Baytown: Tom Bradford final summary

Bradford to the Semis in Houston

Tom Bradford benefited from the rash of redlight fever for the first two Pro Stock Motorcycle rounds at the O'Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals in Houston before finally succumbing to the dreadful disease himself in the semis against eventual event winner Angelle Sampey. "We didn't have the fastest motorcycle out there, but we had a consistent bike," said Bradford. "We hung in there hard and let them beat themselves."

"With the rainout on Saturday, there weren't many runs for us to get a feel for what the lights were. A .004 light was too close, and we needed to make an adjustment to the clutch to keep from being so close to redlighting. That didn't happen, and it was my fault." Jim Schneider, the clutchman on Bradford's The Sportsman Channel Buell, works with the air gap on the clutch to slow or speed up the bike's reaction time. "Jim will normally set that up with a different air gap on Sunday than we run in qualifying. It's not a big adjustment and I don't even notice it. 5 or 10/10000ths more of an air gap on the clutch will slow me down. We didn't make that adjustment and I went .002 red in round 2." Fortunately for Bradford, Antron Brown was .001 quicker.

"We didn't feel comfortable leaving the motor in and changed it for semis. So it was pretty chaotic. We rolled up there and Angelle was in the water box waiting for me and I was still putting my leathers on and stuff. So I was pretty amped up." And Bradford was finally the victim, not the beneficiary, of redlight fever.

"It's been a fantastic start to the season for us," finished Bradford. "We're really excited to be out here going rounds for The Sportsman Channel. We're going to freshen up our stuff back at the shop and we're looking forward to going to Atlanta."

Bradford and The Sportsman Channel team race next at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals April 26-29 at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia.

-credit: tbr