Tony Bartone - D-2 Wrap Up D-4 Preview

JACKSON BOYS DETOUR PROVIDES FINAL ROUND APPEARANCE

Photo Courtesy of Auto Imagery

Atlanta, Ga. – Sometimes a quick change in plans can yield great results. It did last weekend for the Rick Jackson Racing Top Alcohol Funny Car team as the Santa Clarita, Calif. based team advanced to the final round during the Division 2 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event held at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, GA.

Originally the Center Pointe Collision Centre / FireIce™ sponsored team planned to take a week off after the 55th NHRA Mac Tool’s US Nationals. Car owner Rick Jackson believed progress the team made during qualifying at ‘The Big Go’ could provide the team with some momentum. How right he was.

The Steve Boggs tuned Ford Mustang-bodied flopper captured the number one qualified position after recording a stellar 5.660 second elapsed time during the second qualifying session. The pole position set up a first round match up with Norcross, GA’s Mark Billington.

Bartone left the starting line 0.057 seconds quicker than his opponent, but the fickle Funny Car made a hard move towards the center-line about 100 feet into the run. Bartone then steered the car back toward the center and finally got it under control a little past half-track. Billington made a clean run but couldn't run down the Jackson Racing Mustang. Bartone captured the round one victory after recording an off-pace 5.722 ET at 254.09 miles per hour.

The round one victory set up a semi-final match up against the fellow FireIce™ sponsored car of Upland, Calif.’s Jay Payne. Payne held the lane choice for the pivotal semi-final bout versus Bartone. The two veteran Alcohol Funny Car teams gave the fans in attendance an entertaining race. Bartone grabbed a slight reaction time advantage and steadily began to pull away. At about half track the Brad Anderson Engineering power of Payne began to make up some ground, but he ran out of real estate. The Boggs-tuned Jackson Racing Funny Car took the win and advanced to the final round to face off against 2008 Division 4 Champion, Steve Harker from Gainesville, GA.

Unfortunately for the Southern Ca. based team the final round was over before it officially began. Bartone left the starting line a bit too early and the evil red light appeared in his lane, handing the event victory to Harker who streaked to a 5.63 second blast.

“We are pleased with the way the car ran this weekend,” noted Jackson. “We found some things at Indy and it seems to be paying off now. A final round showing did our team some good and we’ll now head down to Belle Rose to see if we can improve by just one more round.”

As Jackson stated, the team will now head to the Division 4 LODRS event held this weekend at Belle Rose, LA. The team will have one qualifying session on Friday, at 6 p.m., and two on Saturday, at 2 and 6 p.m. Eliminations start for Top Alcohol Funny Car at noon on Sunday.

As always, for more information about Rick Jackson Racing please visit http://www.rickjacksonracing.com.

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For up to the minute race results, tune into http://www.dragracecentral.com all weekend.


Courtesy of CRX PROMOTIONS