NHRA New England Nationals
Event No. 6 of 21
New England Dragway
Epping, N.H.
June 11-13, 2021
LEAH PRUETT
Driver of the DSM Precision Manufacturing Top Fuel Dragster
Qualified: No. 10 (3.927 E.T. at 278.92 MPH)
The Results:
E1: 3.771 E.T. at 324.28 MPH defeated Justin Ashley 4.063 E.T. at 274.78 MPH
E2: 3.811 E.T. at 323.12 MPH defeated by Steve Torrence 3.823 E.T. at 320.13 MPH
Race Recap:
Celebrating her 25th NHRA anniversary at the New England Nationals, DSM Precision Manufacturing Top Fuel pilot Leah Pruett was hoping her ‘silver anniversary’ weekend would end with Wally gold. As the No. 10 seed, Pruett overcame a rough qualifying outing by clocking a stout 3.771-second pass in round one of eliminations to defeat Justin Ashley and avenge last event’s first-round loss to her fellow championship contender. Pruett’s win over Ashley pitted her against Steve Torrence in the quarterfinals. Once again, Pruett’s DSM machine ran another solid pass, crossing the finish line beams in 3.811 seconds, but Torrence’s starting line advantage was enough to propel him to the holeshot victory.
From Leah:
A second-round exit is not what we had in mind for this DSM Precision Manufacturing dragster today. The silver lining on the weekend is that we have a car that is having conversations with us. We had the second-quickest E.T. of round one, and that was awesome with that 3.771. We were behind a little bit after having some bad data from the weather station during qualifying. The team did a phenomenal job of getting us qualified and into a winning position on race day. The first-round win was great. We had never been able to beat Justin Ashley before, so that was a boost for this team. The second round was just a good, close drag race. We lost on a holeshot and that’s on me. Walking away from this, we have a race car that is properly working and we’re now very confident heading into Norwalk where we get to pull double-duty with the Dodge SRT dragster and Factory Stock Dodge Drag Pak.
Source: Don Schumacher Racing
