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Harold Martin is Set for a Successful Defense of his Milan Home Turf Located less than an hour's drive from his state-of-the-art facility in New Hudson, Milan Dragway is a second home to native son Harold Martin and the ACDelco Pro Modified ...
Edited: Sep 8, 2007, 3:02 AM
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Harold Martin is Set for a Successful Defense of his Milan Home Turf
Located less than an hour's drive from his state-of-the-art facility in New Hudson, Milan Dragway is a second home to native son Harold Martin and the ACDelco Pro Modified Pontiac Racing team. As such, it serves as their primary test track throughout the year, with the hard-working crew logging numerous runs in their never-ending search for speed.
However, while acknowledging the benefit of racing in front of their fellow Michiganders, as the Knoll Gas Nitro Jam Drag Racing Series makes its way back to the Great Lakes State for this weekend's IHRA Suzuki Motor City Nationals, the EFI Wizard is quick to dispel any notion of a home field advantage -- with one slight exception.
"Milan Dragway is home sweet home for our ACDelco Pontiac team," said Martin. "I won at that racetrack early in my career, and have experienced success in the national events held there, and nothing would be sweeter than to build on that this weekend.
"Although we're on familiar turf, when the national event comes to town, there is an entirely different team that is prepping that racetrack with a different chemical, producing a different surface from the one we test on. Therefore, we reference the notes from previous tracks we've run on in similar conditions as well as prior IHRA national events in Milan.
"On the other hand, we are at home, so we know the back roads into the racetrack, which we're looking forward to leveraging this weekend, as we know the crowds will be stacking up at the normal entrances. That is the true extent of our advantage this weekend."
Bolstering the team's confidence heading into their home race is their improved performance in recent weeks. Despite recent rule changes that forced a radical change in the team's tune-up, the Martin-led crew has held their own, combining a tireless, positive attitude with a competitive and consistent race car to overcome the challenges put before them.
"We were very pleased to get some of our competitive performance back at the last race," said Martin. "I can't say enough about my ACDelco team, and how hard everyone has worked to readjust to the new fuel, reconfiguring our entire engine program to adapt to it.
"We're now trying to combine that success with a repeatable race car, so we think this weekend could be fun. We know that we can win in Milan -- it's just a matter of digging in and lining up all of those ducks to make it happen, which is what we are committed to doing.
"As we travel the circuit throughout the year, we know we have a lot of great fans, but nothing can compare to having our home state Michigan fans cheering for us. Nothing would be better than to allow the hard work and this team's great attitude to put us in the winner's circle, so we could share our success with all of them."
-credit: hmr
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