DESPITE EARLY EXIT AT RICHMOND, HIGHT ADVANCES TO FINAL FOUR
A clutch malfunction ended Robert Hight's hopes of succeeding the
late Eric Medlen as Funny Car champion of the TORCO Racing Fuels
Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park Sunday but the driver of the Team
Castrol/Automobile Club of Southern California Ford Mustang still managed
to lock up a starting spot in the Countdown to One which will crown the
2007 POWERade World Champion.
After dominating the preliminaries and earning the Full Throttle Pit Crew
Challenge bonus money for qualifying consistency, Hight fell to Ron Capps
when the clutch activated prematurely, causing his 8,000 horspower
Mustang to inexplicably lose traction several hundred feet into the run.
The upshot was a quarter mile time of 7.447 seconds at only 107 miles per
hour, far off the 4.790, 4.814, 4.822 qualifying pace that had stamped
him as the pre-race favorite.
"It was really a surprise," Hight said. "The clutch just
came in quicker than it had all weekend. We don't know why, but
we're going to test tomorrow and then we're going to Vegas and
test next week. We've got good sponsors and a good team and (the
championship is) still ours to win."
Hight, the 2005 winner of the Auto Club's Road to the Future Award as
the NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year, now will vie with Tony Pedregon, Ron Capps
and Gary Scelzi for the $500,000 championship, trying to become the third
different Team Castrol driver to win the title in the last six years.
"Our job was to get one of these Ford Mustangs in the Countdown to
One for Auto Club, Castrol and Ford," team owner John Force said from
Baylor University Medical Center where he is recovering from injuries
suffered in a Sept. 23rd crash. "Robert will carry that banner for us
in the last two races. He and (crew chief) Jimmy Prock earned the right
to race for the championship."
***
John Force, the 14-time NHRA Funny Car Champion, continues to recover
from injuries suffered in a Sept. 23rd crash during the O'Reilly Fall
Nationals at Dallas, Texas. Force, who was in fourth place in points
when his Castrol SYNTEC Ford broke in two pieces and crashed into Kenny
Bernstein's Dodge, is on an accelerated physical therapy program
designed to put him back behind the wheel in time for winter testing of
his Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford. Castrol collected more than 2,500 get
well messages for the 125-time tour winner during the TORCO Nationals.
-credit: jfr
