Keith Haney ready to win Dragstock XII at Rockingham Dragway

ROCKINGHAM, NC – Keith Haney and his Keith Haney Racing team have done everything but win this year, so he has one goal for this weekend’s PDRA Dragstock XII at Rockingham Dragway: Win.

“I said it before and I’ll say it again: We’re not pretenders, we’re contenders,” Haney said. “It’s time to race this Camaro to the winner’s circle this weekend. That’s what I’m going for. I won’t be satisfied with anything but a win. I’ve got a runner-up this year, some round-wins, but I need to go win some races in PDRA against the best.”

Haney and his Lucas Oil/RacingJunk.com Pro Nitrous Chevrolet Camaro have performed well since a switch to a new Reher-Morrison Racing Engines powerplant in May, and he raced to a runner-up finish in the Throw Down in T-Town at Osage Casino Tulsa Raceway Park last month.

“Everything is going really well,” Haney said. “The Larry Jeffers car is great, the motor is great, the team is great. If we can get around some minor bumps that we’ve had lately — not us, but parts and things like that. The team is doing great. From the start of the year to this point is day and night — day and night.”

Part of the change in fortunes has been the new engine, but Haney’s race team has improved, too. With a race car set up by Brandon Switzer and chassis tuner Brandon Pesz, Haney’s team has become a consistent threat and has greatly improved since the race in Rockingham in April.

“We started the year here with the little motor, with a little under-performance,” Haney said. “Now, we’re back with more performance under the hood with Reher-Morrison.”

After the runner-up at Tulsa, Haney sped to the No. 6 qualifying spot in the PDRA race in Memphis, Tenn., before parts failure ended his day.

“We did well in Memphis, qualified No. 6, but in round one we had some bad spark plugs,” Haney said. “It happened to a couple teams that weekend, so there was nothing we could do about that. We just have to regroup and go back after it again.”

Haney will be racing with a new computer system designed by Switzer in Rockingham. The Motec M1 system worked well in test runs there Thursday, with Haney running well in the heat of the day.

“He came out with a little easier system to operate,” Haney said. “Anybody can buy it from him and run it. It’s a real user-friendly program and makes it a little easier than the one we had.

“We’re looking forward to it,” Haney said. “We’ve only got three races total left, this being one of them. We’re excited. We’ve been running the new Lucas Oil and it’s been great. Now everybody’s going to it.”