Nancy Matter Racing regrouped after a transmission gremlin sidelined the team from qualifying at their season opener in Houston two weeks ago. The team spent the necessary hours rebuilding everything to ensure success at their second outing for the Lucas Oil Division 4 racing event in Ennis, Texas this past weekend. Their transmission gremlin was defeated without any real significant reason why, but this IS drag racing, and sometimes there are no definitive answers to specific questions.

During the first qualifying attempt, Matter stumbled upon a new issue in the car when she pre-staged. “Since we don’t use a tachometer, I didn’t have an RPM Stage light which usually means I won’t have a shift light either”, notes Matter. “We always check that when we warm the car up, and it appeared to be okay in the pit. There were so many distractions when the car launched, my objective at that point was to just go from a to b and make sure that the transmission worked. Not having a stage RPM or shift light was something I hoped we would figure out that evening”.

“We went through everything again on Friday night and during the Saturday morning warm up, we changed all the parameters to force feed the MSD box to work, everything worked like a champ, so we figured it was good to go. When we made our second pass, I had the RPM Stage Reference, and that was it. I ended up shifting on time for the 1-2 shift, and within 100 RPM of my second shift. We ran a career best of 5.72 on that run which put us into the #4 Qualifier position”.

On the third qualifier, Matter’s Team slowed a bit as she accidentally pedaled the car and only ran a 5.91, however, her team retained their qualifying position for Sunday’s Eliminations.

During first round of Sunday’s eliminations, Matter launched with a .979 60 foot. Matter’s car went into violent tire shake at about 80 feet and did a left turn towards the wall before she could pedal it to settle it down, forcing her to forfeit the race against fellow competitor Burl Brown.

“We had a great weekend running almost a tenth faster than we ever have and on our first full pass down the track for the season. Tom Conway and Clint Thompson, who both help us, were both in Las Vegas and we tuned the car ourselves. Jeremy Mitchell and I made every decision of where we wanted the car to be, and it did exactly what we applied with the exception of the shifting mechanism. We under estimated the track on Sunday, however we really stepped up and it didn’t go unnoticed”.

Matter would like to thank all the teams that were in Ennis for their support and friendship, and send congratulations to Aaron Tatum and Steve Harker for their stellar, consistent performances all weekend.

Matter’s team will next be racing in Houston at the third of six Division 4 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Events in May.