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The latest update as of September 20, 2010


"Filling in a few blanks and a bit of news"

Despite the lack of results after the first round of eliminations on Drag Race Central from the Belle Rose Lucas Oil series race, we've managed to find the points earned by the two funny car racers left in eliminations at that event. Steve Gasparelli lost in the semi-final and gained the grand sum of 11 points towards his season total, while Tony Bartone grabbed all the points available, the maximum of 85 and jumped all the way from the #10 spot to the middle of the pack at #5, pushing Gasparelli down a notch to #6 in the process.

While just a week ago he might have been a very darkhorse to win the season championship, Bartone's prospects have improved considerably with his win at Belle Rose and he's got an excellent chance to move up another notch to fourth on the charts with a good performance at Dallas this coming weekend. He's earned points at five national events already this season, but his worst outing was a DNQ which earned only 10 "participation" points (sort of like the "good try" ribbons they hand out in primary school), so just qualifying for the national event at the Texas Motorplex will put him into a tie with #4 Steve Harker.

Harker will also be at Dallas, or at least he's pre-entered for the event. Harker's team hasn't been on the sort of roll that saw them finish second in the national standings last year, and rumours continue to intimate that Harker won't be racing after this season. Based on his latest outings which have seen him lose in the early rounds at the last three events, we'll reserve judgement on just how hard he's going to run at Dallas. I'm betting they'll be rocking as they usually are. We'll start to get some answers to a few questions about Harker and Bartone and the seven other Top Alcohol championship contenders that have pre-entered the race that starts in just four days time.

Update: Just checked the pre-entry list for Dallas and noticed John Lombardo Jr. added to the list, plus a glance at my points table further down the page showed that Gasparelli will be there too even though I'd added his participation to the wrong column. My bad.

In other Lucas Series points news, it's confirmed that #2 Top Alcohol Dragster Shawn Cowie will be at the Eagle Point (Medford) Oregon, Division Six Lucas race this coming weekend as he attempts to close the gap on the points leader, Bill Reichert. It will be Cowie's eighth, and final, divisional event where he can gain points, but the most he can gain will be only 21. Why? In his seven previous divisional events he has two wins and five runner-ups, so even with a win this weekend he'll only replace a 64 point race with the 85 points earned for winning at Medford, making a 21 point gain in his national points total. Simple, eh? The bottom line is that he'll pull within 21 points of Reichert if he can win the final Division Six Lucas Series race of the season and tighten the battle for the championship that much more.

That's all the major news I've got at hand this morning, and even though I've been itching to throw a few rocks at some racers who are - in my opinion - primadonnas, or simply people who run off their mouths without thinking about what they're saying and to whom they're saying it, I'm going to let that rant rest for a bit. I'll save it for a rainy day..... which strangely enough, is exactly what's happening outside right now. In fact it's belting down. But I'm still in too good a mood to ruin it with another of my ill-tempered blasts at anyone or everyone.

As always, more news when it happens, even if we have to make it up.

Okay, here's just one more table, so you can see exactly how many races are left for the Lucas Oil Series championship contenders to compete at.

DATELOCATIONEVENTTYPE
September 23 - 26Dallas, TXSuper Start Batteries Fall NationalsNAT
September 25 - 26Eagle Point, OR"Northwest Championship"DIV
October 1 - 3Atco, NJLucas Oil Drag Racing SeriesDIV
October 7 - 10Reading, PAToyo Tires NHRA NationalsNAT
October 15 - 17Reynolds, GALucas Oil Drag Racing SeriesDIV
October 22 - 24Noble, OK"Thunder In The Heartland"DIV
October 28 - 31Las Vegas, NVNHRA Las Vegas NationalsNAT
November 4 - 7Las Vegas, NVLucas Oil Drag Racing SeriesDIV
November 11 - 14Pomona, CAAuto Club of SoCal NHRA FinalsNAT

























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