4/10/2007

The NHRA held its 20th annual O’Reilly Spring Nationals Mar. 30-Apr. 1, at Houston Raceway Park, where J.R. Todd, Ron Capps, Jason Line and Angelle Sampey scored emotional wins just one week after Funny Car pilot Eric Medlen died as the result of a crash in testing at Gainesville, FL. In order to provide time for grieving and to further investigate the cause of the crash, John Force, teammate and team owner to Medlen, opted out of attending the Houston event, breaking his string of qualifying for 395 consecutive NHRA national events.

It was a soggy affair, with heavy rain washing away all of Saturday’s planned qualifying, leaving the fields established by Friday’s two field-setting sessions. Fortunately, the skies cleared for raceday and as always, the racers told the whole story through quotes included in NHRA and team reports.