Lucas Oil pro Richie Crampton sees silver lining in qualifying No. 14

CHARLOTTE – The NHRA Carolina Nationals hasn’t started the way Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster driver Richie Crampton and his Morgan Lucas Racing team wanted, but that could work out to their benefit.

The race marks the start of the six-race Countdown to the Championship, which determines the Top Fuel championship. Crampton has won four times in 2015 and sits third in the points standings.

He qualified No. 14 for Charlotte, and while that normally is cause for some concern, there is a huge upside because he’ll face Countdown contender Steve Torrence in the first round of eliminations on Sunday.

“We’ve struggled here in qualifying, and that’s not what we wanted to do, but the upside is when you’re down in the bottom half of the field on the qualifying sheet like we are, you will typically draw someone that you need to take out who is in the Countdown with you,” Crampton said. “There’s an upside to being on the bottom side of the ladder.”

Crampton’s top pass was 4.021 seconds at 278.92 mph, and Torrence qualified No. 3 with a run of 3.786 at 320.36 mph.

“We have Steve-O, who is definitely a contender,” Crampton said. “If we can get him out of the way early enough, that’s good. And there’s a whole bunch of other contenders we need to take care of as well.”

Crampton remains confident on his MLR team, which is led by crew chief Aaron Brooks. The team took some extra chances during qualifying because there are only 15 cars here, meaning Crampton was locked in the field no matter what.

“We’ve seen what this team is capable of,” Crampton said. “We’ve struggled but in some ways, with the car count that’s here, we knew we would qualify. That’s given us the opportunity to swing for the fences a little harder than we would normally do. We knew we would be in the show, and we tried to do a little testing here in qualifying. We’ll be back where we belong tomorrow.”