Dennis Taylor Medford wrap up

Lack of Traction Trips Taylor

ANAHEIM, CA — Champion Raceway in Medford, Oregon, proved impossible to tame this weekend for Dennis Taylor and his Plumbing Concepts Funny Car. The crew used Thursday to test some new engine components and couldn’t master the track surface, as tire spin set in, regardless of how much power was taken away. Friday’s initial qualifying session yielded a 6.02-second elapsed time with tire smoke and excessive wheel speed, in spite of a milder tune-up. Dennis Taylor said, “There’s a nice crowd here and all the fans are really great. We’re hoping to put on a good show for these people, but we can’t get it to stick in the middle [of the track]. We’ll take power out and hope we find some magic.”

Additional challenges beset the Champion Raceway crew as a power outage slowed Friday’s program. As the evening rolled on, it was decided that one more qualifying session would set the field for the Top Alcohol cars. Co-crew chiefs Ora Vasquez and Terry Morrow were faced with the dilemma of making both the engine and the clutch a great deal less aggressive. In truth, that’s like expecting a lion to behave like a house cat. The result was a tire smoking 7.82, but Taylor still qualified fourth on his previous time.

Final Eliminations found Dennis matched with fifth qualifier, Clint Thompson. Taylor explained, “We both smoked the tires, but my car smoked ‘em a little harder. At the stripe, the difference was six-thousandths of a second. Hey, we came up short, but I can’t wait to run this thing on a national-event track. I can tell these new cylinder heads make more power, because the car wants more fuel, it sounds stronger, and all it needs is traction. We’ll regroup from here and hope the track is better in Woodburn (Oregon) next weekend.” The upside to this outing is zero parts damage and the Plumbing Concepts car still looks great.

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Contact: Randy Fish

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