After a standout qualifying performance at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals, Alexis DeJoria and the John Force Racing Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevrolet SS Funny Car team carried that momentum into a semifinal finish on race day at Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. The fan-favorite driver outpaced Blake Alexander and Chad Green before tire smoke ended her bid for a Wally trophy against Ron Capps.
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DeJoria was competitive and consistent throughout qualifying, landing her Bandero Caf\u00e9 Funny Car in the top three of each session. On Friday, her solid pass of 3.947 seconds at 331.53 mph was the second-lowest elapsed time of the session and earned her two bonus points. She improved on her performance in the next qualifying attempt, making the third-fastest pass of Q2 with a 3.918 at 330.63. As qualifying continued on Saturday, crew chiefs Mike \u201cZippy\u201d Neff and Jonnie Lindberg powered her to a stellar lap of 3.886 at 330.31 to earn two more bonus points. The final qualifying opportunity delivered more of the same as DeJoria once again made the second-best pass with a strong 3.900 at 334.32.
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Starting race day from the No. 2 position for the second consecutive event, DeJoria faced No. 15 qualifier Alexander in the first heat of eliminations. Alexander had the early advantage and was outpacing DeJoria through the first 300 feet before he started to smoke the tires. DeJoria sped around him, reaching the stripe in 3.918 seconds at 333.41 mph to advance to the quarterfinals.\u00a0
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In the second round of eliminations, DeJoria was eager for redemption as she faced Chad Green, who has defeated DeJoria in two final rounds this season. Green ran into tire smoke at the launch, allowing DeJoria to breeze by him and turn on the win light with another remarkable run of 3.958 at 329.18.\u00a0
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\u201cBeating Chad Green was huge,\u201d said DeJoria. \u201cHe definitely had it coming. I could not wait to beat him. When that win light came on in our lane, I was like, \u2018finally!\u2019\u201d
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In the semifinals, DeJoria faced three-time world champion Ron Capps. The two seasoned drivers left the starting line within two-thousandths of each other, but DeJoria ran into tire smoke at the hit, ceding the win to Capps.
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\u201cWe made it down the track every time except for that semifinal round,\u201d added DeJoria, whose 2026 record includes two runner-up finishes, a Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge win, and now, two semifinal appearances. \u201cWe had three-second runs all through qualifying. We racked up 40 points today, and seven bonus points during qualifying, which is excellent. We\u2019ve got a really great car. We all thought this was definitely our weekend. There aren\u2019t any ifs. It\u2019s just a matter of when because (a win is) happening very soon. I\u2019m excited to go to Sonoma. I know they will have some cool weather there. We have a really fast race car; we\u2019re qualifying well, and we are solid. This car can run in any conditions right now, and my team has really got a handle on it. Everyone on this team is kicking ass and we all get along so well; we\u2019re all on the same page. Nobody wants to come up against us because we\u2019ve got an excellent race car and a strong team. We\u2019re just going to keep chipping away at it.\u201d
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DeJoria and the John Force Racing Bandero Caf\u00e9 team will now shift their focus to the West Coast as they prepare for the next stop on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series tour, the DENSO NHRA Sonoma Nationals, July 17-19 at Sonoma Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., where DeJoria will start the weekend ranked seventh in the Mission Foods Funny Car standings.<\/p>\n
The post Alexis DeJoria Builds on Strong Qualifying Outing with Norwalk Semifinal Run<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a standout qualifying performance at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals, Alexis DeJoria and the John Force Racing Bandero Caf\u00e9 Chevrolet SS Funny Car team carried that momentum into a semifinal finish on race day at Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. The fan-favorite driver outpaced Blake Alexander and Chad Green before […]<\/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-104122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104122","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=104122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}