With a race car that had been a model of consistency all weekend the Charter Communications team
was prepped and ready to go by late morning and when the rain delayed call came for first round of
eliminations they rolled into the Route 66 staging lanes with high anticipation. Driver Rodger
Brogdon knew that Tommy Utt and crew had given him a race car that had made four good laps in
qualifying and Brogdon was anxious to begin his race day against Johnny Gray.
Unbeknown to everyone though was the fact that a small component inside the clutch assembly was
ready to fail, and as Brogdon brought the rpm's up on the starting line to launch the car that
failure occurred, leading to a premature launch and red light elimination in the opening round.
As Brogdon put it "One of the things we've been working on this weekend is the reaction time, both
mine and the cars. I had a .001 light in the third round of qualifying, but that came at the
expense of our 60 foot time when the air gap in the clutch was too close and pulled me through the
starting line beams, other than that I haven't been near a red light all weekend long. I knew
immediately that there was something wrong inside the (clutch) can and when we got back to the pits
we were able to determine what the problem was."
"Sure I'm disappointed," Rodger added, "this team has been working hard to get everything to come
together. But coming up short on race day due to parts breakage has happened to everyone at some
point in time. This weekend we were able to dial in yet another portion of our set up and the four
laps we made in qualifying put us in the top half of the field again for the second time in the
last three races. We're going the right direction and we'll be ready when we get to Englishtown
next weekend."
Rodger Brogdon and the Charter Communications team continue to make progress in the NHRA Full
Throttle tour, as this weekend's performance moves them into 14th place in the point standings.
Considering that the team did not compete at the opening race in Pomona and have been together as a
team now for only six events, optimism runs high as they head for Englishtown, NJ, and the next
race on the NHRA Full Throttle tour.
