Lady luck also played a part in Tran's first-round exit. The Quaker State® Honda Civic qualified in second place and because of mechanical problems with the Mopar Neon, Tran's championship rival Mike Crawford qualified at the bottom end of the field. This led to a first-round meeting that neither team wanted. Mike Crawford's 8.73 E.T to Tran's 8.79 E.T. At the end of the day reaction times proved to be the deciding factor and Tran was simply not in his normal league. "I was slow on the light and lost the race." He said. "My team did a great job to qualify in such a strong position and I really should have cut a better light in the race against Crawford. I am obviously disappointed to let down my home fans but I will be back on form before the next event in Oregon."

Crew chief, Tony Palo was pleased with the overall performance of the Quaker State® Civic. "The car was running well and we knew that we had the tune-up pretty close so we just needed to get past Mike Crawford. It didn't happen so now we will be working hard to find a little more horsepower before the next event. You can't let one bad result bring you down and we will be ready for the next one." He explained further. "I knew that Kenny was not feeling very good when he took a day off earlier in the week. Kenny just doesn't take time off and I could see that he was still under the weather when we came to the track on Friday. He's feeling a lot better now so we will concentrate on closing the gap in the points over the next couple of races."

Currently, Tran is in third place in the championship behind Mike Crawford and leader Marty Ladwig.

Contacts:

Jotech Motorsports www.jotech.com
Quaker State www.quakerstate.com
RaceWorks LLC www.raceworks.net
Bob Norwood www.bobnorwood.com