Vandergriff Advances to Houston Quarterfinals

Baytown, Tex. (April 2)- For the second race in a row, Bob Vandergriff Jr. advanced to the quarterfinal round at the O'Rielly NHRA Springnationals at Houston Raceway Park in Baytown, Tex. on Sunday afternoon. Vandergriff, of Alpharetta, Ga., and the UPS Top Fuel team drew opponent Doug Kalitta in the first round of elimination's. The Jim Dupuy-tuned dragster posted a 4.692 second blast at 312.71 mph to defeat Kalitta.

Vandergriff met up with Melanie Troxel in the second round, only to fall prey to the eventual finalist after he lost traction and smoked the tires.

"After the first round, we made a change to try and pick the car up in the beginning of the racetrack, and it proved to be to too much," Vandergriff said. The car just didn't like it. It's just another part of the learning curve with this new tire and new team. We don't have any information to draw on and make changes. What we thought was going to be a small change turned out to be a much larger change than we thought. We made a couple of good runs over the weekend, but we are still growing as a team. We'll regroup and head to Las Vegas."

Leaving the Houston race, Vandergriff moves up to 13th position in the NHRA POWERade championship points chase.

The next stop for Team UPS will be the Summitracing.com Nationals at the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, April 7-9.

Ken Sklute
Vandergriff Motorsports Public Relations
www.RacersEdgePhotography.com