Line Rebounds to Place Sixth on Friday in Seattle
Event: 25th annual NHRA Northwest Nationals
Location: Pacific Raceways, Kent,
Day/Date: Friday, August 3, 2012
With only four attempts in which to not only secure as high a spot as possible in Sunday’s final eliminations field, but also learn as much as possible about the racing surface, every qualifying session at an NHRA event is an important step towards ensuring success on race day. Therefore, when defending event and series champion Jason Line suffered a malfunction in his transmission on his opening run, his Summit Racing team found themselves scrambling to recover in time for the evening session.
Despite running in the very first pair, Line recorded a respectable 6.597-second elapsed time with a top speed of 210.54 mph to slot sixth with two attempts remaining on Saturday.
“You never want to be the first one out in the session, but we had not choice after breaking a piece in the transmission on our first attempt,” said Line. “It wasn’t a terribly good run, and we gave up a couple hundredths in the first sixty feet, which prevented us from being with the cars higher in the order.
“We just got behind, which happens. Things break, which is a part of racing, and we now have to figure out how to bounce back. We have two more attempts tomorrow to move this Summit Racing Camaro up the ladder and in a better position for race day, and that is what we’ll be focusing on.”