CRAMPTON TAKES TOYOTA TO LAS VEGAS WINNER’S CIRCLE; DeJORIA ADVANCES TO FUNNY CAR SEMI’S
LAS VEGAS, NV – Richie Crampton defeated Larry Dixon in the Top Fuel final to give Toyota it’s third NHRA 
victory of the season, while Alexis DeJoria drove her Camry to the Funny Car semi-finals at the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Sunday.
After registering the quickest time in Saturday’s qualifying, Crampton followed that up by running low time in three of the four elimination rounds today.
“This was just a fantastic team effort,” said Crampton, the 2014 NHRA Rookie of the Year. “We tested our Lucas Oil Toyota dragster here right before Pomona and it paid off today. (Crew chief) Aaron Brooks just had this car dialed in today. It was just so much fun to drive all day. The MLR team has had a tendency to really take off in the hotter summer months, so to start off with such a consistent car, winning rounds and winning today’s race is really exciting. To be in fifth place and just 36 points out of the series lead is huge. We were the Traxxas Shoot-out runner-up last year and we have our sights on winning it this year, so we’re also very excited to secure our slot already in this year’s race.”
Antron Brown retained the Top Fuel point lead despite losing to fellow Toyota driver Shawn Langdon in today’s opening round. Langdon subsequently lost in the second round, but did close to within 15 points of Brown in third place.
After a fire in the team’s transporter on Thursday, DeJoria rebounded strongly to advance to the semi-finals. She defeated Courtney Force in her opening run and then knocked off teammate Del Worsham in a pedal-fest in round two before smoking the tires in the semi-finals against eventual race winner John Force.
“It was a strange start to the weekend with the fire on our truck on Thursday, but man did the Patron XO Café Incendio Camry guys turn it around,” said DeJoria. “We had two great days of qualifying where we made it down the track every time and we made it to the semi-finals. We didn’t get to run for the trophy, but we made some progress this weekend.”
Both Cruz Pedregon and Worsham won one Funny Car round today. Pedregon ran one of the quickest passes of the day in defeating Jack Beckman in the opening round before losing traction in the upper 80s heat in a second-round loss to Robert Hight. Worsham remained in second place in the Funny Car standings by beating fellow Camry driver Tony Pedregon. Chad Head led John Force through the eighth-mile before losing traction shortly before in the finish in his first-round loss.
The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series is off this weekend and returns to action at the O’Reilly Auto Parts Spring Nationals at the Royal Purple Raceway in suburban Houston, April 24-26.
