Michalek Brothers Racing Qualifies for 66th Running of NHRA U.S. Nationals
Qualified #15 and bowed out first round to Matt Cummings
Michalek Brothers Racing (MBR) returned to action this past weekend in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Denso Spark Plugs NHRA U.S. Nationals, turning in a performance with mixed results. The Fund That Flip sponsored A/fuel dragster made a 5.37 second run on Thursday evening — the team’s best run in NHRA competition, but was unable to improve on that performance the rest of the weekend before being defeated in the first round of eliminations by Matt Cummings.
Michalek Brothers Racing qualified 15th for the 66th running of the NHRA U.S. Nationals.
“We are happy that we could salvage some of the 2020 race season, and coming out for the first time this year to the U.S. Nationals to mix it up with the best-of-the-best from our class set the bar very high and required us to be on our game,” said Kyle. “We are never happy just being at the track; we want to compete and win rounds. We know where we stand from our performance this weekend that we have a good car to work with, but we need to keep chipping away and picking up additional performance. I’m confident we have a good foundation to build from as we begin preparations now for next season.”
“This weekend was not only a big weekend on the track for the car, but also a big weekend as the kickoff race for our partnership with Fund That Flip (FTF). We were able to host FTF employees and guests in our pit area and introduce them to NHRA drag racing. We have a lot of positive momentum to build on for 2021 and can’t wait to get back to the track with FTF to keep building our program.”
Team co-owner Corey Michalek looked back on the weekend’s results knowing that neither the car nor the driver performed up to expectations.
“Our primary goal for the weekend was to qualify and then use eliminations to see where we stacked up against some of the best cars in the country,” said Corey. “I’m glad we accomplished that initial goal, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed by our showing during eliminations. I struggled with my command of the car on the starting line and I unintentionally rolled it in deep, thus leading to a red light ending our chances before the race even started. Nevertheless, that was an incredible run by Matt Cummings that we probably didn’t have an answer for, so hats off to him and the McPhillips team.”
“From a car performance standpoint, our first run was in the ballpark of what we were hoping to start with, but when that run was thrown out for being underweight, we had to adjust our approach for Q2 to ensure we got down the track, and then the car just did not perform the way we had it set up to run during E1. We’ll definitely be taking a hard look at everything back at the shop to see if we can diagnose where things fell off.”
Per the NHRA’s most recent schedule revision, the NGK Spark Plugs Four Wide Nationals has been cancelled for 2020 so MBR’s NHRA schedule has concluded for 2020. The team plans to participate in a private test session in the coming weeks to prepare the car for the 2021 season.
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