NHRA
Dennis Taylor Pomona wrap up
Taylor gets on track in Pomona. POMONA, Calif. - Despite losing in round one of this past weekend's K&N Filters Winternationals at Pomona Raceway, NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car ace Dennis Taylor and his Cooner Wire backed team finally knocked ...
Published: Feb 13, 2003, 5:39 AM
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Taylor gets on track in Pomona.
POMONA, Calif. - Despite losing in round one of this past weekend's K&N Filters Winternationals at Pomona Raceway, NHRA Top Alcohol Funny Car ace Dennis Taylor and his Cooner Wire backed team finally knocked the proverbial monkey off their back. After struggling much of last year, Taylor and tuner Randy Goodwin's offseason work paid huge dividends with a strong showing performance wise that has the team looking to their next event.
Taylor, who runs his racing safety equipment company, Taylor Motorsports, in Anaheim, Calif., qualified the Cooner Wire Camaro tenth in the field with a 5.751 second elapsed time at 247.29 mph. Taylor's tenth qualifying spot was not quite indicative of his performance, however. The run was made during the first qualifying session, and was the fourth quickest of the round. During the second session, Taylor was on par to run a mid 5.60 run, but pushed a head gasket out, killing the motor. Taylor opted to sit out the last session to conserve parts, which set up a first round matchup with the always-tough Mert Littlefield.
Taylor took the starting line advantage with a stellar .024 reaction time, but had ignition problems cut his run short at half track, giving Littlefield the easy win. However, Taylor posted a 2.47 clocking to the 330' mark, which would have put him on pace to run a very low 5.60 run. The team's newfound success help to take the edge off the first round loss.
"We really fought hard all last year," said Taylor. "Randy and the guys really did their homework over the winter, and it really paid off on the track. The car really ran awesome this weekend. It hasn't ran this smooth in a long time; the car had zero tire shake this weekend. We ran times that were right with the very top cars in the class, and there was some heavy hitters out here. We feel like we had a car that could have potentially won the race. When you factor in that this is the home race for nearly all of our sponsors, it's really disappointing, but the car ran so good, everyone can see the potential this hot rod has now."
"We're very fired up about our next race in Phoenix," Taylor added.
The next race for the Cooner Wire team will be the Division 7 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series opener at Firebird Raceway in Phoenix, Ariz., Feb. 28-Mar. 2.
-cwr-
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