Lucas Oil pro Richie Crampton leaves Seattle with track record, gain in points

SEATTLE – Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster driver Richie Crampton had a successful run in the NHRA Northwest Nationals this weekend at Pacific Raceways.

Not only did the second-year driver take home the track record for elapsed time, Crampton also snared the No. 1 qualifying spot and moved up one position in the Top Fuel points standings to fourth.

“We definitely had a fantastic weekend here at Seattle,” said Crampton, who exited in the second round of eliminations on Sunday. “We gained a position in the points, which is always good, so we’re pecking away at that. We’ve definitely got a good race car under us still.

“We came up short a little against Shawn (Langdon), but we’re excited to get to Brainerd (Minn.). I think we’re going to show them what we’re really working with.”

After setting low e.t. of the first round, Crampton smoked the tires at the hit in a second-round matchup with Langdon. It was the first time all weekend that Crampton’s Lucas Oil dragster made a run slower than 3.849 seconds.

“That first 60 feet of the run, (crew chief) Aaron (Brooks) had this race car dialed in all weekend,” Crampton said. “That was definitely not a place where we were concerned about blowing the tires off like that. It was very uncharacteristic, but we’ll figure out what exactly we did there. It was going to be a good race, that’s for sure.”

Crampton set the track record in qualifying, 3.727 seconds, to take the No. 1 qualifier for the first time this year. That put him against No. 16 qualifier Ron Smith in the first round, but after Smith had to shut off, Crampton made a single run of 3.740 seconds at 322.96 mph that was the best of the round.

Crampton’s second-round pass was 9.909 seconds at 82.35 mph while Langdon went to the semifinals with a 3.810-second pass at 301.07 mph.

Another positive experience for Crampton was getting to visit World War II veteran Joe Reilly, who was a guest of the Morgan Lucas Racing team this weekend in conjunction with The Greatest Generation Foundation.

Reilly, age 94, served in the U.S. Army at Normandy during D-Day, later fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Reilly joined Crampton on stage during driver introductions, to the cheers of the Seattle crowd.

“It’s amazing to get to spend time with these heroes,” Crampton said. “Hopefully, we can do it more often in the future. We were extremely lucky to spend these last three race weekends with some American heroes and national treasures.

“I think Joe enjoyed it. This was his first drag race, so coming from a generation that spawned drag racing, he knew a lot about it, but this was his first time seeing Top Fuel cars run. I think he had a good weekend also.”