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Phoenix: Morgan Lucas Saturday preview

LUCAS VS KALITTA IN FIRST ROUND AT PHOENIX PHOENIX (Feb. 26) -- Morgan Lucas will head into Sunday's eliminations at the 22nd annual Checker Schucks Kragen Nationals racing Doug Kalitta in his opening round stanza at Firebird International Raceway ...

Published: Feb 27, 2006, 6:47 AM

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LUCAS VS KALITTA IN FIRST ROUND AT PHOENIX

PHOENIX (Feb. 26) -- Morgan Lucas will head into Sunday's eliminations at the 22nd annual Checker Schucks Kragen Nationals racing Doug Kalitta in his opening round stanza at Firebird International Raceway starting from the 10th position. The last time the pair met in head-to-head competition was the 2005 Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway in the quarterfinals with Lucas taking the win light.

"It's a huge match up because I like racing Doug Kalitta - he's a straight up racer," said Lucas, whose overall record against Kalitta is 3-2 in Lucas' favor. "For the second race of the season, I'm kind of excited about it. I like big races like this because it puts more pressure on me to perform at the starting line. We're going to go up there and do the best we can. I have all the faith in the world with my people and it could be anybody's race tomorrow. Doug's a great starting line leaver and how are you going to beat that."

In Saturday's qualifying, Lucas entered the day on the outside of the 16-car field, but quickly put any non-qualifying blues to rest with his best accomplishment so far of the weekend after running a time of 4.535 seconds at a speed of 325.77 mph. In his final qualifying session, the 22-year old driver came close to duplicating his previous run with his quarter-mile sprint of 4.557 seconds, 323.58 mph.

"It still has a lot left in it," said Lucas. "All we want to do is duplicate that 4.53 performance in the first round and that's what we have to do -- win first round, especially since we'll be the second pair out on race day. We'll go for it and get it over and move on to the next round, hopefully."

-www.morganlucas.com

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