Qualifying and Eliminations

Because of a torrential rain on Friday evening that washed out the Friday night qualifying, the DRO series racers were forced to qualify and run eliminations in just one day. The combination of great “air”, temperatures in the 60’s and a perfectly prepped track resulted in more engine damage for the racers than at any other race in the series’ six-year history.

The Bowen team and the Sanders team used up three engines each during qualifying and eliminations!

There was one-shot qualifying Saturday at 2 p.m. to set the field and that was followed by three rounds of Eliminations, meaning at least two teams were going to make four passes in one day, which is a lot to ask of volunteer crews and budget nitro teams.

To add to the problems during the qualifying session, the right lane clocks malfunctioned and gave Mark Sanders an ET of 4.457 at just 245.31. After that pass the track crew found the problem, repaired it and for the rest of the event the right lane ET’s were accurate but the speed numbers in that lane remained somewhat suspect as Mellinger had a 288.74 speed with an ET of just 5.823. Both Sanders’ 4.45 ET and Mellinger’s 288 were disallowed.

In the end Sanders was considered qualified but moved to the bottom of the ladder.