Marnell looking for win at home

Thursday, Oct. 25, 2001 | 11:23 a.m.

After competing for nine seasons in the NHRA Pro Stock category without a win, Las Vegas resident George Marnell finally earned his first national-event victory last month in the AutoZone Nationals at Memphis Motorsports Park.

Now that Marnell has proven to the drag-racing community that his Marnell and Black team is capable of winning races, the affable 51-year-old wants to prove it to his hometown fans.

Marnell will be competing in his third NHRA national event at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend when the inaugural ACDelco Las Vegas NHRA Nationals roll into town. In the two previous spring events in Las Vegas, Marnell has failed to qualify in the top 16 and advance to Sunday's eliminations.

But Marnell said he never has come into his hometown race with as much confidence as he has this week.

"We've missed good opportunities here by having a couple of problems," Marnell said. "We had clutch problems the last time we were here and we didn't miss it by much but, nevertheless, we missed it.

"I feel real good about things and I can't wait to get out there and show the hometown folks what the Marnell and Black team is made of."

Since leaving Las Vegas in April without qualifying for the eliminations, Marnell has failed to qualify at only one other event -- at that was the race following the one here. He has qualified for the eliminations at 16 straight races, winning the pole once, and has been among the top half of qualifiers at eight of those events.

Last weekend, in the O'Reilly Fall Nationals in Ennis, Texas, Marnell qualified sixth and advanced to the semifinals on Sunday before losing a heartbreaker to V. Gaines. The margin of victory in the race was a scant two-thousandths of a second -- or about 7 inches.

"Last weekend we did well," Marnell said. "We were in the hunt and it could have gone either way. V. did a marvelous job -- just a little bit better job than we did.

"Our team has really jelled here lately and I think that we have our hot rod running real well."

The key to Marnell's success this season has been his ability to concentrate more on his race-day setup than he has in the past.

"We've been consistently qualifying well and we've been able to race," Marnell said. "Our race-day setup is not the same as our qualifying setup. Before, when we were just trying to get in the show, we were putting all our efforts toward qualifying.

"Now, qualifying and racing are two different parts now. We have been fortunate enough to go some rounds and to work on our race-day setup ... and we're giving them fits out there; we're giving some pretty good guys some trouble out there. They know they have to race when they get up to the line now."

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