Fresh off their second runner-up appearance through the first six events, Alexis DeJoria and the Bandero Caf\u00e9 Funny Car team continued to run with the top of the class when the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series made its debut appearance at Maryland International Raceway for the NHRA Potomac Nationals. Aboard her 12,000-horsepower Chevrolet SS, DeJoria was solid throughout qualifying at the inaugural event, picking up five bonus points en route to securing a qualifying position in the top half of the field. A tough first-round match against Ron Capps awaited in the opening round of eliminations, and although DeJoria made another consistent pass, it wasn\u2019t enough to outpace the points leader, ending her day earlier than she had hoped.
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The Bandero Caf\u00e9 team\u2019s first-ever run down the MIR track was a stout 4.025-second pass at 318.32 mph, placing DeJoria in the provisional No. 2 spot after Friday\u2019s first round of qualifying. Traction issues followed in the second and third qualifying sessions, but crew chiefs Mike Neff and Jonnie Lindberg turned up the wick in the final qualifier, tuning DeJoria to a session-best 3.997 E.T. at 326.16 mph, which held up to be the only three-second run of the round. For their efforts, they were rewarded with three bonus points, bringing DeJoria\u2019s total for the weekend to five overall, and placing her seventh on the Funny Car ladder to secure the advantage of lane choice over Capps. The veteran drivers lined up Sunday morning and although DeJoria gave it a good run, clocking a 4.009 E.T., the race was all Capps, who held the lead from start to finish. While DeJoria had hoped to continue to add to her 10 season round wins, she has nothing but confidence in her John Force Racing team and is eager to get right back into her Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevrolet SS next weekend for some redemption.
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\u201cI\u2019m extremely proud of the Bandero nitro Funny Car team, and beyond blessed,\u201d DeJoria said. \u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true to be able to race for John Force. He comes up to me when I\u2019m in the waterbox and he points at me, and I tap my heart and point back at him. There\u2019s no better feeling than knowing you have the support of the best Funny Car driver in the sport, and that right there gives me so much confidence. I love these JFR cars. I\u2019ve never driven a better car; they drive so well, and my team, and Mike Neff and Jonnie (Lindberg), have such a great handle on it.
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\u201cRacing here at MIR was a brand-new experience for all of us. I love it here; it\u2019s beautiful. We made some good runs and we\u2019re continuing to progress. We\u2019re consistent, and now we\u2019re focusing on just getting a little bit faster. We got five bonus points, which is especially helpful since we didn\u2019t get past first round today. Ron Capps has been a thorn in my side and one of these days, we\u2019re going to give it back to him. We\u2019ve got Epping and Bristol coming up these next two weeks, and I love when we go from one race into the next. After going out first round today, I want to get right back in that race car.\u201d
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DeJoria and the Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevrolet SS Funny Car team will leave Maryland International Raceway ranked sixth in the Funny Car standings. Up next for the Mission Foods Series is the NHRA New England Nationals near Epping, N.H., June 5-7.<\/p>\n
The post Alexis DeJoria Continues Consistent 2026 Campaign With Strong Qualifying Performance at NHRA Potomac Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fresh off their second runner-up appearance through the first six events, Alexis DeJoria and the Bandero Caf\u00e9 Funny Car team continued to run with the top of the class when the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series made its debut appearance at Maryland International Raceway for the NHRA Potomac Nationals. Aboard her 12,000-horsepower Chevrolet SS, […]<\/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-103774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103774","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=103774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}