Race Results:
Lucas Oil Division 6
Spokane County Raceway
Spokane, Washington
July 30-August 1, 2010


Spokane County Raceway was the third stop on the schedule for Top Alcohol Funny Car's in the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series for Division 6. Ashwell Racing made the 8 hour trek from their home base in Keizer, Ore for a share of the prize and those valuable points. Before this race, driver Jeff Ashwell was 2nd in the points behind Brian Hough with Clint Thompson nipping at his heels in 3rd. Brian may have a lock on the Division 6 Championship but we know it will be a close battle at the remaining 3 races for 2nd place. To be able to finish 2nd or even 3rd in our first full time race schedule would be storybook for this team.

Besides Top Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car, Spokane had booked in Nostalgia Nitro Funny Cars, 4 jet cars, and a wheelstander. All this action resulted in some of the best crowds on a Saturday that Ashwell Racing has raced in front of this year. It was definitely standing room only!  (note: picture below taken on Friday)


Q1 on Friday was scheduled for 7:30pm, though I believe it was closer to 8:30 before we ran, which put qualifying right at dusk. It had been years since Jeff had driven at night so even though people might view that as a disadvantage he was surely up for the challenge. With the outside temp cooling off to a pleasant upper 70's and the track temp hovering around 94 degrees, Jeff goes out and clocks off a 6.026 at 237.21, which put him 3rd. The team had put in a new fuel system prior to this event so this was the first test of it. The motor may have been a little rich, but nothing that crew chief Norm Christensen wouldn't be able to sort out.

The team towed back into the pit to look over everything and finally called it a night around 10pm which allowed everyone to go watch the Nostalgia Nitro funny car's and the jets. Nothing like the smell of nitro and watching the header flames at night. Usually we don't get a chance to watch any racing during the weekend so this was a nice way to cap off the evening together as a team.

After a brief, but very intense severe thunderstorm during the night, the team awoke to cloudy skies and much cooler temperatures. Qualifying wasn't scheduled until 5pm that night so there was a lot of downtime to just be able to hang out as a group. After a few weather delays and oil downs Q2 had been pushed back until 7:30 which allowed the Spokane grandstands to reach near capacity. Jeff and the team really wanted to improve their qualifying E.T. so when the car went out there and kicked the belt off around 800 feet it was a huge letdown for everyone. With Q3 about an hour away the team decided to sit out the final round of qualifying to thourghly look over the motor and not chance anything of breaking.


After qualifying being held completely at night it was a welcome relief to have eliminations start at 10am as win or lose we still had an 8 hour drive back home. Our opponent first round was Clint Thompson, who I had mentioned above was currently in 3rd behind Jeff in divisional points. Whoever won this round would be in 2nd place.

At the flash of the green Jeff said he saw a whole lot of Clint as he ran a respectable 5.633 at 254.62 to Jeff's 6.095 at 238.89. Since Clint went on to win then race we are now 2 rounds behind him in the divisional points and with 2 races left we still have a chance to overtake him and we will stop at nothing to do just that.

Though the race didn't go exactly as we wanted and at times it was quite frustrating we as a team will never give up, always persevere, and just head to the next one. Sometimes when you try new things it takes a few runs to get everything sorted out. Ashwell Racing has a smart amazing tuner in Norm Christensen and we will get it worked out before the next divisional race in Seattle August 20-21. Our core group has been together for over 5 years now so we are more like a family than just the crew and like all families sometimes we have good days and sometimes we have bad days but we must all remember that we are a close knit bunch of individuals with one common goal in mind: And that is to "Haul Ash!"