Madison Comes Up Short at NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas

Las Vegas - Madison Payne and the Muscle Milk team struggled a little bit this past weekend and came up with plums, oranges, and bells to use an analogy from what Las Vegas is best known for. Even so, the Muscle Milk team still qualified well, landing in the 6th spot with a 5.32 at 274 MPH in a tough 16-car field.

The format at the Four-Wide events is a little different than your typical drag race as four cars race together in "quads" and the first and second-place finishers in each of the four quads move on to the next round until only four cars remain and in that final race only the car that crosses the finish line first wins the event.

In the first round, Madison faced Prescott Dean, Casey Grisel, and Juan Cantau-Pompa. At the finish line, it was Dean taking first place followed by Grisel finishing second. Both drivers moved on to the semi-final round. Madison slowed to a 5.53 at 263 MPH to finish third. Cantau-Pompa was also eliminated and finished fourth.

Car owner Duane Shields explained what happened to the car's performance at his hometown race. "We underestimated the track and lost a cylinder 1.4 seconds into the run which makes it hard to win. The car rarely drops a cylinder and we struggled all weekend.

The weather was different every day so there were three different tuning conditions which made it hard to judge the track. We will move on to Charlotte, the next Fourwide race, and see if we can have better luck than we had in Las Vegas" Duane said.

Duane and Madison would like to thank their sponsors Muscle Milk, NGK Spark Plugs, GRP Connecting Rods, Cleanboost, and Brad Anderson Enterprises for their support this season.