Jeg Coughlin Jr. earned the No. 1 qualifier honors at New England Dragway and had a first round bye before defeating fellow HEMI®-powered teammate Vincent Nobile. The driver of the Jegs.com Mopar was hoping to make his 43rd birthday celebrations a little bigger with a trip to the final round in elimination. However, even with a near perfect 0.001-second reaction time in his semifinal match-up against eventual runner-up Gray, Coughlin shut down early with an ET of 6.927 seconds at 198.38 mph to his competitor’s 6.638/210.24 run.

"It's not the way I dreamed of celebrating my birthday," said Coughlin who now sits third in the standings. "But, we went some rounds and earned some points, so it wasn't all bad. I'm just hungry for another win."

On Saturday, Greg Anderson brought a very strong 6.580 at 211.56 mph to the table and was second quickest of the opening session. Enthused and eager to return to the driver's seat for the last session to see what else Team Summit could extract from the brand new racing surface before the fields were set, Anderson had no way of knowing that his day was about to take a dramatic turn.

A freak occurrence during the quick turnaround between qualifying sessions on Saturday – a stripped spark plug hole – set the team off schedule, and Anderson was forced to sit out the fourth and final session of qualifying. The extremely rare situation left Anderson disappointed, but also grateful.

"We just ran out of time to get it fixed," said Anderson. "You hate to miss a run like that, but it was just a freak deal, and you have to be thankful that it didn't happen on raceday.

Anderson did make the field and defeated Steve Kent in the opening round, but fell to Allen Johnson in the second.