NHRA

Columbus Randy Daniels Downs Bob Panella...again

PRO STOCK TRUCK: DANIELS DOWNS PANELLA...AGAIN RANDY DANIELS, BAILEY TRUCKING CHEVY S-10, had a big smile on his face as he made it down the return road after trouncing the other half of this season's Pro Stock Truck 'dynamic duo' BOB PANELLA, ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

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PRO STOCK TRUCK: DANIELS DOWNS PANELLA...AGAIN

RANDY DANIELS, BAILEY TRUCKING CHEVY S-10, had a big smile on his face as he made it down the return road after trouncing the other half of this season's Pro Stock Truck 'dynamic duo' BOB PANELLA, PANELLA TRUCKING CHEVY S-10, for the third time this season. This was the pair's fifth final round appearance in eight events. Panella was No. 1 qualifier, set an elapsed time track record, but was unable to hold off No. 2 qualifier Daniels in the final round. Daniels, whose reaction times were uncharacteristically slow in the first three rounds (.515, .481, .475), came up with a zinger in the final round, a .413 to Panella's .484, winning the title on a holeshot advantage with a 7.554-second pass at 178.42 mph to Panella's 7.546/178.00. Daniels is inching ever closer to Panella's Winston Championship points lead. He is now just 14 points behind (802-788).

DANIELS: HOW DID YOU PULL OF A GOOD REACTION TIME IN THE FINAL? "We had been running the clutch entirely different than we have been running this weekend. It was doing some silly things to us, we didn't know what happened. For the final we got back to some basics. We figured out how to make the S-10 run real fast in the first part of the track. We figured we stumbled onto something to help in that part of the track, but it killed my driving." HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO WIN THIS RACE? "This is really special because it's Father's Day and I have my dad (Garley) with me. If it weren't for him being here with me none of this would be possible. He's the brains behind this operation. He's built these small-block Chevys who knows for how many years -- even he couldn't tell you the exact number. He's super for me and he's got a lot of great ideas and we keep engineering them into the truck combinations and they're really flying at the moment. I think in every qualifying round we had top speed. And speed is horsepower. We're still on a learning curve on how to use that horsepower." ON THE FINAL: "I felt like both lanes were pretty equal. We ran the left lane all day long, but I wasn't really nervous about the right lane. When Bobby and I run together we bring out the best in each other and we took a stab at the tree and walked away with a pretty good reaction time and came away with the win." ARE YOU TIRED OF SEEING THAT YELLOW TRUCK? "No. It's getting to be kind of fun."

PANELLA: "He had to go for it, and I just don't know how he does it. We made a good run. That was all we had. I just didn't do my job at the starting line. That's as good a light as I could cut. Until I do something with my S-10 or my linkage, that's as good as I can be. Why that is, I don't know. All I can do is keep trying. He drove away from me like I was sitting still. He beat me more than anybody else today combined. That wasn't even a good race." WHAT DO YOU DO TO FIX IT? "I don't know. It's either me or the truck. It's hard to say it's the truck because I can do it now and then. I don't know if it's something I do mentally that screws me up or what. For whatever reason, whether it's the way my S-10 works now or it's just me, I haven't had the kind of success this year I had last year. I won races all year long with a slower truck. This year I have the fastest truck, and he always comes out a little bit ahead."

<pre> POINT STANDINGS:

1. Bob Panella, Chevy S-10 802 2. Randy Daniels, Chevy S-10 788 3. Greg Stanfield, Chevy S-10 514 4. John Coughlin, Chevy S-10 425 5. Steve Johns, Chevy S-10 409

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