FireAde pro Larry Morgan holds spot in top five of Pro Stock standings

ST. LOUIS – FireAde Pro Stock driver Larry Morgan maintained his top-five spot in the Pro Stock points standings by racing to the second round of the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals on Sunday at Gateway Motorsports Park.

Morgan, who has two victories in 2015, is fifth in the standings, but he’s only 51 points out of second place after two of six races in the Countdown to the Championship.

“Not a bad weekend, not a great one,” Morgan said. “We didn’t go back in points, so that’s always a plus. We’re moving up, but the bad part is Erica (Enders) is still going rounds. We need somebody to stop her to get us really back in it. Maybe that’ll be us.”

Enders extended her points lead to 113 over second-place Greg Anderson by racing to the final round, her second in a row in the Countdown.

Morgan did score an important round-win in the first round by dispatching two-time Pro Stock champion Jason Line, who was seventh in the standings headed to Gateway and a win over Morgan could have pushed the FireAde driver back.

But Morgan was quick on the Christmas Tree with a .020-second reaction time, and his pass of 6.554 seconds at 211.59 mph was more than enough to hold off Line’s quicker 6.525-second pass at 211.63 mph.

“The first round was killer,” Morgan said. “It was weighing on me, to be honest with you. That was a big round. Jason’s been having really good lights, and it was a big round in points for us to get around him.”

Morgan then got the jump on Bo Butner in the second round, .033 to .042, but Morgan’s Gray Motorsports-powered Camaro inexplicably slowed to a pass of 6.604 seconds at 209.39 mph. Butner got the win with a run of 6.543 seconds at 210.67 mph.

“We ran good the first run,” Morgan said. “We got a little squirrely down at the other end, but it was still OK. The second run, we kinda went back to our Q4 setup, but we broke a motor or something. It really wasn’t right from the time I let the clutch out.”