Rodger Brogdon and team had never raced in the rarified air of Bandimere Speedway, yet they continued to show that they are catching up to the rest of the Pro Stock field with four solid laps in qualifying and ultimately becoming one of just six cars to run in the 6-second zone at the track located a mile above sea level. At the conclusion of qualifying on Saturday night, Brogdon and the Charter Communications team found themselves on a Rocky Mountain high, as their number six qualifying position would give them their best ever race day start, where they would meet up with young Rickie Jones.

As Sunday dawned the team was still jubilant from their 6.995 final qualifying run and began the necessary preparation for round one. With grey clouds looming overhead and the threat of rain coming, NHRA advised all the race teams to be ready when called and the team rolled out loaded for their first round encounter. As Brogdon lined up against young Jones, both drivers set their sights on a round one win, with Brogdon blasting down track to a stellar 7.024, 195.87mph run against Jones 7.051 lap at 194.44. Unfortunately for the Charter Communications team the round win went to Jones when his gamble at the starting line paid off with a .005 reaction time (.000 is perfect) and was able to just hold off Brogdon's charge at the finish line by a mere twenty nine thousandths of a second.

Said Brogdon after the run, "We've got a good car that obviously has the performance, it's just right now we can't catch a break, that's two races in a row where we've come up short by just thousandths of a second. Three thousandths against WJ at Norwalk, and then today's just miss in round one. When the tide turns, everyone had better watch out because we're going to have some serious catching up to do. These tracks on the western swing are all tracks where we've never raced before and Denver is notorious for being the toughest. If we can do this well here, well obviously I'm pumped at the thought of rolling into Seattle next week and seeing what we can do there."

Rodger Brogdon and the Charter Communications team will continue their run at the western swing next week at Pacific Raceways in Seattle and then the following week in the northern California wine country, racing at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. With performance now in hand Brogdon and company will start looking to turn the tide and see if they can strike a deal with Lady Luck. When they do, hang on because the rest of the 2009 Full Throttle season will certainly get interesting.

Courtesy of Bob Unkefer