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Thursday, June 4, 2009

Dixon joins NHRA's 500 club


Larry Dixon joined the 500-win club a couple weekends ago at Bristol Dragway in Tennessee and added to his total by winning the NHRA top fuel event at Heartland Park Topeka in Kansas last weekend. He has 504 round wins in his career, one of only seven NHRA drivers to reach that milestone. John Force, who races in the NHRA funny car division, leads all drivers with 1,022 round wins. He is also the only driver with 1,000 round wins.
Force, Warren Johnson, Kurt Johnson and Dixon are the only active drivers among the seven drivers with at least 500 round wins.
For the record, Dixon notched his 500th round win in the first round at Bristol. He went on to win four rounds at Topeka and now has 504 career round wins. He is six round wins behind Kurt Johnson, who sits in sixth place with 510 career round wins.
“It was nice to be able to go out there at Topeka and have a great event,” said Dixon, a driver for Al-Anabi Racing and a Van Nuys High graduate. “The car ran well all weekend, and everything about it was good. The other plus was that everyone ahead of us in points went out early so we were able to make up a lot of ground. We only moved up two spots, but we gained a lot of ground on some teams so that was a nice bonus.”
Dixon moved up to fourth place in the top fuel standings and trails leader Tony Schumacher by 141 points.
“Everything that happened from the time we got back to the pit area after the second-round loss at Bristol to the time we went to Topeka was good,” Dixon said. “We talked a lot in Bristol, and then tested for two days in Atlanta. We tried a lot of different things, and I was just making runs in the car. Everything about it was good … the mental and physical parts were great. Just being able to spend time with everyone and make the runs was important. We have all of the pieces we need, but we are now becoming more of a team, and I think we saw some of the results with our win at Topeka.”

Photo: Larry Dixon moved into fourth place in the NHRA top fuel standings after winning at Heartland Park Topeka in Kansas on Sunday.

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