Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series - West Regional - Las Vegas, NV

It's starting to seem that this event will never end for the Top Alcohol racers, as we're well into day four and we've just finished Top Alcohol eliminations. In the dragsters, it was Madison Payne taking her first regional event win of the season, that solidified her hold on the #10 spot in the standings. She took out veteran Joey Severance in the final when Severance was forced to pedal, and couldn't get back on the loud pedal quickly enough to stay in the hunt. He's in the #11 spot in the standings, and has an outside chance to get into the Top Ten with a good performance at Pomona. He's got a bonus event to race in there, as he's in the final four from the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals, which will be contested during qualifying for the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals.

On the funny car side, it was another case of "same old, same old" as the Killer B's "Retribution Tour" continued their winning ways. Driver Sean Bellemeur took the event win in a close race against the Miner Brothers car with Alaskan Ray Martin driving. He's currently occupying the #11 spot in the points standings, but will almost certainly vault into the Top Ten at Pomona. That's partly based on the assumption that a number of racers who haven't yet entered the Pomona event get their entries in at the last minute. Since none of them are in contention for a top placing, that seems very unlikely.

One racer that made a big jump in the standings at the Las Vegas regional was Ulf Leanders who jumped from #11 to #8 with his semifinal finish. The Leanders brothers will be racing at Pomona and could pick up one more spot with a semifinal finish. And if Ray Martin has a good outing at the final event of the season, he could battle Leanders for the #7 or #8 position in the final standings.

We'll wait until the entry deadline passes on Tuesday, presuming that Monday which is Veterans Day, is not a business day and the deadline is usually on the first business day of the week of an event.

Next up at Northern Thunder is more work on our Las Vegas coverage with a large batch of photos from Friday and Saturday's action, plus heaps of captions to go with them.