Jeg Coughlin Wins All-Chevy Pro Stock Finals at Reading
Source: General Motors Racing
Aug 18, 2008 - 12:48:33 PM
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For Cagnazzi Racing, it couldn’t lose leading into today’s Pro Stock finals at the 24th annual Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway. Teammates Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Dave Connolly squared off in an all-Chevy final round, a repeat of the Sonoma finals two races ago, but this time the roles were reversed as Coughlin drove his JEGS.com Chevy Cobalt past Connolly’s Charter Communications Chevy Cobalt for his second win of the season and the 40th of his career, placing him fourth on the all-time wins list in Pro Stock. Despite the loss, this was Connolly’s third consecutive final-round appearance (Sonoma win, runners-up at Brainerd and Reading), and he clinched a spot in the Countdown to 1.
“We knew we couldn’t go wrong with Dave (Connolly) and me in the finals for Cagnazzi Racing, but it felt good to get the win light there against my teammate,” Coughlin said. “Congratulations to Victor (Cagnazzi, team owner) and the entire team back in Mooresville (N.C.); they’ve done a fantastic job. We’re hoping this is a sign of things to come when we start the Countdown in Charlotte. We’ve had a pretty slow summer, but the last couple of races we’ve gone to the finals (Sonoma) and the semis (Brainerd), and to pull of a win here is huge.”
Coughlin entered today’s eliminations qualified 11th and proceeded to get a holeshot win over V. Gaines in Round 1, defeat Jim Yates in Round 2, and then get past last week’s winner at Brainerd, Kurt Johnson, in the semis. In the final round Coughlin had a winning elapsed time of 6.650 seconds at 206.39 mph as Connolly had a red-light start.
“The first couple of rounds today we were struggling,” Coughlin said. “We made some pretty aggressive changes against Kurt (Johnson) in the semis; he’s kind of been the one to beat here at Reading lately. But he turned the red light on by a couple of thousandths and we threw a pretty good shot down there with that 6.669, so we felt like we were ready for the finals against our teammate.
“We were pretty fortunate today. To have Kurt Johnson and Dave Connolly go red against you, you don’t expect that, but we’ll take it that’s for sure. After Saturday and qualifying 11th, we knew we had our work cut out for us. But the last couple of weeks we’ve been real strong on race day, so I had a lot of confidence in the team that this would be a top-five car come Sunday. Now we need to carry this momentum into the Countdown. Indy’s the biggest race of the year, no doubt about it, and we want to win Indy, but come Charlotte we’re running for another POWERade championship.”
Despite missing the season’s first five races because of sponsorship issues, Connolly advanced to his sixth final round of the season, clinching a spot in the Countdown and moving all the way up to the sixth position in points.
“It was an awesome weekend for us,” Connolly said. “It was good we were able to pull farther ahead of Ron Krisher and Greg Stanfield in the standings and as long as we can go as many rounds at (the next race in) Indianapolis as (seventh-place Mike) Edwards and (eighth-place) V. Gaines, we should stay in sixth place. We’ve exceeded my expectations this year. I didn’t think we’d be able to get this high in the Countdown after starting the season five races after everyone else.”
Kurt Johnson in the ACDelco Chevy Cobalt was looking for his second consecutive event win after his victory last week at Brainerd. He joined the Chevy bowtie brigade in the semifinal round after defeating Greg Stanfield in Round 1 and Larry Morgan in Round 2. Johnson defeated Coughlin in the semis at Brainerd, and today turnabout was fair play as the JEGS.com Chevy driver returned the favor by defeating him with a 6.669 e.t. as Johnson had a red-light start.
“I still think we have something special in this ACDelco Cobalt,” Johnson said, “and that alone pumps me up. I’ve been driving better lately, with my lights coming around, and that was the first time I red-lighted all year. You have to know where your limits are, and we found that today. Unfortunately, we felt this was a race we could have won. You can’t win being late, and you can’t win being early, you need to be perfect, so that’s what we’ll try to be two weeks from now in Indy.”
In Funny Car, Del Worsham in the CSK Chevy Impala saw his long-shot hopes of qualifying for the Countdown extinguished when Jack Beckman and Mike Neff advanced to the semifinals today, but Worsham can take some solace in his making an improbable dash over the last few months to qualify for the U.S. Smokeless Showdown bonus event to be contested at the U.S. Nationals on Saturday, Aug. 30, with $100,000 going to the one-day event winner.
Worsham won this bonus event, based on Funny Car qualifying over the course of a year, in 2005, but with two DNQs to start the season and two more in the month of June, qualifying for the Showdown was not on his radar screen. But on the strength of strong qualifying efforts the second half of this season, Worsham came to Reading needing to out-qualify Jack Beckman and Gary Scelzi, while he also had to hope that John Force would not out-qualify him by 35 Showdown points. Worsham (9th) out-qualified Beckman (13th) while Scelzi and Toliver both failed to make the race field here. As for Force, he outpaced Worsham, but not by enough to get around him and the improbable qualifying scenario was complete. The final math equation resulted in Worsham not only making the Showdown, but doing so in the seventh position, while Force completed his own unlikely comeback by moving into the eighth position.
"We've been running well lately, really since we got to Englishtown back in June, so to cap off this weekend by somehow miraculously getting into the Showdown was really a big deal for this team," Worsham said. "We were so far behind in that thing that eighth place was over the horizon and six time zones away, but we kept scratching and clawing all summer and all of sudden it was right here in front of us this weekend, at the last race before Indy. It wasn't handed to us, we still had to go out there and make it happen, and we did it. That's very cool.
"There are still seven races left, and the way we're running that's seven more chances to wear the cool hats in the Winner's Circle," Worsham said. "We know we can't win the championship, but we also know we can win races. Plus, we earned a shot at the Showdown money, and that's something to be very proud of. We're a little disappointed that all the wrong numbers added up today, but we're feeling good about how we can finish this season. We're going to be a factor in how it all shakes out, I'm sure of that."
In Top Fuel, Team Chevy’s Larry Dixon qualified No. 6 for today’s eliminations and advanced his U.S. Smokeless dragster to his fifth final round of the season. Dixon defeated Doug Foley in Round 1, Dave Grubnic in Round 2, and Antron Brown in the semifinals before facing off with points leader Tony Schumacher in the U.S. Army dragster. In the final round, Schumacher won his fifth consecutive race with an elapsed time of 3.845 at 313.88 mph to Dixon’s 3.891 e.t. at 302.35 mph. Dixon now has a win (Phoenix) and four runners-up on the season and sits solidly in third in the points standings.
In the Sportsman class, Frank Manzo from Morganville, N.J., drove the Lucas Oil Chevy Monte Carlo to the Top Alcohol Funny Car title for an incredible ninth consecutive year when he defeated Eric Lourie from Terryville, Conn., in his ’02 Chevy Camaro. Manzo, who also qualified No. 1, had an elapsed time of 5.601 at 259.26 mph to Lourie’s 5.737 e.t. at 248.80 mph. Dan Fletcher from Churchville, N.Y., also won Super Stock in his ’69 Camaro, and Anthony Fetch from Belleville, N.J., drove a ’68 Camaro to the victory in Stock Eliminator.
“We made some changes to the car at the beginning of the year and it’s just been a learning process,” Manzo said. “The weather was good, and the track was very good all weekend. In the semis we misread the track and spun the tires hard and shook, but overall me made some good calls and then in the finals we did good. We’re still a little off, but the car’s starting to get back and I think we’re heading in the right direction. Hopefully we’ll get to Indy with three or four good qualifying days of weather and we’ll be ready to race the guys on race day.”
The next stop on the 24-race NHRA POWERade circuit is the final qualifying race for the Countdown to 1 playoff, the 54th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis over Labor Day weekend, Aug. 27-Sept. 1, 2008.
PRO STOCK
Winner – Jeg Coughlin (Chevy Cobalt), 6.650ET/206.39MPH
Runner-up – Dave Connolly (Chevy Cobalt), red-light start
No. 1 Qualifier – Greg Anderson (Pontiac GXP), 6.611ET/208.84MPH
Low elapsed time – Greg Anderson, 6.611 seconds
Top Speed – Jason Line (Pontiac), 208.91MPH
Top 10 – 1. Greg Anderson (Pontiac GXP), 1,222; 2. Kurt Johnson (Chevy Cobalt), 1,185; 3. Jeg Coughlin (Chevy Cobalt), 1,129; 4. Jason Line (Pontiac GXP), 1,090; 5. Allen Johnson (Dodge), 1,008; 6. Dave Connolly (Chevy Cobalt), 868; 7. Mike Edwards (Pontiac GXP), 865; 8. V. Gaines (Dodge), 864; 9. Ron Krisher (Chevy Cobalt), 794; 10. Greg Stanfield (Pontiac GXP), 770.
FUNNY CAR
Winner – Jack Beckman (Dodge ), 4.183ET/291.57MPH
Runner-up – Frank Hawley (Dodge), 6.967ET/95.08MPH
No. 1 Qualifier – Cruz Pedregon (Toyota), 4. 109ET/299.00MPH
Top 10 - 1. Tim Wilkerson (Chevy Impala SS), 1,189; 2. Tony Pedregon (Chevy Impala SS), 1,066; 3. Robert Hight (Ford), 1,000; 4. Cruz Pedregon (Toyota), 958; 5. Ashley Force (Ford), 922; 6. John Force (Ford), 871; 7. Gary Densham (Chevy Impala SS), 859; 8. Ron Capps (Dodge), 840; 9. Jack Beckman (Dodge), 836; 10. Mike Neff (Ford), 796.
TOP FUEL
Winner – Tony Schumacher, 3.845ET/313.88MPH
Runner-up – Larry Dixon, 3.891ET/302.35MPH
No. 1 Qualifier – Tony Schumacher, 3.816ET/316.67MPH
Top 10 - 1. Tony Schumacher, 1,650; 2. Antron Brown, 1,124; 3. Larry Dixon, 1,082; 4. Cory McClenathan, 1,019; 5. Rod Fuller, 1,015; 6. Brandon Bernstein, 974; 7. Hillary Will, 907; 8. Doug Herbert, 843; 9. Dave Grubnic, 736; 10. Doug Kalitta, 732.
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