Bristol: Melanie Troxel Saturday notes

Troxel Qualifies 11th at Bristol; Races Tony Pedregon

BRISTOL, Tenn., May 17, 2008 -- Melanie Troxel continues her quest for a Funny Car round win and race victory Sunday in the Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway, thanks to a qualifying run of 4.839 seconds at 318.62 mph.

That effort came Friday afternoon and held up through Saturday's two runs when she had times of 4.947 and 4.932 seconds.

Troxel, driving the ProCare Rx Dodge Charger R/T, is starting for the fourth time in eight POWERade Series races. She squares off against Tony Pedregon (No. 6, 4.821 at 316.90 mph) in the opening round.

"We got down the track on every run, more or less," she said. "We never smoked the tires, we never shook and never had to abort a run here. That's definitely an improvement from where we were a few races ago."

Crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald are trying to track down gremlins that caused the motor to drop cylinders on some of the runs. "Now we have one of those tuning glitches that every team fights at one time or another," Troxel pointed out. Every time you go to a different track with different weather, different altitudes, you have to sort it out again. We're not running quite as well as we would like at this point, but we're in the field and we have ideas for things we want to try tomorrow. Hopefully we can go outandstep up the program a little bit in the first round.

"I'm really comfortable in the car.It gives you a lot of confidence when you just get down the track on every run. Any time you can make it to Sunday, a lot of times being consistent, getting down the track on every run can win you rounds and it can win you races."

-credit: gcr