Line Just Misses At Summit Racing Southern Nationals
 
Atlanta, Ga., May 11, 2013 – Summit Racing Pro Stock driver Jason Line was fired up at his sponsor’s event at Atlanta Dragway, the 33rd annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals, and came into raceday as the No. 7 qualifier with something to prove. Although he was stopped short of achieving his goal, Line is grateful for a weekend that although delayed, proved productive.

Rain delayed the initial start to the event by an entire week, and Line and his team took careful advantage of the days between the eventual completion of the race. They returned home to Mooresville, N.C., and to the KB Racing shop and set back to work in search of more power and a better presentation than they’ve had so far this season. Line qualified in Atlanta with a 6.609 at 209.69 and a scored a first-round meeting with young Vincent Nobile. Last season, when Line was the No. 1 qualifier here at the Summit Racing Southern Nationals, he defeated Nobile in the second round on the way to the final.

With the realization that he was coming up against a routinely efficient starting-line manipulator, Line had his ducks in a row and left the starting line cleanly with a notable .019-second reaction. As predicted, Nobile was quick at the hit and launched with a .013. First to the finish, however, was Line driving the blue Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro. His 6.615 at 209.62 mph was second-quickest of all the Pro Stockers in the first round, and his opponent ran into trouble as he got out of the groove and had to give up the run.

In the second round, Line was again prepared for the challenge and clocked a very decent .025-second light to Jeg Coughlin’s .013. Line’s powerful Team Summit Chevy Camaro was second quickest of the round once more and quicker to the finish line stripe than his opponent, 6.619 to 6.624, but he forfeited the win by a mere .007-second.

“I’d take that light nine out of 10 times,” said Line. “If I could have a light like that every time I went to the starting line, I’d be in pretty good shape. But today, it wasn’t good enough. I wanted to be better than that, but you can’t beat yourself up over it. You just have to focus on being better the next time.”

Despite the early exit, Line moved up to the No. 5 position in the Mello Yello Series Pro Stock standings. He found the back-to-back journey to Atlanta to be a moderate success that will bode well for the future of the Summit Racing team.

“All in all, it was a good weekend,” said Line. “We definitely showed progress with both cars in the Summit Racing camp, and to be honest, I’m most excited about the fact that Greg has not really had a good car for quite some time. I feel like he had the best car he had all year this weekend, and we came up a little bit short, but it wasn’t terrible and it’s nothing to hang our heads over.

“We lost a good, close race, and sometimes that’s just the way it goes. But we’ll go back to work and try hard to find even more performance with our Summit Racing Camaros. We’re definitely heading in the right direction. This is a great team, and we all have the same goal: everyone on the Summit Racing team wants to be better than everybody else out here. We don’t strive for mediocrity; we have a good group of motivated guys who are all striving for perfection. It isn’t always easy, but that’s a really cool thing to be part of.”