Gainesville: Cory McClenathan Saturday report

McCLENATHAN WILL START NO. 5 AT GATORS GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 13, 2010) - NHRA Top Fuel points leader Cory McClenathan qualified the FRAM Top Fuel dragster in the No. 5 position for the 41st annual NHRA Gatornationals today. Only three rounds ...

McCLENATHAN WILL START NO. 5 AT GATORS

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 13, 2010) - NHRA Top Fuel points leader Cory McClenathan qualified the FRAM Top Fuel dragster in the No. 5 position for the 41st annual NHRA Gatornationals today.

Only three rounds of qualifying were held because of rain on Friday, and "Cory Mac" registered his quickest pass in the final session today of 3.830 seconds at 303.03 mph. He slowed slightly at the beams because of a burst of flame out of the engine. His previous two laps were a tire-smoking 8.407/78.10 (No. 13) and a 3.835/317.79 (No. 6)

"The weekend has been pretty good so far," said McClenathan. "It was a little more eventful on that last run than what we wanted, but when you have a day of rain like we did here on Friday, it always kind of takes everybody back.

"We went out there on Friday on our only run and shook the tires, so coming in today I thought the FRAM team would be a little bit more calm about their approach and they weren't. We went out there and ran a 3.83 and we ended up sixth going into the last session.

"We really thought we had a good package to try and run a 3.80-flat, but I went out there and at about 800 feet it immediately smoked the tires. I tried to get my foot off and hit the pedal a little bit, but these cars don't like that. They get very unhappy about that and the motors don't like that extra fuel going in there and it ended up knocking the panels out and obviously set off all of the safety things like the parachutes, and shut off the fuel.

"The FRAM guys are working on it. It's not really hurt, but my feelings are hurt a little bit because that took away low E.T. because it was well on its way to running a 3.79 or 3.80-flat.

"Tomorrow we're going to try to go down the track four times and win this thing, but like everything else, we always take it one round at a time here in the FRAM pit. We've been on a good run lately and we've got a good group of guys and a good car, so if the driver does his job, we're going to be okay."