Demke Claims Important Vegas Regional Win
LAS VEGAS – Chris Demke’s Top Alcohol Dragster win at last weekend’s NHRA Lucas Oil Series West Region event 
in Las Vegas might not seem so special at first glance; a regional event win is a standard accomplishment for a championship team like Maddern Racing. But it really was an important win for Demke and team, as it was their first win in Sin City in five years and they defeated Joey Severance, who previously hadn’t lost a round at The Strip since 2013.
“We struggle at this racetrack all the time and this weekend certainly wasn’t any different. We faced our own challenges and the car never ran as good as I expected it to run, but as it turned out it was good enough,” Demke remarked.
Demke qualified the Peen Rite/Boost Performance Products blown alcohol dragster in the third spot, standing on his first run down the track, a 5.380 elapsed time at 269.76 mph. In the first round of eliminations, he defeated Randy Eakins, who he fell to in the first round at the SummitRacing.com Nationals in Vegas last weekend. The second round was the big one, though. Demke left just one thousandth of a second behind Joey Severance, then
charged ahead to win in a 5.415 to 5.429 race.
“Winning that round, as has happened with other rounds, felt like we won the race even though it wasn’t the final. We talked about it afterward; if there was a car out there that could break Joey Severance’s streak, it was our car. We were well-aware that we had stopped the ‘track owner’, so to speak,” Demke said, referencing Severance’s dominance at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway over the last year.
Finally, the defending national champion ran a consistent 5.416 in the final round to defeat back-to-back finalist Megan McKernan and lock up the second West Region spot in the eight-car JEGS Allstars race in July. The combination of achievements meant a lot to the Maddern Racing team, especially after a rare first-round loss.
“It was a challenging weekend, as they always are in Las Vegas. We came back from the national event debacle, got our focus back and returned to what our team knows best, and that’s going rounds. We’re securely in first place in national and regional points, and we locked in our JEGS Allstars position.”
The team will return to their Southern California base to refresh everything before heading east to Heartland Park Topeka for the Kansas Nationals in May.
