After reaching the final quad at last year\u2019s NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway, Alexis DeJoria entered Sunday\u2019s eliminations looking to replicate that success at the season\u2019s only four-wide event. Backed by a strong qualifying performance that secured the No. 5 seed, DeJoria and her Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevrolet SS Funny Car team advanced out of the opening round before falling short of a return trip to the final elimination quad.
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DeJoria rebounded from early traction issues in Friday\u2019s opening qualifying session with a standout 3.932-second pass at 331.20 mph under the lights, vaulting from 14th to fifth in the order. Crew chiefs Mike Neff and Jonnie Lindberg sent DeJoria on another good run during Saturday\u2019s first session where she posted a 3.993 E.T. before traction problems followed in the final round.
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With the No. 5 qualifying position locked in, DeJoria matched up against No. 4 qualifier J.R. Todd, No. 12 qualifier Hunter Green, and No. 13 qualifier Jeff Arend in the opening quad where she delivered a clean and competitive 3.962-second pass at 324.36 mph to advance alongside Todd. In the quarterfinal round, she made a decent 3.980-second run, but it wasn\u2019t enough to outpace Todd and Ron Capps, who posted quicker E.T.s to advance, ending her bid for a first 4-Wide Wally trophy.
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\u201cRan a little slower than we had planned,\u201d said DeJoria, who reached the final round at the season-opening Gatornationals with her new John Force Racing team last month. \u201cIt didn\u2019t drop a hole, but it was pushing me downtrack. I was getting pretty close to the centerline, but luckily it was towards the end. I was giving the wheel input, and it was just not reacting, so right before I thought I was going to cross the centerline, I lifted and fortunately, missed it, but it wouldn\u2019t have mattered anyway because we ran a 98. We\u2019re doing well, we just need to touch up on some areas and get this thing going a little quicker. It\u2019s consistent; we\u2019re getting down the race track, we just need to get down there a little quicker.\u201d
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DeJoria won\u2019t have to wait long for another shot at the winner\u2019s circle as the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series heads to Adel, Ga. near Valdosta this week for the NHRA Southern Nationals at South Georgia Motorsports Park, May 1-3. She will start the weekend ranked sixth in the Funny Car point standings, up one spot from the previous event.<\/p>\n
The post Alexis DeJoria Qualifies No. 5, Secures Quarterfinal Finish at NHRA 4-Wide Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After reaching the final quad at last year\u2019s NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway, Alexis DeJoria entered Sunday\u2019s eliminations looking to replicate that success at the season\u2019s only four-wide event. Backed by a strong qualifying performance that secured the No. 5 seed, DeJoria and her Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevrolet SS Funny Car team advanced out of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}