{"id":1117,"date":"2014-08-03T13:43:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T13:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2014-08-03T13:43:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-03T13:43:41","slug":"rupert-clinches-ihra-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/?p=1117","title":{"rendered":"Rupert Clinches IHRA Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite having the conclusion to their final scheduled event of 2014 rained out – California’s Jason Rupert has clinched the IHRA’s Nitro Funny Car season Championship.<\/p>\n

Rupert locked up the 2014 IHRA Nitro Funny Car World Championship during Friday’s action at Pittsburgh when Mark Sanders, the closest driver to him in points, failed to qualify for the race.<\/p>\n

\"646\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By qualifying in the top five, Rupert locked up his first IHRA championship and his fourth nostalgia Nitro Funny Car championship in a row, adding three titles in the Hot Rod Heritage Series.<\/p>\n

“It feels great to win this championship. Everyone out here tries so hard and all of these guys are such great drivers, with such great cars and tuners, it is truly an honor to be the champion of this group,” Rupert said. “I have a lot of heroes in drag racing, but the guy I really look at is Frank Manzo. He has won so many championships and he is so humble about it and I now understand why. Success is not going to last forever, and knowing that makes this mean so much more. When you are chasing others you have nothing to lose, but when you are being chased you have everything to lose. All of these guys are great drivers, it was just our year.”<\/p>\n

Before the rain storms hit, the top four drivers in qualifying had all advanced to the second round of eliminations.<\/p>\n

Top qualifier Peter Gallen bested Gary Kraus with the best pass of the afternoon with a 4.923-second pass at 224.10 miles per hour to move on to the semifinals. In other Nitro Funny Car action Bruce Litton defeated Ronny Young, Mike McIntire Jr. defeated John Hale and Jake Crimmins defeated recently crowned IHRA World Champion Jason Rupert.<\/p>\n

Posted by: Larry Crum<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite having the conclusion to their final scheduled event of 2014 rained out – California’s Jason Rupert has clinched the IHRA’s Nitro Funny Car season Championship. Rupert locked up the 2014 IHRA Nitro Funny Car World Championship during Friday’s action at Pittsburgh when Mark Sanders, the closest driver to him in points, failed to qualify […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1118,"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nitrofccanada.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}