Joliet: Dave Connolly final summary

Connolly Runs Second-quickest First Round Time, But Falls to Quickest Driver

Dave  Connolly and Evan Knoll's Torco Racing Fuels/Seelye Wright Automotive
Group  Chevy Cobalt experienced one of those rare weekends where nothing seemed
to go  right until the first round of eliminations in the Torco Racing Fuels
Nationals  at Route 66 Raceway.

Things did get better, but it still wasn't enough for Connolly to get past Allen Johnson.

Connolly  struggled during qualifying; settling for 15th with an elapsed time
of 6.654  seconds at 206.39 mph. Crew chief Tommy Utt made various changes,
looking for a  combination that could get down the hot, tricky racing surface.

And Connolly did just that, running 6.667 seconds at 206.70 mph to  6.663 at
207.05 mph, only to come up six-thousandths of a second short of the  win.

"We struggled, but the good thing was our crew kept  their heads up and the
whole team worked together and we got our act together,"  said Connolly, a
native of Elyria, Ohio.  "We made the second-best run of  the session.
Unfortunately, we ran up against the guy who had the best  run.

"I think we figured out what was wrong with our car and  we can go on and put
the bad qualifying behind us.  If we can continue to  run like we have been
and I can sharpen up my driving a bit, I know the wins and  rounds will come.

"Unfortunately we didn't win a round and there was a lot of money on the line this weekend and we stumbled. It was just one of those things. We straightened up our act and got ready for race day like we always do. Even though we're running badly, the team never got down. We kept working and plugging away and it paid off today with an improvement in our e.t (elapsed time)."

Connolly lost in the first round of Saturday's  King Demon Crown event.  He
and the team will regroup and prepare for the  busiest stretch of the year --
six consecutive races, beginning at Englishtown,  N.J., June 22-24.

-credit: dcr