Columbus: Darrell Russell final qualifying summary

Another career-best effort for Russell.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (June 15) -- Reigning Rookie of the Year Darrell Russell continued his torrid string of strong qualifying efforts by nailing down a career-best No. 2 starting position for this weekend's Pontiac Excitement Nationals. Russell, a 33-year-old from Houston, powered Joe Amato's Bilstein Engine Flush System Top Fuel dragster through a steady 4.602 at 307.23 mph to earn his fourth consecutive top-half qualifying berth.

"This Bilstein Engine Flush System car is running so strong," Russell said. "It's pretty exciting to climb in a car that you know can haul the mail. This is the highest we've ever qualified since I've been driving professionally and it's a real tribute to our crew chief Wayne Dupuy and the guys on this team to set a career-best mark like this."

After carding a runner-up finish at last year's event, Russell will try to advance one more round during this visit to mid-Ohio and claim the hardware of this historic race. He and crew chief Dupuy begin their battle against No. 15 qualifier Jim Head, whose best past of the weekend thus far showed a 4.854 at 295.40 mph on the scoreboards.

"We have a good team and a good race car right now," Dupuy said. "Everything is clicking and hopefully that doesn't change for a long time. We don't have an ego thing going with the Goodyear tires. I'm still running the old ones and I don't plan on changing that any time soon. They work for us; it's as simple as that.

"It's pretty fun to come to the track right now because this car has become very easy to tune. Plus, our driver is doing a good job, I've been tuning okay, and the crew is all working well together. We need to just leave things alone and go out and race."

Russell is currently sixth in the POWERade championship points standings. He trails fifth-ranked driver Doug Kalitta by 15 points, meaning he could move up one position in the rankings by surviving just one more round than Kalitta during Sunday's action.

"Generally, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about the points because the only time they really matter is in November," Russell said. "But I know one of the goals the guys have is to get me into the top five so I'd like to keep moving up. I certainly feel like we have the car to do it and our qualifying effort here proves my point. We're all revved up to go rounds."

The ESPN2 television network is devoting eight hours of coverage to this event. Qualifying highlights air from 8-10 p.m. (ET), this evening, with a repeat showing from 4:30-6 a.m. (ET), Sunday morning. The elimination rounds will be broadcast from 8:30-11 p.m. (ET), Sunday, with another showing from 2:30-4:30 p.m. (ET), on June 19.

-drr-