Commerce: Tom Bradford Saturday summary

Bradford Tucked Safely in the Middle in Atlanta

After a string of impressive Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying efforts that led to round 1 losses on raceday, Tom Bradford is pleased to have run consistently mid-pack throughout timed runs at the Atlanta NHRA event. "We're not doing bad, we're not doing great," said Bradford. "But we're in the thick of things and feeling good about tomorrow."

"We're chasin' the tune-up a little bit," Bradford admitted. "We had a real good hold on the last two tracks because they weren't all that great on traction. But we came here and the track has some real grip to it."

Photographer and Dragbike.com editor Matt Polito noticed that Bradford's Atlanta qualifying passes were not yet the eyebrow raisers that Tom laid down in Gainesville and Houston, where he qualified seventh and fourth, respectively. "When's your 'I'm Tom Bradford!' run coming?" asked Polito.

"Do I have to do that every time?" laughed Bradford, who promptly went out and jumped, temporarily, to third on the charts. By the end of the round, Bradford was back in ninth, mid-pack

"We're qualified eleventh and we're real happy with that," Bradford said at the end of the day. "It's gotta be one of the tightest Pro Stock Motorcycle fields ever. But we left a lot on the table. We made aggressive moves with the tune-up for the last round it and it showed us the other side of the fence, so to speak.

"So we're looking forward to tomorrow. We've got Matt Smith first round, and the field is so tight that it's anybody's game. Anybody could win tomorrow."

-th