After an unsuccessful test of the brand new, 2018 Cobra Jet Mustang in Florida over the holidays, the team returned to Texas in late February hoping that the car would test well in advance of their departure for two weeks in Florida to run the NHRA Divisional Race and Gatornationals National Event, to get their 2025 season underway.

 

To everyone’s dismay, the test was again unsuccessful, meaning the car needed to stay with the builder as they tried to diagnose the issues. This meant the team would have to call on last year's ride, the 2012 Mustang Cobra Jet, somewhat affectionately known as ‘Frankie’ for its temperamental nature. Jory drove ‘Frankie’ to a 20-11 round record and a win at their first event together, giving the team reason to believe this was a great secondary option.

 

The divisional event started with the team designating the car to run in FSS/A, after having competed in FSS/B during the 2024 campaign. The reason for this switch was the overall weight of the car, which when properly set up based on the NHRA horsepower factor for the car, would make them overweight for the chassis certification limit of 3600 pounds.

 

This change in designation turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as that moved the team into a class in which they would have to face only one other competitor for the class win, a race within the race, at the divisional event.

 

These races are run on the index, which is determined by NHRA, meaning both competitors in any given race that are in the same class are simply trying to go as fast as they can to beat their opponent. The challenge with this for the team was going to be that their competitor in this winner take all contest, Rouven Dawson from the United Kingdom, had them covered by nearly eight-tenths of a second. On paper, that scenario would appear to be an insurmountable mountain to climb, but the races aren’t run on paper, they take place on the track, and for good reason.

 

Jory & 'Frankie' pulled up to the line, knowing that even if they were perfect, their competitor would have to stumble significantly for them to come away a winner. And wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly how things went down. Jory was great on the tree (.010 reaction time), while Dawson put up a -.022 red light start, handing the race to the Fletch Racing team right off the starting line. 

 

While unexpected, the win was not lost on anyone on the team, with this being the first NHRA class win for the group, earning them their first Wally trophy for their efforts. This is a trophy that was targeted as a focal point of the team’s combined efforts, so the win had great meaning.

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Heading into the divisional race where they would compete against 85 other competitors, and having not been in competition since Labour Day Weekend of 2024, the team opted out of collecting points during the event. This proved to be the right decision as the team came up against a very strong competitor in Austin Alvey (.014 reaction time and .001 over the dial) in the first round, while Elliott had an uncharacteristic slow reaction (.060) and the car ran .016 slower than the dial-in the team had predicted. 

 

Prior to the Gatornationals the same decision about collecting points needed to be made, with the team this time opting to claim at the event. Believing that their racing luck, along with Jory’s driving, would improve after the disappointing finish at the divisional race, this was considered to be sound thinking.

 

Qualifying gave the team cause to believe they had made a great decision, as Jory was consistently good with his reaction times (.022 & .010), while the car did the same with its elapsed times (8.55 seconds) in both sessions.

 

In the first round they faced off against Vic Cagnazzi, who laid a .002 reaction time (to Jory’s strong .014) on them at the start of the contest. That put the team at a small disadvantage to start the race, but far from insurmountable. As the race unfolded, Jory caught up to Cagnazzi around the 1000’ foot marker of the 1320’ course, knowing exactly what he needed to do. At this point, the driver's job is to manage the distance between he and his competitor, keeping it to a minimum as they head toward the finish. In this case, Jory decided he would take the stripe (finish first) and managed to stay just 6’ (.025 of a second) ahead of Cagnazzi as they crossed the finish line. Looking for his winlight, Jory was in disbelief that it didn’t come on as he had done everything he felt he could in the fractions of a second he had to compute his decisions while traveling at more than 150 MPH. Unfortunately, ‘Frankie’ had overachieved well beyond the 8.54 second dial-in the team had chosen, and ended up breaking out by just .001 of a second, which is an automatic loss.

 

As it turns out, the team predicts that 'Frankie' was on a run of 8.505 seconds, almost five-hundredths of a second quicker than he had gone on his best pass in qualifying the previous day. And while this was surprising in the moment, the team had been battling supercharger cooling issues throughout the trip, and came to the conclusion that on this particular run the ambient air temperature cooled the air going through the supercharger by an additional 10 degrees at launch, leading to the improved performance. That was data they unfortunately did not have based on past performances, making it difficult for them to predict that it would happen.

 

That loss did not set the team up with a great start to their National Championship points scoring season, but the silver lining is that they can drop a number of events as they improve their scores at future events, and they can be assured that the racing gods certainly will provide them with their share of good finishes this season.

 

The next outing for the team is the NHRA Carolina Nationals in Charlotte, North Carolina, April 25-27, where they are hopeful the new car will make its highly anticipated debut.