NHRA

Shelly Howard Baytown wrap up

Howard makes semifinals in return to competition. BAYTOWN, Texas - NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster driver Shelly Howard netted a semifinal finish in her return to competition at this past weekend's O'Reilly Spring Nationals presented by Pennzoil at ...

Published: Apr 16, 2003, 9:38 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Howard makes semifinals in return to competition.

BAYTOWN, Texas - NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster driver Shelly Howard netted a semifinal finish in her return to competition at this past weekend's O'Reilly Spring Nationals presented by Pennzoil at Houston Raceway Park. Unfortunately for the team, however, they missed the call for the round after wounding an engine in round two.

Howard, from Tulsa, Okla., qualified her Tom Conway tuned Blown Alcohol Dragster seventh with a career-best 5.377 at 263.77 mph. In round one, she took out Division 6 Champ Brandon Johnson with a 5.453 at 262.44 mph, and then defeated Michael Gunderson with a 5.633 at only 224.73 mph when the motor gave away at around the 1000' mark. Howard and her team thrashed to get the spare motor in the car, but just missed the 75 minute turnaround by mere minutes. Howard was actually suited in the car ready to run and towing towards the line when they fired Shields to run.

"It's really a tough break to lose a round like that," said Howard. "We were ready to run and on the way to the line when they told us it was too late. We didn't have several of our normal crewmembers with us this weekend, so we just didn't make the call. It's hard enough when you have your normal guys to swap engines, much less when you only have a couple of your normal crewmembers. It's not to say the people that helped us wasn't any good, that's not the case at all, it just takes time to gel as a team to be able to get through those kinds of circumstances."

From Houston, Howard and her team will move north to the Texas Motorplex for race three of the Division 4 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series just outside of Dallas. There Howard hopes to make a strong return to Division 4 competition after missing the Memphis event.

"We just want to go up there and get back on track," stated Howard. "We ran good this weekend, but that doesn't guarantee that we'll run good up there, so we'll just take it one step at a time. That's all we can do."

-shr-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Baytown: Pawuk Racing eliminations summary

Next article Marc White Baytown wrap up

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Who will win this year’s ultimate F1 dream ticket? You decide…

Sponsored

Sponsored 28 min

Who will win this year’s ultimate F1 dream ticket? You decide…

Ferrari promotes F2 racer to F1 reserve driver role

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

1 h

Ferrari promotes F2 racer to F1 reserve driver role

Employing team orders can simply be a matter of common sense

Formula 1

Employing team orders can simply be a matter of common sense

Max Verstappen risks penalty after FP1 clash at Portimao GTWC finale

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance 1 h

Max Verstappen risks penalty after FP1 clash at Portimao GTWC finale

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts