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Dallas: Melanie Troxel Friday summary

TROXEL SETS CAREER-BESTS ON FRIDAY IN TEXAS DALLAS (Oct. 7, 2005) - Melanie Troxel, driver of the Skull Gear/Torco Race Fuels Top Fuel dragster, became officially the quickest and fastest female driver in NHRA history with her 330.31-mph pass in ...

Edited: Oct 9, 2005, 1:11 AM

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TROXEL SETS CAREER-BESTS ON FRIDAY IN TEXAS

DALLAS (Oct. 7, 2005) - Melanie Troxel, driver of the Skull Gear/Torco Race Fuels Top Fuel dragster, became officially the quickest and fastest female driver in NHRA history with her 330.31-mph pass in today's first qualifying session for the O'Reilly Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex, which was top speed for that round.

She surpassed Shirley Muldowney's previous fastest speed of 327.66 mph, set in 2003.

Troxel had already established the quickest pass by a woman in NHRA racing in Reading, Pa., of 4.509 seconds, which she re-set tonight in the second session by posting a new career-best of 4.458 seconds.

This last pass placed her second in the field behind Doug Herbert, who recorded a 4.441-second lap, with two more qualifying rounds remaining.

"Honestly, there are a lot of passes like that that you can't necessarily tell them apart from other really good passes," Troxel said of her speed run.

"Obviously, the car was on a great pass, but I think my focus was a little bit more on how the car was handling since we struggled with that a little bit and we got to scale the front end of the car this morning.

"We've just made a lot of little subtle changes, but they've all added up and that felt like an entirely different car. It went perfectly straight down the course. Of course, there's no such thing as perfect, but that's about as good a hookup as you could hope to get.

"Honestly, we're happier with the fact that the car is handling well than the speed mark.

"It's a joy driving this car right now," she said. "It's a credit to (crew chief) Richard Hogan, the entire Skull Gear/Torco Race Fuels team, and (team owner) Don Schumacher."

-dsr-

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