ST. LOUIS (Sept. 26) -- GEICO/Lucas Oil Top Fuel driver Richie Crampton has already accomplished a lot in his rookie season, but he'd love to add a No. 1 qualifier to his impressive resume.
Crampton, winner of the U.S. Nationals and one other NHRA race in 2014, sped to the provisional No. 1 for the NHRA Midwest Nationals on Friday at Gateway Motorsports Park.
"Hopefully, I can hold on to that and get my first No. 1 qualifying position for the season," Crampton said. "It would be huge. That's one of the things I haven't been able to do yet this year, and I'm pretty excited about the way we ran tonight."
After recording the sixth-quickest pass in the first qualifying session Friday, Crampton ran a 3.764 at 322.73 mph to jump to the No. 1 spot.
"It kind of surprised me a bit to be No.1 here," Crampton said. "Obviously, I've got a great race car that I get to drive in my rookie year, so I'm pretty spoiled. Every racetrack is a new racetrack for me this season, so to have some success here right out the gate is pretty exciting and it makes me even more excited for race day."
Crampton established himself as the front-runner for the NHRA rookie of the year award with victories in Englishtown, N.J., and Indianapolis. The Australia native and naturalized U.S. citizen also reached the Countdown to the Championship, but the six-race playoffs didn't start the way he wanted with two early exits.
But Crampton still has confidence in his Aaron Brooks-led team, and he was able to add three qualifying bonus points to his total Friday.
"Aaron Brooks is pretty aggressive and swings for the fence when it's good conditions like we just saw tonight," Crampton said. "I think it was just one of those situations where everything came together the way it should, and we'll get our old race car back that we seemed to have lost after Indianapolis.
"The conditions were good. I'm actually kind of surprised that there wasn't anyone else a little better than that, but 3.76 was pretty strong. I didn't know it was going to stay No. 1 with such great cars running behind me after they saw us do that. It was a great racetrack, great conditions, and it worked well for us."
