Rookie sensation Shawn Langdon followed up his best race of the 2009 season with another solid
performance at the Texas Motorplex, racing to his seventh semifinal finish to maintain his top-five
ranking in the Full Throttle points. Teammate and car owner Morgan Lucas reached Round 2 before
bowing out of the action.
Both Langdon and Lucas fell victim to a subpar right-hand lane, which produced only a fraction of
the day's winners. The goal of the day became maintaining lane choice and both Langdon and Lucas
were quickly sidelined once they lost that advantage.
"The car ran great but as you can see, no one was winning in that lane," Langdon said. "But, if you
had told me before the playoffs started that I'd have a runner-up and a semifinal finish in the
first two races, I would have taken that in a heartbeat.
"I like the way things are going right now and everyone that works on this Lucas Oil/Mach 1 Global
Services dragster should be proud of what they've accomplished. We're still right in the hunt and I
can't wait to get to Memphis on Friday and do it all over again."
Langdon managed to beat six-time IHRA champion Clay Millican (3.911 to 4.051) and point leader Cory
McClenathan (4.236 to 4.403) before spinning his tires halfway down the track against Larry Dixon,
allowing the two-time world champion to win with a 3.957 at 308.28 mph to Langdon's coasting 5.037
at 154.92 mph.
On the other side of the ladder, Lucas opened with a win over Mike Strasburg, running a 4.188 at
215.20 mph to Strasburg's 5.625 at 124.56 mph. He then fell to Spencer Massey in the quarterfinals,
3.942 at 304.67 mph to 4.758 at 161.96 mph, when his GEICO Powersports/Lucas Oil dragster lost
traction halfway down the track.
"We banged the blower in Round 1 and that cost us any chance of having lane choice against
Spencer," Lucas said. "It was pretty obvious that the right lane was worse than the left lane. Just
about everyone had trouble getting down that side.
"It's great to see Shawn marching on. He's doing a great job and he's right there in the fight for
the Rookie of the Year deal and the Full Throttle championship. Our No. 1 goal right now is Shawn
winning the title. We'll do whatever we can to help make that happen."
