Foley Qualifies 16th at Reading

Doug Foley, who made his first appearance in an A-Fuel Dragster running in the Top Alcohol class for the first time since 2003, reuniting with his former tuner Tom Conway.  “The field was fast and the track was cold and it gave us fits all weekend.  I had to back peddle the car in the second and third qualifying shots to even get it in the field and even after all of that still had to run the world champion in round 1”.

Difficult task on raceday.  After spending two days debugging the car and trying to find a tune up that fits a 55 degree track temperature, something I never had to deal with in my 20 year career.  We got the task of being first pair on Sunday after the pros and running Bill Reichert who happens to have a big #1 on the side of his wing.  We knew this was not a run where back peddling the car would be an option.  The 60’ times had been so aggressive and we have been trying to slow them down every run but it seems to be going faster every time, and this time was no different.  We got Reichert off the line by a couple hundredths with an .046 reaction time and went 8.94 60’, which is unheard of, but in this case it drove through the shake zone and kept on hauling, we were ahead at half track but Bill was gaining on us.  I went a career fastest 5.28 (in this class) he went a 5.25 and barely got us at the finish line.  It was a good race but obviously not the outcome we were hoping for.  We would have liked to go some rounds for Senecal Construction and the rest of our sponsors. 

Doug and I have been racing together since the late 90’s and we have won a lot of races in several different classes, even though this was not the outcome we were looking for, it was enjoyable to race with some of our old friends.  We have been in the pro pits for the last 8 years and we have lost touch with several of them.  It would be nice to do this more often, I think our team could be very competitive with some pre season testing,” said Tim Lewis.