The Jerry Maddern Racing team celebrated their return to historic O'Reilly Raceway Park in
Indianapolis, Ind. with Dairy Queen ice-cream cake as qualifying began today at the 55th NHRA Mac
Tool's US Nationals presented by Lucas Oil.
The Sunland, Calif. based team returned to the location of one of their most memorable single race
victories. In 1998, Darren Nicholson drove the Peen-Rite sponsored Top Alcohol Dragster to the US
Nationals championship. It was the first National Event victory for not only Nicholson but also the
Maddern team. Current driver Chris Demke is hoping lightning strikes twice at the "Big Go" for the
team affectionately known as "the Circus Clowns".
The Maddern team began their weekend long birthday celebration for crew member "Hamburger" Mike
Demke with a solid, yet conservative first qualifying effort. A 5.384-second 263.20 mile per hour
run was good enough to place the team in the fifth qualifying spot after one qualifying effort.
"The car ran solid and smooth today," stated Demke, who is seeking his first career National Event
'Wally'. "We put a fresh blower on the car and put good-old-trusty "Ludwig" between the rails of
the Dave Uyehara chassis for this event. We wanted to get a solid baseline tune-up for (team owner
and crew chief) Jerry to work with."
The team had planned to turn up the wick for Q-2, however they were unable to test the cooling
track, as their second qualifying effort for the day was postponed until tomorrow morning, due to
delays caused by electrical failure and oil downs.
"It's not every day we have the chance to visit this historic city. And our team was planning on
paying tribute to those amazing racers who have made this city a 'Mecca' of motor sports, by
visiting the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum. I guess we'll have to post-pone that trip and
establish some history ourselves," concluded the sly Demke.
The Peen-Rite team will hit the track again tomorrow with a qualifying session scheduled to begin
promptly at 10:30 a.m. The third qualifying session should be scheduled later during the day's
racing activities.
Stay up to date with daily coverage of the 55th US Nationals in the sportsman section of
Competitionplus.com. And up to the minute results available from the great folks at http://www.dragracecentral.com
