The weather was hot and humid for qualifying  and cool and breezy for eliminations on Sunday at the NHRA Lucas Oil divisional race held in Baytown, Texas. The Hitchman Racing team put down one test pass on Thursday which showed a good launch and the team was happy.

The first qualifying pass was not until 5:45pm on Friday and Darryl laid down his qualifying pass of 5.615 @ 256.50. That held him to the seventh spot in the eight car field. He broke the clutch stand off the flywheel in the second qualifying pass and ran a 5.654 in the third pass with the fuel line coming off.

First round eliminations matched him up with Michael Manners who was qualified in the second spot running a 5.38. Darryl left on him with a reaction time of .057 to Michael’s .131 and pulled out a fantastic win running a 5.465 @ 250.92 and that was with the fuel line coming off again at 4.38 seconds! That was why his MPH was so low at the top end. Michael ran a 5.540 @ 269.89.

The team was on top of the world at that point. The fuel line was reattached and Darryl left the tune up the same. They were lined up against Todd Odom who had run a 5.47 to qualify and ran 5.43 in first round eliminations. Darryl will have to be on the mark for the next round.

There was cloud cover when the team went into the staging lanes and the tune up was the same as the earlier run.  The class was still in the lanes waiting when the sun broke through and heated up the track. Unfortunately, Darryl’s tune up was a little too aggressive for the hot track and he smoked the tires. That ended the race for the team.