Richie Crampton claimed a round win for the SealMaster team in Texas today.
Crampton had two qualifying passes and he was especially stout in the Friday evening session to solidly give him a top half starting spot.
Crampton was the first pair on the track for the third straight race. This time, he raced Billy Torrence. Crampton got the jump in his SealMaster Toyota and blazed down the track with a career-best pass at 3.683 seconds. That would be tied for the best elapsed time of the first round.
In the quarterfinals, he raced Billy’s son, the points leader, Steve Torrence. Crampton had another good pass, but Torrence was ahead early. However, right before the finish line, Torrence lost a tire. He was able to just beat the SealMaster machine to the line before a vicious crash. Torrence would walk away uninjured.
Statistics:
Qualified: No. 8 (3.749 sec., 294.88 mph)
E1: Crampton defeated B. Torrence – 3.683 sec., 326.79 mph to 3.726 sec., 326.95 mph
E2: Crampton defeated by S. Torrence – 3.711 sec., 325.53 mph to 3.724 sec., 302.62 mph
Quotable: “We qualified strong and then put down two good runs on race day. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough to get by Torrence, but I’m glad he’s ok. All-in-all, this SealMaster Toyota is looking good heading to the Toyota Nationals and it’s not over yet. We’re going to continue to try to do our job and play spoiler for Doug and Shawn and try to go some more rounds. To have the quickest ET of the first session shows the quality of this team. These guys have what it takes and I’m pretty excited to get to Vegas.”
Team Kalitta PR/Photo Gary Nastase Photography
