Sonoma: Jason Line Friday notes

Line Celebrates His Birthday, Places Third in Friday Sonoma Qualifying

Jason Line celebrated his 40th birthday on Friday by opening his qualifying effort at the Fram Autolite Nationals in Sonoma, CA, and his Summit Racing Pontiac gave him the present of running extremely well. In each of the two sessions, Line was among the best of the 19 cars making an attempt, with his 6.574-second, 209.52 mph pass in the evening session, which tied for second quicke st and was an immeasurable one thousandth of a second behind the top spot, eventually placing him third based on a top-speed tiebreaker. Pleased with his opening effort, the 2006 Pro Stock champion headed into Saturday's final two sessions looking for ways to improve even further.

"For my birthday, I asked my Summit Racing Pontiac for two good runs, and it gave me what I wanted," said Line. "Tonight it shook just a little bit in the top of low gear, but other than that it was a really nice run, and the good news is that I think there's some left in it. All in all, I'm pretty happy, although we have to figure out why my teammate isn't running any better than he is.

"Still, the bottom line is that we'll have a good starting spot for Sunday, and I still think we can improve on it tomorrow. All in all, there are no complaints from me -- a good work day and not a terrible way to spend my birthday."

-credit: kbr