For Immediate Release
5/1/2011 The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
The Thornton Racing Team got a second place finish at this weekend's Super Chevy show in the Pacific Street Car Association Pro Street category at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Driver Ed Thornton of Chino, Ca staged his Lucas Oil Products backed black 1963 Corvette with Twin Comp Turbo Turbochargers against the recent PSCA juggernaut and fellow Lucas Oil teammate Mike Maggio of San Dimas, CA with his Supercharged Camaro. The race was close at the beginning at Maggio's .032 reaction time slightly edged Thornton's .049 but by the finish line the margin was more than .3 seconds as Team Thornton went down in defeat at 6.328 to 6.027 elapsed time.
Remarked Thornton "I could see he was ahead and he wasn't running away hard but he was slowly edging ahead of me at every cone. We had more than our share of struggles with our car this weekend and honestly to make it to the final round feels like a victory all on its own."
"We are slowly finding little issues with the engine and with our car especially the chassis," said co-crewchief Shane Tecklenburg of Mission Viejo, Ca. "We have more power than we have ever had with these new Comp Turbo's but we are really struggling to figure out how to apply it properly to the pavement."
"It's getting tough to get the clutch to hold the power that we are generating now with these turbos," said co crewchief Doug Stewart of Valinda, Ca. "We are going to have to go back to the drawing board on some of our control systems to get this car right."
After struggling to a dismal 11th qualifying position with a 6.95 the Thornton Team, also supported by Brandt Racing Enterprises, East West Engineering, Injector Dynamics, Accufab, Wingnuts Restaurants and Doug's Headers, took a bye run for their first round victory when their opponent was unable to make the call due to breakage. Second round saw Thornton upset Dan Nickelson on a major holeshot .020 to .288 and the black Corvette's 6.36 at 226 outpaced a 6.18 at 231. The Semi-final round pitted Team Thornton against Matt Rhoades but Rhoades 6.92 was outpaced by Thornton's 6.42 at 221 mph. That run was the car's best performance of the weekend to the 330 cone and solidified their place in the final round against Maggio.
Thornton Racing team plans to compete next at the PSCA Hughes Performance California Nationals May 20-22, 2011.
The team would like to express their gratitude to the PSCA Staff, the staff at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and to Lucas Oil Products' Jimmy Biggs and George Klass for their video coverage of the event.
