National: Buddy Perkinson event summary

PERKINSON RACES TO SECOND ROUND COMP ELIMININATOR FINISH IN LAS VEGAS

LAS VEGAS (Oct. 31) -- Buddy Perkinson drove his Perkinson Racing Competition Eliminator Dodge Stratus to a second round finish today at the NHRA Las Vegas Nationals on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

After finally ending up qualifying in the No. 10 position after three sessions with an elapsed time 7.030 seconds at a speed of 196.13 mph, the 19-year old Perkinson positioned himself in the lineup by running - 0.660 of a second under his 7.69 B/A adjusted category index.

His opening round of Comp eliminations came early Sunday morning under cloudy skies against No. 26 qualifier, Chris McGaha. Perkinson reacted first with a .038-green light and chased his opponent down reaching the quarter-mile stripe first running a time of 7.042 seconds, 181.62-mph to McGaha's time of 8.130 seconds, 166.70 mph.

In his second round of competition, Perkinson faced John Edwards. It was an unfortunate pass as he was defeated after running too far under in his NHRA Competition Index Control setting when driving his Dodge too quick in his opening round reducing the margin of his Comp B/A index.

Driving his Comp car out the back door of the finish line timing lights, Perkinson stopped the clocks at 6.994 seconds along with a great speed of 197.28 mph leaving his signature on the event before unexpectedly being eliminated early.

"This weekend was very fast making it a very hard race for us," said a somber Perkinson. "Our first round of eliminations was run early Sunday morning giving us conditions we weren't expecting for Las Vegas. Everyone was already fast, but under the cool circumstances made the Comp field even quicker and it really hurt in the sense of making us too quick. When that happened it turned out to be a problem for us."

The next NHRA National event for Perkinson will be the Auto Club of Southern California Nationals NHRA Finals at the Auto Club Raceway at Pomona on Nov. 11 - 14.

-source: buddy perkinson PR