Baytown, Texas – The Rick Jackson Racing, Centre Pointe / FireIce.com Ford Mustang Top Alcohol Funny Car team came up just short against Mickey Ferro in the final round of eliminations at the 23rd running of the O’Reilly NHRA Springnationals contested at Houston Raceway Park located in Baytown, Texas.
Team driver Tony Bartone placed the Centre Pointe / FireIce.com TAFC in the number two qualified position earlier in the weekend and entered eliminations against the number 13 qualifier, Channelview, Texas own Lee Callaway. At the flash of the green, Bartone grabbed the starting-line advantage and never looked back, as his 5.539 elapsed time was good enough to take the win against Callaway’s impressive 5.584 ET.
With only 13 TAFC’s on the property, the round one victory gave Bartone a bye-run into the semi-finals. Crew chief Steve Boggs decided to go for the throat and lane choice in the semi’s, however just barely missed the tune up and Bartone shook rattled and rolled his way to an off pace 10 second elapsed time into the semi-finals against Gainesville, GA based Steve Harker.
A match-up of titans in the competitive TAFC division, both of whom finished in the top 10 in the world last season wound up becoming anti-climatic as Harker lost traction at the hit of the throttle. Bartone drove his Centre Pointe / FireIce.com Mustang TAFC straight down the HRP quarter-mile and recorded a 5.600 second ET giving Bartone the round win and a final round appearance.
In the money round, Bartone raced against his buddy Mickey Ferro from Stamford, CT who had been dominating the class with low elapsed time recorded in every round. Ferro was out of the gate first and never trailed recording a solid 5.543 ET for his third National event win. Bartone recorded a 5.561 ET in a losing effort. During his sterling career in the TAFC division, Bartone has only failed to qualify once in 121 TAFC races. And that occurred at this event last season. To say the Rick Jackson team improved on last season’s effort would be an understatement.
“We conquered some demons at HRP this weekend by making the money round,” noted Bartone. “Our car ran pretty well, but we’ve at the end of the day we didn’t get it done when it counted. We want to give our congratulations to Mickey Ferro and his crew for the great final round race and for their event wins. We’ll take a look at our run data, fix our parts and be ready for Vegas next weekend. Hopefully we our results will be exactly the same as last year there.”
To learn more about the Santa Clarita, Calif. based Rick Jackson Racing team, who won last year’s Summitracing.com Nationals in Las Vegas, please visit their website or visit Rick Jackson Racing’s team page.
You can check out all categories round by round results posted on dragracecentral.com.
