Troy Coughlin reaches ‘elite eight’ in Pro Mod action

Courtesy of Jegs

LAS VEGAS, NV – It wasn’t the storybook finish Troy Coughlin envisioned for the JEGS.com Pontiac GTO in Sunday’s Get Screened America Pro Mod Series action at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but his turbocharged small block is still defying the odds.

“I guess none of the other Pro Mod racers got the memo that we were supposed to win today,” Coughlin said with a laugh. “We had a decent run today, we just got beat.”

After winning the first round of eliminations on Saturday night, Coughlin was paired with former Team JEGS crew chief “Tricky” Rickie Smith in the second round.

After being burned-down by Smith at the starting line, Coughlin’s car got off to a smooth start, but it just didn’t have enough juice to beat Smith, who ran a 6.016-second pass at 236.63 mph. Coughlin crossed the line in 6.047 at 246.17 mph.

“We all want to win, but no matter what, it’s really good that we are making consistent runs,” Coughlin said. “We’re getting just about everything we can out of this combination. It’s going to be this way running against these other cars with bigger engines, but this JEGS car is a Top 5 player. We just need to get Sunday under control.”

The entire JEGS.com turbo program is far ahead of where Coughlin expected it would be at this early point in the season.

“We’ve accomplished a lot already,” Coughlin said. “But we’ve got a lot of competitive guys on this team who want to see this thing go. We’re taking something that supposedly can’t be done and making pretty good strides with it.

“It’s just our second race as a group with this team, so when you look what we’ve done, it’s pretty awesome.”

The Get Screened America Pro Mod Series’ next stop on the schedule will be April 29-May 1 at Royal Purple Raceway in Houston.