ST. LOUIS (Oct. 11) – A semifinal Pro Street finish at the 9th Annual FuelLab NMCA World Street Finals at Gateway International Raceway left Troy Coughlin feeling philosophical.
Coughlin finished third in the season points in his JEGS.com Pontiac GXP, considering he is also running in the NHRA’s Get Screened America Pro Mod Series as well, it made for a hectic year for his crew.
“We’ve raced two cars and done pretty good with them,” Coughlin said. “It’s disappointing because we haven’t won, but we’ve been going a round or two here and there.
“It was good enough to finish third in NMCA even though we missed the first two races, and we can finish third in NHRA with a good finish in the finale there. It was not too bad. They made some rule changes from 2009 that weren’t necessarily in our favor, but we valiantly raced on.”
During the weekend at Gateway, Coughlin was the No. 1 qualifier in Pro Street, and would advance to face eventual race winner Chris Rini in the semifinals. Coughlin had a car that was consistently running at 6.27 seconds at 226 mph, but he had a feeling it would not be enough to best Rini’s horsepower.
“We qualified well and had made some pretty decent runs,” Coughlin said. “We were trying to fine-tune on it and keep it going. We knew we had to shine because we knew he could run a 6.15 or 6.16. We knew we were able to run a 6.18 to a 6.20. We had to lay it all down and were a pinch too aggressive.”
Rini raced to the finish with a 6.168 second pass at 234.23, while Coughlin limped across in 17.886 at 45.29 after smoking the tires.
“Next year, we’ll have to dig deeper and be smarter with our choice of power,” Coughlin said. “We want to come out swinging properly. At this point we’re going to wait to see if there are any rules changes for the 2011 season and go from there. We know what we ran this year is good, but it wasn’t the best. We’re always striving to be the best.”
The racing isn’t over for Coughlin, and is planning on heading for Las Vegas for a couple of events. First is the Get Screened America Pro Mod series season finale in Las Vegas at the end of the month, and Coughlin said he’s thinking about entering his Pro Street car in the Street Car Super Nationals in mid-November.
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JEGS, Director of Media & Motorsports
Office: 800.345.4545 (#3, ext 412)
Mobile: 614.595.1820
Fax: 740.362.5507
Email: jegspr@aol.com -or- scott.woodruff@jegs.com