Dallas: Johnny Gray Friday summary

Gray struggles in Friday Texas qualifying

ENNIS, Texas (Sept. 24, 2004) - Johnny Gray and Don Schumacher's Wonder Wagon Dodge Funny Car struggled through two rounds of qualifying today for the O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex, ending up 18th and out of the field with a 5.834/165.50.

In today's first session the Wonder Wagon lost a cylinder, causing Gray to move left toward the centerline and out of the groove, and in this evening's round he failed to start the lap.

"They started to start the car and they pulled one set of wires and it didn't start," he said of the second run. "So they pulled the other set and it started . The car ran there a few seconds and one of the coils started smoking real bad. It wasn't going to run real good on one mag anyway and you didn't want to stand the chance of something going amiss in the electronics and blowing the body off of it, so we just shut it off.

"We'll be fine tomorrow. We're not concerned. We'll go out and stick ourselves right in the top half of the field tomorrow and be ready for Sunday."

Two more qualifying sessions are set for Saturday.

-dsr-