Seattle: Tom Martino wrap up

Entering Sunday's final eliminations of the Prolong Super Lubricants Northwest Nationals, Tom Martino knew he would need an outstanding effort to advance. After qualifying 14th, the CENTURY 21 Firebird pilot would be facing Pro Stock points leader Jeg Coughlin Jr., without the benefit of lane choice on a very tricky Seattle International Raceway. Martino and crew worked late into the night on Saturday performing major changes on their race car in hopes of bettering their performance from qualifying and scoring the upset victory. However, their hard work went for naught, as the combination of Coughlin's posting the quickest elapsed time of eliminations and Martino being forced to shut off early resulted in the New Jersey-based team's early exit from competition. Despite the results, Martino still found some positives in his weekend in the Northwest. "We drastically changed our Century 21 Firebird before today's first round, because we simply weren't happy with its performance in qualifying. Unfortunately, we ran through the clutch almost immediately on our run, which pulled us to the left and out of the groove. After that, I knew I wouldn't catch him, so we clicked it off early.

"We're going to go testing this Tuesday in Woodburn (Oregon) to see exactly what results came from the changes we made. From the limited data we got from today's run, there are a couple of areas that look promising. Hopefully, we'll be able to gather enough information from our test session to go into Sonoma next weekend with a solid handle on how to make our car respond like it was earlier in the year."