Madison: Cory McClenathan Saturday summary

Cory McClenathan took another scary ride in the Carrier Boyz FRAM Boost Top Fuel dragster during Saturday night's final qualifying session for Sunday's O'Reilly's Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis.

This one, fortunately, was no where near as destructive as the one that destroyed the dragster almost two months ago, leaving McClenathan with numerous bumps andbruises.

"It looks like the header came apart, got into the tire and that, in turn, cracked the wing," McClenathan recalled.bI still had some control when it whipped into Doug's (Kalitta, who was running next ot him) lane pretty hard. I'm just glad he wasn't there.

"It's just one of those things.I was just trying to get the car stopped so we didn't do any more damage. I was trying to keep it off the wall andgrab the brake. That was kind of hard to doon three wheels.When I saw I was going to bump the wall (with the left rear end), I steered it away from the wall.

"Now we have to see if we can fix this car and get ready to race. We are going to have to check the car and make sure it's okay and see what we can do to fix it. We have a lot of work to do."

The veteran driver from Lake Havasu City, Ariz., had two good qualifying runs before the incident. His 4.614-second run of Friday night put him in third place going the last run and he added a 4.727-second effort on Saturday's first lap on a hot, slippery racing surface. Cooler night airand bettertrack conditions set the stage for quicker runs in the final attempts.

McClenathan wound up seventh overall (4.614 at 320.43 mph) and races David Grubnic (4.671 at 318.39).

The team was in the process of thoroughly checking the chassis before preparing it for eliminations.

-cbr