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‘New pipe’ shows plenty of speed for Lucas Oil Top Fuel ace Richie Crampton

INDIANAPOLIS – Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster driver Richie Crampton won the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals last Richie Crampton - New Dragsterweekend at Brainerd International Raceway with a career-best 3.69-second pass, but that’s not good enough for Crampton and his Morgan Lucas Racing team.

MLR built a new car for the U.S. Nationals and the Countdown to the Championship, and it was plenty fast in testing Wednesday at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis.

“It was a good day, for sure,” Crampton said. “We put our 3.69 race car to the side and broke out a new race car. I wasn’t sure we needed to do that after our success, but this one worked out pretty well. All things are looking good for Indy.”


Crampton made five passes during testing, making three terrific runs and one planned shutdown. His top lap was 3.725 seconds at 321.04 mph, leading the seven Top Fuel cars at the test. Crampton’s other passes were 3.754 seconds at 325.85 mph and 3.803 at 326.87 mph, both run during the heat of the day.

Crampton, crew chief Aaron Brooks, and lead fabricator Jason Rush built the car in the MLR shop in Brownsburg, Ind., continuing the team’s process of constructing its own chassis.

“The whole process of building a car in-house at MLR has become more streamlined,” Crampton said. “The end result has been some high-quality race cars. Every one of them has been as good as we can make it, and it shows by the results we’ve been able to achieve with them.

“Other manufacturers have been building race cars for 20 years, and we only started in 2012, so we’re pretty proud of that. Once again, it’s another fantastic job by everyone at MLR.”

Crampton and MLR debuted an in-house car at the Indy test in 2014, and Crampton later drove it to victory at the U.S. Nationals.

“The one we set aside was a brand-new race car at the Indy test session last year,” Crampton said. “We’re following in the footsteps of that, trying to get some ‘fresh pipe’ and bring out a new race car and finish out the year with it. Hopefully, it rewards as much as the last one did.”

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