During qualifying, Troxel and her crew chief, Canadian veteran pro mod racer and tuner Al Billes, took advantage of a guaranteed qualifying position because of a short field to test her car and get additional seat time. She completed just one full pass that qualified her No. 5 at 6.130 at 238.89 mph that gave her lane choice over Chris Russo who was No. 6.

At the launch, both cars shook the tires and the drivers pedaled the throttle to regain traction; Russo recovered quicker and raced to the finish line first. By the numbers, Troxel scored a 6.601 at 228.31 mph to Russo's winning 6.420 at 224.32 mph.

"It was kind of the par for the course for everyone getting down the track today - it was really tricky. That was my first time to pedal the Pro Mod, and I wasn't entirely happy with it, but considering having not practice doing that and not knowing to expect with that car, it didn't go terribly," Troxel said.

"These cars are such a handful that we really don't feel like it's worth taking any unnecessary chances in qualifying. I absolutely never pedal it in qualifying, and if we don't think we can improve our qualifying time, there's no point in pushing it and for this weekend, we were guaranteed a position so I didn't push it.

"Come Sunday, though, whatever we had to do to get to the finish line is what we were going to do, so, I got to pedal the car for the first time. I wasn't all over the track or out of control; we just got beat by a couple of tenths.

"We're still fighting the same problem with this car, and that is it's not happy before the 330 mark, so we're going to work on that tomorrow when we test here in Grand Bend. The plan is to spend the day testing and getting ready for our next race, which most likely will be Martin, Michigan at the end of the month," Troxel said.

Courtesy of Matthew Brammer