CHARLOTTE – Tommy Thompson Racing teammates Dom Lagana and Scott Palmer successfully raced their way into the Top Fuel elimination field of this weekend’s 11th annual NHRA Carolina Nationals and are ready to challenge for the trophy when Sunday’s eliminations kick off at zMax Dragway.

Lagana did a slightly better job in qualifying his Magic Dry Absorbent dragster in the No. 8 position with a best pass of 3.762 at 324.59 mph. Palmer was just a few spots back in the 12th slot with a 3.788 at 326.56 mph in his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter rail.

“We’ve got the best car we’ve had all year going into race day,” said Lagana, who is competing for the seventh time this year. “We’ll just take it round by round and see how good the track is and what it will take. It’s a noon start but I think it’s still going to be fairly cool tomorrow. It should be just as good as it was in Q4, if not better.

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CHARLOTTE – Dom Lagana was born into a drag racing family and he feels most at home when he’s at the drag strip. That holds true whether he’s driving his family-owned Magic Dry 100% Organic Multi-Purpose Absorbent dragster or turning the wrenches of Billy Torrence’s CAPCO rail. As long as there’s nitro in the air and grease under his nails, Lagana has a smile on his face.

“I know how lucky I am to do what I do,” Lagana said. “No matter if it’s Billy’s car or mine, I’m still working hard trying to get the most out of every run.

“It’s worked out really well because we don’t race a full-time schedule with our family car and Billy doesn’t race a full-time schedule with the second CAPCO car so I make our schedules line up. Either way, I’m having fun and I know I’m where I belong.”

Billy Torrence is the father of Top Fuel points leader Steve Torrence and CAPCO is the Torrence family’s oilfield business. Due to business obligations, Billy only competes at a select number of national events with Lagana serving as a vital member of his crew. When Billy has to miss a race, Lagana pulls his family car out and races himself.

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CHARLOTTE – Earning a spot in NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship was a dream Top Fuel pilot Scott Palmer recently realized for the second year in a row thanks in large part to the support of team sponsor Tommy Thompson and his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter brand. His next big goal is winning a national event, something Palmer would dearly love to get done in the final three races of the 2018 season.

Palmer’s next chance will come this weekend at zMax Dragway in the Charlotte suburb of Concord, N.C., with the 11th annual NHRA Carolina Nationals.

“We have shown several times this year we are capable of running with anyone out here,” said Palmer, who came within a round of his first victory earlier this season with a runner-up finish in Phoenix. “With the tuning alliance we have with the CAPCO team (of points leader Steve Torrence and his father Billy), the support of Tommy Thompson, and a crew chief like Jason McCulloch, we have everything we need to win.

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ENNIS, TX – For the first portion of his opening-round race against reigning Top Fuel champ Brittany Force, Scott Palmer was thinking he might just be able to upset his higher-qualified rival. But his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter Top Fuel dragster slowed ever so slightly in the middle of the track and although the difference was barely perceptible, it was enough for Force to charge by and take the win.

“We actually tried to make the car run a 3.77 and if we had run close to that we would have won that round but it just kinda drove through the clutch a little bit,” Palmer said. “We tried to speed it up early but it didn’t respond. We’ve been like 3.82, 3.83 — I mean the car is really consistent — but it just didn’t respond the way we wanted it to that round. We’ll be more aggressive next week.”

Palmer started well, leaving .022 seconds ahead of Force and felt comfortable until somewhere around the second timing cone, but that’s when his fortunes changed and Force was able to slip by and take the finish line stripe first, running a 3.762 at 330.07 mph to Palmer’s 3.839 at 323.97 mph.

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ENNIS, TX – To win an NHRA drag race you have to be prepared to beat anyone in the field so it seems fitting that Scott Palmer will open his quest for the Top Fuel title of the 33rd annual AAA Texas NHRA Fall Nationals against reigning world champion Brittany Force.

Separated by just three hundredths of a second on the qualifying grid, Palmer likes his chances after a methodical four rounds of qualifying at the Texas Motorplex.

“We got a little behind in Q1 with a clutch issue,” Palmer said. “I couldn’t find neutral so I couldn’t get it into reverse. Because of that we had to be a little more conservative Friday night when most teams made their best passes.

“Today we went a little over-center in the first session and smoked the tires so we backed it down a touch from there for Q4 and just tried to run a low 3.8 to get a good baseline tune-up for tomorrow if it’s hot like this again.”

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ENNIS, TX – While others stress out about the challenges of the Countdown to the Championship, Scott Palmer and the popular CatSpot Organic Cat Litter Top Fuel dragster team prefer to stay focused on the No. 1 command from sponsor Tommy Thompson — “Have fun.”

“Tommy Thompson is so much more than a sponsor,” Palmer said. “He’s a friend, a true friend who always has our best interests at heart. He gives us everything we need to be successful and we certainly wouldn’t have had a chance to contend for championships the last two years without his support.

“But the thing about Tommy is he picked our team because he likes the way we race. We have fun and he loves that. He asks us all the time, ‘Are you having fun?’ He’s that kind of guy. There is no one in motorsports I’d rather work for than Tommy Thompson. I’m the luckiest guy out here.”

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ST. LOUIS – It was a frustrating Sunday for Top Fuel driver Scott Palmer when a broken throttle cable on his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter dragster left him stranded on the starting line during a Round 1 match-up with Leah Pritchett. Adding to the agony, Pritchett smoked the tires and drifted to a very beatable 5.568 at 125.37 mph.

“It’s the proverbial 50-cent part,” Palmer said. “It’s actually more than that but same difference. It’s a part you don’t expect to break but it did and we didn’t even get a chance to race. It’s a punch to the stomach.

“We had a very steady racecar all weekend and we definitely would have gone straight down the track if everything had held together. After running three 3.70s and a 3.80-flat in qualifying, we certainly had a handle on both lanes. It’s a pretty unfortunate deal for us.

“I feel bad for the team, the fans, our main sponsor Tommy Thompson, and everyone at CatSpot that came up from Sikeston, Missouri. All we can do is move forward from here and triple check every part and piece to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

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ST. LOUIS – It’s great to have a quick car in drag racing but it’s even better if you have a consistent hot rod to keep your opponents honest come race day so they fully expect a close race from start to finish. Such is the case for Scott Palmer this weekend at Gateway Motorsports Park where his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter Top Fuel dragster has been running like a bracket car.

“Having a fast car is great and it’s even better when your car goes down the track every time but really what you want the most is both — a really quick car that goes down the track every time,” Palmer said. “We probably could have pushed it a little harder and posted a better time that would have moved us further up the ladder but we’re still happy to have such a solid tune-up. We’ve got a race car for tomorrow.”

Palmer and crew chief Jason McCulloch cooked up four impressive runs between 3.779 and 3.806 seconds in qualifying, the best of which was a 3.779 at 323.74 mph that earned the Tommy Thompson-sponsored team a spot in the field of the seventh annual AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals.

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ST. LOUIS – Sight-seeing around St. Louis is going to have to wait for Scott Palmer and crew after the championship hopeful’s race day in Reading, Pa., ended with several shredded body panels flying off his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter Top Fuel dragster. So instead of touring the famous Arch, the team will be parked in Indianapolis awaiting a brand-new set of body pieces.

“We run a MLR chassis so we’re already at their shop in Indy getting a new body fitted,” Palmer said. “Richie Crampton (MLR fabricator and fellow Top Fuel driver) and his guys are working overtime to help us and we can’t thank them enough. That’s the drag racing way; we all help each other out.

“When you lose as many panels as we did you really just have to replace them all because if you try to patch an older body with a new body, you’re going to have problems. This is all custom-made stuff so you can’t really go to the store and get body panels. Either way, we’ll be ready for St. Louis, even if we don’t get much sleep.”

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READING, PA – Facing the most prolific Top Fuel racer of all-time, Tony Schumacher, an undaunted Scott Palmer and his CatSpot Organic Cat Litter Top Fuel dragster team gave their opponent all he could handle in a wild quarterfinal playoff race that was ultimately decided by dislodged body panels that temporarily blocked Palmer’s vision at 300-plus mph.

“That was wild,” Palmer said. “Some of the top body panels started coming off about 100 foot from the finish line. It started with one piece and then it just blew up like a bomb. The whole top — the windshield, the piece in front of the windshield, the piece beside me and a mud-flap all came off.

“The problem was, a body panel came over and was covering my helmet. I couldn’t see. There was no windshield. Also, a big piece of carbon fiber came in there with me and actually covered up the brake and wedged in the steering wheel. I couldn’t turn so I had to literally take my right hand and punch the body panel out of the frame rail so I could see where I was going and get to the brake. It was exciting to say the least.”

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