Following last week’s on-track incident in Houston, the DC Motorsports team brought out their backup Funny Car for the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway. The last time they sent their spare car down the track was during pre-season testing in February, but the team quickly adapted, and Alexis DeJoria used her best qualifying time of 3.936 seconds to qualify ninth for Sunday’s elimination show.
Having enjoyed a solid showing at the previous two four-wide events (Las Vegas 2022, Charlotte 2021), DeJoria was looking to take her Bandero Tequila Toyota GR Supra Funny Car to its third consecutive four-wide final quad appearance on race day in Charlotte. The six-time Funny Car winner lined up against John Force and Bob Tasca in round one, and powered the Bandero Supra to the finish line in 3.899 seconds, an E.T. that likely would have earned her the round win had she been in any of the other three Funny Car elimination quads. Unfortunately for DeJoria, both Tasca and Force’s machines were just a tick faster and their E.T.s allowed them to advance into the next round.
“We made some progress in our backup car that we haven’t run since testing in Arizona back in February,” said DeJoria, who departs zMAX ranked eighth in the Funny Car standings. “We ran a 3.89 today and had a good light and just got beat by seven-thousandths-of-a-second and sometimes that’s just the way it goes out here. The competition is stout and it’s hard to win races, but we’re a strong team. We’ve been a little out of sorts since Houston last weekend and having to get everything back together so quickly without a break (in the schedule) was tough. Now we have a week off to plan things out and get ready for Virginia. We’re going to test on Monday and we’re looking forward to getting back at it in a few weeks.”
Qualified: No. 9 (3.936 E.T. at 328.38 MPH)
Elimination Round Results:
E1: 3.899 E.T. at 324.98 MPH defeated by John Force 3.892 E.T. at 335.07 MPH, Bob Tasca 3.878 E.T. at 331.20 MPH
NHRA Camping World Series Funny Car Point Standings (Unofficial):
| 1 | Matt Hagan | 567 | |
| 2 | Robert Hight | 545 | |
| 3 | Ron Capps | 501 | |
| 4 | John Force | 375 | |
| 5 | Cruz Pedregon | 340 | |
| 6 | J.R. Todd | 295 | |
| 7 | Bob Tasca III | 283 | |
| 8 | Alexis DeJoria | 273 | |
| 9 | Chad Green | 269 | |
| 10 | Tim Wilkerson | 244 |
ABM Communications PR
