(Ron Lewis photo)

Personett opened his Indy-winning weekend with a solid, second-place qualifying effort behind Mike Janis, then posted wins over Rick Stivers, Kenny Lang and Ed Hoover to reach the final round. Along the way he reset his own class speed record to 255.39 mph in round two against Lang, backed up by a 254.52 run in the last of four qualifying sessions.

Personett credits a stellar ORP racing surface for the record, but said it took him a while to get a firm grasp of what it needed. “It was a good track before, but ever since (new ORP Director of Operations) Kurt Johnson has taken over it’s even better and with all the traffic on it we were just way, way over center from Q1 and we just kept dialing it back.”

That tactic almost put him out early, Personett admitted after getting a free pass in round one when Stivers’ chutes came loose during his burnout.

“That was when I took too many steps backwards, so that was my lucky round,” Personett said of going 6.00 at 248.93 mph. “Then I come to find out if we had stayed in that left lane—we pulled a lane swap right there—and they had run two of the Nostalgia Funny Cars earlier and I guess one of them had a barrel valve fuel line come off and doused the track. They turned about 15 minutes into a major clean-up and it turned it into a right-lane race track and I was just way, way on the other side of the fence as far as too soft and that just wrecked my run.”

(Chris Haverly photo)

Round two delivered the record-setting 5.89/255.39 combo, but Personett later revealed he actually thought his day was over with engine trouble as he turned off the track.