Vegas won’t be site of Coughlin’s 50th victory

Coming off his 49th Pro Stock victory last weekend in Houston, an optimistic Coughlin began Sunday’s action with a wire-to-wire job on Bob Yonke. Coughlin left first in the race with a .036 to .047-second advantage and never relinquished the lead, zooming to a 6.773 at 204.60 mph in front of Yonke’s 6.796 at 204.05 mph.

Coughlin was razor sharp on the starting line again in the quarterfinals, recording a great .018-second reaction time to get a .022-second jump on Krisher. Unfortunately for the yellow and black JEGS.com crew, Coughlin’s Cobalt got so out of shape that he was forced to push in the clutch and abandon his attempt, allowing Krisher to win with a beatable 6.779 at 205.13 mph.

“We thought we had a better car going into the second round,” Coughlin said. “We thought the right lane looked a little better than it did first round, so we had a last-second lane swap. We chased (the setup) the whole weekend. That’s the bottom line. When you’re in reactive mode instead of gameday mode, you can’t always pull the rabbit out of the hat.

“We just didn’t have a good foundation going into the weekend. Now we’ve just got to prepare better for St. Louis. I’m confident we’ll come up with a game plan and execute. We’ll show the brilliance we had the previous few races.

“For now, I think you lick your wounds and go home.”

The Full Throttle tour takes a weekend off before returning to action April 30-May 2 with the 14th annual AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway International Raceway in St. Louis. However, Coughlin will use the down time to race at the K&N Spring Fling 20’s presented by Sparco, April 22-25, at Bristol Dragway.

“We’re gonna have some fun in Bristol,” Coughlin said.  “I’m going to race my dragster and my Chevy II, put this race behind me, and look forward to St. Louis.”

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