Line Quick on Sunday at Summit Racing NHRA Nationals
NORWALK, Ohio, July 5, 2015 – Jason Line and the blue Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro came to life on Sunday at the 9th annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals at Norwalk’s Summit Motorsports Park. The memory of a tough set of qualifying passes was left in the past as Line had one of the quickest cars on the property on raceday, and he collected two round wins en route to a semifinals finish in a nice showing that reminded the class that he was a contender.
“My Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro was definitely not the same racecar we had on Friday and Saturday,” said a pleasingly surprised Line. “The car was good today – but the driver, not so much. It was still a great day for the Summit Racing team, though, and we won the race with my teammate Greg Anderson’s car. It would have been nice to have both of our Chevys in the final, but after today I feel a lot better going to Chicago [the next race on the 2015 Mello Yello Series tour].”
Line qualified in the No. 12 spot, a shocking position for a driver who held the points lead off and on in the first part of the season. Coming into the Norwalk event, Line had two wins in three final rounds on his scorecard, including a victory over Anderson at the Summit Racing NHRA Southern Nationals earlier this spring in Atlanta.
Sunday, rekindled the memory of that strong Summit Racing Camaro Line had earlier this year. In the first round in Norwalk, he recorded low elapsed time of eliminations with a 6.550-second pass at 211.66 mph that handily disposed of KB Racing-powered Vincent Nobile and a 6.557, 211.79.
In the second round, Line was first off the starting line and first to the finish with a 6.583, 210.73 that matched Larry Morgan’s 6.583 with a 211.63. The round-win was technically a holeshot and sent Line to the semifinals, where he came up against Drew Skillman. His opponent was first off the starting line, and that was the decider as Line powered to a quicker 6.568, 211.69 (low elapsed time of the round) but fell to Skillman’s 6.588, 211.36.
“We’ve been testing a lot of things the last few weeks, and we had to sleep on it a little bit, think about some of the things we’d done, and go backwards a little bit,” said Line, No. 3 in the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Pro Stock points. “We kind of went back to square one, and now we have a good hot rod again. We have four good hot rods in the KB Racing/Summit Racing stable, so we’re pretty excited to get to Chicago next week and get back to it.”