K&N's Luke Bogacki Does It Again; 2nd NHRA Super Comp Wally at Beech Bend Divisional
- Sep 2, 2011
"We haven't done much NHRA racing this season, but I love Bowling Green and it's close to home, so this race has been on the schedule all year," explained Bogacki. "It's really cool to be able to win it again. I haven't had a great year on the track, and it's always rewarding to win in a class that's as competitive as the 8.90 category." First Bogacki would be randomly paired with Mike Fuqua in round one, where he would begin his outstanding string of stellar reaction times and send Fuqua out very early. Round two, Bogacki tightened up his box even more for a .004 light to also sending Waco, Texas resident, Trisha Allen to her premature departure. Now on the ladder, Bogacki's next competitor would be Tim Garrison. Making sure he didn't go red, Bogacki backed off ever-so-slightly from the tree and posted a comfortable .018 to Garrison's much slower .037 and almost effortlessly, backed into him for a holeshot 8.926 to 8.911 win. It would be the rounds to come where Bogacki felt he had some of that needed luck on his side. First came in the quarter-finals against recent Division 3 JEGS All-Stars representative Michael Shelton. "He made a run that I would take any day of the week in Super Comp," admitted Bogacki. "He posted an excellent .005 reaction time and was 8.911. It just so happens that I made one of my better runs of the day. I was .011 on the tree and got there by .002 for an 8.903. It was just one of those rounds where I was able to do a really good job when I had to." "I felt like I got my really lucky break in the semi's," professed Bogacki. "I ran Jeff Mandell and I felt like we had left together, I was .014 and he was .008. My intention going down the race track was to get there first. For whatever reason, right at the last second I just felt like there wasn't enough room, so even though I had whomped it a couple of times, I stood on the brake. I got back behind, but it was only by .009. That's usually not a good place to be, but it just happened to work out. He had me .006 and was .003 further under [8.90 Index] than I was. Usually that indecision on my part will cost me the round. It just so happened that it worked out for me that time." "It's almost unheard of to be flawless for 6-8 straight rounds. You have to get a break when you make a mistake," he added. "Plus, usually you have to beat at least one great run in the other lane. It's all a matter of good fortune and timing really, and today it just fell into place." In a tightly competitive class, such as Super Comp, it takes a driver on their game in addition to a car they can trust will run what they've set it up for. "The car was really good," he noted. "That combination has always been really good on the throttle stop. But I was a little bit confused all the way up to the semi-finals and this sounds bad, but I didn't have a close enough race up until the quarter-finals. Basically, I never got to the thousand foot mark under full power. So I didn't have any run completion numbers to work off of. I had a pretty good idea of what it would go, but without the true thousand foot mark time, I couldn't verify it in those early rounds." In the final, Bogacki paired up with Tyler Caheely and even though he posted a stout .010 light, he didn't need it as the race was over nearly the moment the tree came down. Caheely handed Bogacki the NHRA Super Comp Division Wally by going red. "I want to thank my mother Ellen and my fiancée Jessica," he said after his win. "They were both at the event, and that made the win really special. The Jones family does an excellent job with their facility and of course, all the guys at K&N. I have the first generation K&N Composite scoop on this dragster along with using K&N Wrench-off oil filters on all my cars. It really makes a difference in the quality of products you use, if you expect to be consistent and win you have to have nothing but the best going in." Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world. |
