Madison's Hot Streak Cooled in Charlotte

Madison's Hot Streak Cooled in Charlotte



Charlotte - After two final rounds in a row, the Muscle Milk A/Fuel Dragster team had an off weekend due to circumstances beyond anyone's control at the Betway NHRA Carolina Nationals. Madison qualified 15th with a 6.97 after a third qualifying sessionwas canceled. Madison would have faced No. 1 Qualifier Julie Nataas in the first round. However, a last-minute disqualification of Rich McPhillips' car driven by Tony Stewart reshuffled the deck and Madison ended up racing Earl Nichols instead.

At the hit, Nichols got out of the box first with a .037 reaction time to Madison's .074. Nichols built on his starting line lead and got to the stripe first with a 5.22 at 275 MPH over Madison's 5.26 at 274 MPH which was her best run of the weekend. Madison was disappointed but optimistic going into the next race in Virginia. "It wasn't the weekend we wanted. We needed that third qualifying session, but Duane and his team put up a great first-round run that would have beat anyone else that round, so it's unfortunate, but that's racing. We are ready for Virginia and looking forward to hopefully redeeming ourselves" she said.

Car owner Duane Shields was also disappointed with how the weekend's circumstances changed the outcome of the race. "We lost a round of qualifying which put us behind the eightball. We changed the tune-up last night and hoped we would get another qualifying run before eliminations but didn't. We expected to run Julie Nataas but Tony Stewart was disqualified shortly before the first round. Had we raced Julie we would have likely won that round since she had problems on her run. Nichols had the quickest run of the round and we had the second" Duane said.

Next, the team heads to Richmond, Virginia for an NHRA Regional event from September 29 - October 1. "We will take what we learned here and head to Virginia. We are encouraged that the car will run well" Duane said. Duane and Madison would like to thank Muscle Milk, Brad Anderson Enterprises, NGK Spark Plugs, GRP Connecting Rods, and Clean Boost for all of their support.