Coughlin disappointed with early exit from E-town
ENGLISHTOWN, NJ – After a season-best result at the last stop of the Get Screened America Pro Mod Drag Racing Series, Troy Coughlin was pumped up about this weekend’s 42nd annual NHRA SuperNationals. But some gremlins in
his JEGS.com Pontiac’s electronics left him outside the elimination field with a best pass of just 6.083 seconds at 238.60 mph, .079 seconds off the necessary pace.
“We worked really hard to come here and compete in these NHRA races, and when you have little gremlins come up and bite you here and there, it can put you back a little bit,” said Coughlin, a past winner at the Englishtown event. “The JEGS.com team is strong and we’ll get past this. We’ll go back to the shop, regroup, and make sure we’re 100-percent ready for Bristol in two weeks.”
Coughlin and crew, who posted a first-of-its-kind 5.95-second run in their small-block GTO in Georgia, put some new computerized batteries into service this weekend and Coughlin is pointing to the new apparatus as the probable cause of their issues at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.
“I think we had a hiccup with the batteries,” Coughlin said. “We had an ignition box go bad while we were warming up this morning, weird little things like that, and we’re wondering, did some of this stuff cause some of the problems we had in the prior runs? We’re not sure yet.
“I do know we put our best foot forward and used our best tune-ups from the Atlanta race. We had a little too much power for the first 100 feet of the track. We had a little more smoke there than we wanted. Still, we almost skated by, the tires just gave up a little bit out there. That was pretty much it for us.
“We’ll go back and re-polish everything and double-check the car and get ready for the next one. That’s pretty much all you can do at this point.”
The next event on the Get Screened America Pro Mod Drag Racing Series occurs June 17-19 with the 11th annual Ford NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway.
