Sat, 26 Sep 2009, 12:16 AM Tom Hammonds Qualified No. 4 at the O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals

Courtesy of Kirk Weeks

ENNIS, Tex. -- Tom Hammonds will go into the final day of qualifying at the 24th annual O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals in the No. 4 position in the Pro Stock category. Hammonds opened up the day with a 6.620 second run at 208.17 mph.

"The first run today was great and we're excited about being fourth right now," Hammonds said. "Tomorrow afternoon it's supposed to be hotter than it was today, and Sunday's supposed to be even hotter. I think we'll be able to establish a good tune up for race day based on how we run tomorrow . We got some good information from that first run today and that should help us tomorrow morning. As long as we run comparatively close to the top of the field, we'll be fine."

In the second session, Hammonds shut off the Race for Achievement Chevrolet at about the 330-foot marker, and coasted across the line.

"We made the first run today and thought we were a little aggressive," Hammonds said. "We came back and took a little clutch out of it to control the wheel speed and it bit us - we didn't have enough wheel speed and the car didn't stay up on the tire. That pushed us out of the groove and we had to abort. That's one thing about this place, you don't get to sashay around too many times before you're up on your roof. I was out of the groove, and since it wasn't a good quality run, I pushed the clutch in and coasted across."

The O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Tex., on Sept. 24 - 27, is the second race on the six-event NHRA Countdown to 1 for the 2009 Full Throttle Championship.

Qualifying coverage can be seen on ESPN2 on Sunday, Sept. 27, beginning at 12:15 a.m. Eastern. Final eliminations coverage gets underway on Sunday, Sept. 27, with NHRA Race Day starting at 11 a.m., and a repeat broadcast of qualifying gets underway at 11:30 a.m. A three-hour telecast of final eliminations kicks off at 7 p.m. Eastern.

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