Commerce: Jason Line Saturday summary

Jason Line No. 4 at Atlanta Dragway

COMMERCE, Ga. (April 28, 2007) -- If you guessed that Jason Line finished in the No. 4 qualifying position for the 27th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals, you'd be right...

Line, the reigning NHRA POWERade Pro Stock champion, used a pass of 6.655 seconds at 207.91 mph in the evening qualifying session on Friday to claim the fourth spot on the final qualifying ladder.

"This is much better than were we qualified at the last race in Las Vegas when we qualified 10th," said Line. "Having the low elapsed time of that final round will give us much needed confidence going into tomorrow's eliminations. Now if we could win this race sponsored by Summit Racing, we'd really be happy."

Line's other elapsed times during qualifying on the Atlanta Dragway quarter-mile were: 6.677/207.21 in Friday's first session, 6.678/207.30 during today's earlier session, and a 6.659/207.53, low elapsed time of the final session.

Line went to the final round at Phoenix before finishing runner-up, then drove his KB Racing LLC-owned Pontiac to the Pro Stock title at Houston two races ago. At Atlanta Dragway Line finished runner-up to his KB Racing LLC teammate, Greg Anderson, in 2005.

Line goes after his second win of the season when eliminations get underway tomorrow when he faces Erica Enders in the opening round. Enders qualified No. 13 with a run of 6.685 seconds at 206.20 mph.

After five events on the $50 million, 23-event NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, and the fifth of 17 events in the first segment of the Countdown to the Championship, Anderson leads the Pro Stock point standings and Line is second.

-credit: kbr