Brogdon to defend Bristol victory from No. 6 qualifying spot

BRISTOL, TN – ProtectTheHarvest.com driver Rodger Brogdon put himself in position to score back-to-back victories at the Ford NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway by qualifying in the No. 6 position Saturday.

Using an engine built in his shop in Houston, Brogdon sped to a pass of 6.643 seconds at 207.62 mph that put smiles on the faces of his race team.

“They’ve been putting in 80 hours a week for the last month or so,” Brogdon said. “They’re used to working a lot but not every Saturday and every Sunday. They’re putting a lot of effort into it, and they’re definitely heading down the right path. We’re all very proud of them.”

After using engines from Elite Motorsports at the last three races, Brogdon returned to his in-house engine program, which had been working overtime to improve horsepower. Brogdon originally considered skipping Bristol to continue developing engines, but his team convinced him not to.

“They had to talk me into it, honestly,” Brogdon said. “They said they were going a certain way with the engine program and we needed to run it to actually see if what they thought was better would go down the track. It’s definitely better, for sure.”

That was proven from the first qualifying session, when Brogdon was No. 5 after a pass of 6.680 at 206.51 mph. He stayed in the top eight until Q3 on Saturday, when the 6.643-second run moved him briefly to No. 1.

Another good pass in Q4 has Brogdon confident of a long day Sunday.

“I think we can win,” Brogdon said. “We can run within two-hundredths of the fastest car going down the track, so that’s a realistic chance of winning some rounds and winning the race. We’re real confident going into tomorrow.”

Brogdon squares off against four-time Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson in the first round Sunday. Anderson qualified No. 11 with a pass of 6.678 at 206.64 mph.

“We’ve never questioned our ability to win,” Brogdon said. “We just had to have a faster car. All we needed was just a little bit more to make it interesting on Sunday, and it’s going to be good tomorrow.”