Thursday, June 12, 2003 | 9:45 a.m.
Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-4089.
Las Vegas businessman Ken Black will add a second car to his Vegas General Construction NHRA Pro Stock team beginning with this weekend's Pontiac Excitement Nationals near Columbus, Ohio.
Jason Line, who served as the motor tuner with Joe Gibbs Racing in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series from 1998 to 2002, will drive Black's KB Racing Pontiac Grand Am as a teammate to primary driver Greg Anderson. Anderson has four national-event victories this season, including the spring race at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and trails points leader Kurt Johnson by two points in the Pro Stock standings.
Black said fielding a second car would serve two purposes.
"We can take (Line's) car and actually test at the national meet and try things that we wouldn't normally be comfortable trying with our No. 1car," Black said Wednesday. "With races so close together, trying to get testing time -- that's the whole secret, being able to get out and test -- there's just not enough time between races."
Black said that once Line gets the car dialed in, he might be able to provide an assist to Anderson in his quest for the championship.
"We're hoping to have two top-half-of-the-field qualifiers if everything goes the way you'd like," Black said. "In theory, (Line) can help take out Kurt early once in a while -- nobody else can do it so it looks like we've got to do it ourselves."
Line, who had been away from drag racing for five years before he joined Black's team this year as the motor tuner on Anderson's car, is eager to get back behind the wheel.
"It has always been my dream to race Pro Stock," Line said. "I am extremely grateful to Ken Black and Greg Anderson for giving me the opportunity to make my dream come true.
"I am also pretty nervous. Pro Stock is the most competitive form of racing out there. The quality of the drivers within the class is remarkable; to be going up against that kind of competition would make anybody nervous."
Although Line, 33, technically is a rookie in the class, his drag-racing roots go to 1989. He won the NHRA National and Division 5 Stock championships in 1993 before leaving drag racing in 1998 to join Gibbs' Winston Cup team.
Anderson said he was looking forward to having a teammate as he pursues his first NHRA Pro Stock championship.
"I am pretty excited about the second car and having Jason as a teammate," Anderson said. "So far this year, he has been a pivotal member of this Vegas General Construction team (and) I think having him behind the wheel is only going to make this team stronger.
"The new car is a little different than mine -- and we did that on purpose. We plan to use Jason's car to teach us how to find the setup faster."
A test-and-tune session at 5:30 p.m. Friday kicks off the weekend and will be followed by Midnight Mayhem, for street-legal cars, at 10 p.m.
On Saturday, the Junior Dragster Series take to the track at 8 a.m. and the CIFCA Funny Cars and weekly bracket racing have the track at from 5 p.m. to midnight. A complete schedule for the weekend can be found at www.lvms.com.
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