Kirk Wolf and the Dubbin team survive a turbulent qualifying weekend before falling in a razor-thin opening round.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The DMP | Kentex A/Fuel Dragster and driver Kirk Wolf arrived at the NHRA GatorNationals facing a car that wanted to run — perhaps too much. A wheelie bar malfunction, tire smoke, and a stubbornly aggressive car consumed two of the three qualifying sessions before a razor-thin round-one exit ended the team’s weekend.
Qualifying: Three Sessions, multiple Problems
Q1 set the tone. A wheelie bar adjustment problem destabilized the car at the hit, producing tire shake near the 100-foot mark. Wolf abandoned the pass, posting an 8.767 at 90.61 mph — good for ninth on the sheet.
“We had a problem with the wheelie bar; they couldn’t get it adjusted properly,” said team owner Dean Dubbin. “It just wasn’t where we needed it to be to get the tire and clutch to work together, and it made the car too unstable leaving the line.”
Q2 brought no relief. Tire smoke at the hit of the throttle produced a 25.519 at 24.43 mph, dropping Wolf to 14th.
With Q3 representing the final opportunity to establish a competitive baseline, tuners Clay and Chase Copeland made significant clutch and engine changes. The result: a straight and smooth 5.377 at 265.90 mph — 11th in the final qualifying order.
“It was a good, solid hit, but a little off from the performance that the car should be running in those conditions,” Dubbin said. “After what happened in Q1 and Q2, the guys made some wholesale changes to the tune-up to give us the best opportunity to get down the track and get some representative data going into eliminations. We like to be aggressive and hate to tiptoe like that, but we just had no choice.”
Eliminations: .005 Decides It
Round one drew McKenna Bold aboard one of the Randy Meyer Racing entries. Both drivers left nearly simultaneously — reaction times separated by .001 seconds — and the race was settled at the finish line by (.005) five-thousandths of a second.
Driver RT ET Speed
(W) McKenna Bold .061 5.318 265.06 mph
Kirk Wolf .062 5.322 267.32 mph
“It was a great race; everyone did a great job. We needed that run in Q1, so we had a really good platform to build from throughout the weekend,” Dubbin said. “It just took us a few runs to get squared away with what the car wanted. Unfortunately for us, the car in the other lane was just a tick faster today.”
Up Next:
The Dubbin team has a few weeks off before returning to Concord, NC, for the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway – April 24 – 26.
