Weekend of ‘seconds’ ends 2011 title aspirations

WEEKEND OF ‘SECONDS’ ENDS 2011 TITLE ASPIRATIONS

Reading, PA – After qualifying in the second position and exiting in the second round at the Auto Plus® NHRA Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, the Rick Jackson Racing Top Alcohol Funny Car team will be relegated to finishing no better than the second spot in the 2011 Lucas Oil World Championship chase after category king-pin Frank Manzo clinched his 15th World Championship with a semi-final victory.

After a highly successful outing in Dallas the weekend prior, the Centre Pointe Collision Center team held a meeting and decided their best course of action to chase down Manzo the point leader, was to head to his turf, and attempt to race and beat him prior to the final round. This would have minimized the total points Manzo would have earned at the event and put the championship square on the shoulders of the Santa Clarita, Calif. team.

The plan was to attempt to qualify on the same side of the ladder as Manzo, which is very difficult to do in the sport of NHRA Drag Racing. After the first session, the team’s 5.540 stood as the number one effort. Manzo captured the number one spot in the second session and as qualifying ended the Tony Bartone driven Centre Pointe Mustang TAFC ended up in the number two spot, and unfortunately on the other side of the ladder from the point leader.

“It was a crap shoot but we thought we could slow the car down just enough to move down the qualifying list,” noted Bartone, who entered this event with a perfect National Event score card and was unable to improve his point total at this event. “Once qualify ended, our title aspirations were in the hands of the racing gods. And apparently they didn’t favor the Centre Pointe team this weekend.”

The Centre Pointe team defeated Wayne Morris to open up eliminations, however suffered a mechanical engine failure in a second round loss. On the other side of the ladder, Manzo defeated Todd Veney in the semi-final round and ran the quickest run in the history of the category 5.411 to clinch the 2011 National Championship.

“I am very proud of the effort we put forth this season and the improvement over last year is quite impressive,” noted team owner Rick Jackson. “Our goal each year is World Championship or bust. There are no points for second place. We are disappointed in the outcome, but, at this point all we can do is tip our cap to Frank Manzo and congratulate him on collecting another title and by doing so with a great performance to wrap up eliminations.”

“We will sit back and decide what we are going to do to finish the season, before announcing any plans,” Jackson said. “But one thing is for certain, we are going to give 100% effort at each event we attend. We owe this to our friends, our fans and our sponsors who have supported this team all season. We might be a bit upset today, but we will continue to improve.”

To learn more about Rick Jackson Racing, please visit their website @ http://www.rickjacksonracing.com. You can also follow the team and receive daily updates on Facebook @RickJacksonRacing.