Quebec’s Mercier Scores at LODRS

The Lucas Oil Series Eastern Regional at Lebanon Valley Dragway last weekend in scenic upstate New York saw Canadian Dan Mercier win Top Alcohol Dragster…..

Mercier faced off against Rich McPhillips in the final round battle that featured two nitro-injected cars and the two top qualifiers who had run within hundredths of a second of one another throughout eliminations.

For the championship, McPhillips took off too soon for a -.248 foul while Mercier scored with his slowest run of the day — 5.51 secs.

Daniel Mercier won his 8th career NHRA LODRS event last weekend

“I saw him so far out in front of me, and I said to myself, ‘Impossible,” because I knew that I had a good reaction time,” said Mercier, of LaPrairie, Quebec. “I heard yelling over the radio, but I couldn’t tell for sure what they were saying, so I just stayed on it to the end, just to be sure.”

It was Mercier’s first final-round appearance in exactly a year, since he had virtually the same ET and same reaction time that won this year’s final in a close 5.52-5.51 holeshot loss to Dan Page here last year. Mercier was within three-thousandths of a second of both his reaction time and his ET from the 2011 final, but it proved irrelevant when McPhillips, who qualified No. 1 with the only run all weekend in the 5.30s, lurched off the line too soon.

Mercier, who won on the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series tour for the eighth time in his career, established low ET of all three rounds.  He had a two-hundredths edge on McPhillips both in round one (5.41 to 5.43) and in the semifinals, where he beat Karen Stalba, 5.49 to 5.81.

“It was nice to win againLebanonValley,” he said. “It was here where I won my first race ever (over Art Gallant) back in 2004.”

Posted by:  Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association (Photo by:  David Smith)