Rolling the Dice at Las Vegas

Todd Lesenko and the Jim Dunn Racing team entered NHRA’s Big O Tires Las Vegas Nationals as a very optimistic group.    They came into the 2nd to last event for the 2012 NHRA Full Throttle season campaign hot off what was arguebly their strongest showing of the season during the previous event held at Reading PA….

But the “gods of drag racing” would seemingly frown on that momentum.  At Las Vegas the team’s best run of 4.476 secs fell well short of the 16-car bump spot of 4.136 secs.

“We knew the field at Las Vegas would be a swift.  So we tried to tune the car to run at least 4.12 secs to make the field,” Todd revealed.  “Unfortunately with trying to meet that objective we had some issues with the car again.   Fate was not with us this time.”

Todd did experience a flash fire during the team’s final qualifying attempt on Saturday afternoon — but thankfully all of NHRA’s strigent safety equipment did it’s job as planned, and that fire extinguished quickly.

Prior to the kickoff of racing Todd did participate in a truly great NHRA Fan Fest held right downtown Las Vegas on Fremont street Thursday night where he interacted and signed autographs for a very long line of enthusiastic racing fans.

The team also ran a new “Tap It Brewing Company” Chevy Monte Carlo body at Las Vegas per their ongoing 2012 sponsorship commitments to that valued sponsor.   The team will finish out it’s season campaign at Pomona in two weeks running that great looking Orange body once again…….(BB)

Photos by:  Bruce Biegler

To view additional photos from NHRA Las Vegas visit the season photo gallery :  HERE