St. Louis: Jerry Toliver final summary

Jerry Toliver Pleased with Results from First Funny Car Event

Jerry Toliver didn't really have an opportunity to challenge Ashley Force in the first round of Sunday's O'Reilly Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway, but he was happy to be in the starting lineup.

When the green light went on and Toliver dropped the hammer, the car moved away slowly. The throttle linkage broke and he had to coast to the finish line in 16.433 seconds at 66.71 mph while watching Force win in 4.860 seconds at 305.84.

"Every time we make a lap we get more  information and we need laps,"
Toliver said, "and we didn't want to lose that  one.  We really wanted to get that
lap, win or lose, to see how it would  react with the tune-up we put into it
from Saturday night's qualifying.  We  are continuing to improve.

"We have a good hot-weather tune-up we  are creeping up on and it's going to
get better. We tuned that car up to run  4.85 and if we'd been able to run
that we would've won that round.  But it  didn't, and we didn't.

-credit: jtr