Rapisarda Racing moved into 14 th spot after day one of qualifying of the NHRA Arizona Nationals at Firebird International Raceway.
An aggressive tune up for the opening session saw the team struggle with a pass of 8.45/73.97 sec and finish the session in 16 th place. The second qualifier held in the late afternoon netted the team a much improved pass of 3.97/309.98 mph.
“We were too aggressive on our first run,” according to tuner Keith Stewart. “However we were able to gather some really useful data that we used to make changes in the clutch set up and it worked. We were happy with our second run and we are going to make some more changes to the car overnight . I’m confident that we can go faster and improve on todays effort.”
Cory McClenathan supported Stewart’s view regarding the aggressive opening run and added that the team needed to get the car to go from A to B.
“On the second run it got off the line strongly, was good through the middle and the time and top speed was a major improvement.” said McClenathan.
“Tomorrow we are looking at running in the mid 3.80 sec and get our top speed close to the 320 mph. It would be good to qualify higher and with that we get a better spot for Sunday race.”
images courtesy Christie Mokotupu
