo

Photo by: Ted Rossino

Venice, CA (November 2, 2011) – Things continue to progress in the right direction for Kalitta Motorsports’ Funny Car driver, newcomer Alexis DeJoria, and the Tequila Patrόn team. Following a fantastic showing of fan support at the Fremont Street Autograph session the night before, Team Patrόn hit the track on Friday in high spirits.

The air was cool, the track was good, and the conditions were just right for an exciting race day. In their first run of the weekend, Alexis ran an impressive 4.145-second at 302.96-mph pass. She went into the second round of qualifying sitting pretty in the third spot. During the second run her Toyota Camry flew down the track at 4.121-sec, 305.15-mph, setting a new personal competition record and her second best numbers to date (she ran a 4.120-sec at 310-mph at a previous test session), showing the fans and her peers why Team Patrόn will be the team to beat next season.

“Friday really set the tone for the weekend. We had two good back-to-back runs. Our team did such a great job and more than anything, I think that our performance showed that we’re competitive and we’re capable of running with the best of them,” said the Kalitta Motorsports driver, adding, “Our team has been able to develop such a wonderful synergy in such a short period of time. We’re definitely going to be a team to watch in the 2012 season.”

Because of their success on Friday, the crew was able to use Saturday’s third and fourth qualifying runs to test out some new combinations that they previously had not had a chance to do. They went into the day looking at the conditions as being similar to what they had anticipated for Sunday, and wanted to really push the envelope and see what they could get away with. According to the team’s crew chief and VP of Kalitta Motorsports, Jim Oberhofer, the team put another supercharger on the car and tried out a couple of new parts, in an effort to see how these parts would react. “There’s no such thing as two parts being identical,” said Oberhofer. “In the third run, the car made a little more power, but spun the tires two seconds into the run. For the fourth, our goal was to get into the 4.08’s [sec] or 4.09’s [sec]. We thought to ourselves, let’s really try and push it. The car started off running good, but it was just a little too much and the car lost traction.”

Team Patrόn went into Sunday’s eliminations in the eleventh spot, facing Bob Tasca. “We were a little aggressive on Sunday, but we had to be, because we knew we were up against such a great team. We gave Alexis the best car that we felt could win a race, but unfortunately, as we continued to wait our turn, the track got a lot hotter, and there were a lot of oil downs, especially in the right lane, making for a tricky track. We made some adjustments going into the run and were slightly ahead until about the 550-ft mark when the car started spinning the tires, costing us the race” said Oberhofer.

“It was unfortunate how the weekend ended, but we’re still learning and trying to figure out how far we can push this car,” adding “Alexis did a great job this weekend. She’s got great reaction time and does such a nice job staging the car. She’s definitely on her way to being one of the top drivers in the game.”

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