Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Tired of struggling, Marnell makes major changes

Thursday, June 26, 2003 | 9:53 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

Fed up with watching eliminations on TV rather than racing in them, NHRA Pro Stock driver George Marnell of Las Vegas decided it was time for some changes.

Some big changes.

After qualifying at only two of the 11 NHRA national events this season, Marnell has replaced crew chief Buddy Ingersoll with veteran tuner Mike Elliott and hired former NHRA Pro Stock competitor Lewis Worden as the team's test driver.

"It has been a real struggle; I've really had a difficult time here," said Marnell, who is tied for 21st in Pro Stock points going into this weekend's Sears Craftsman Nationals at Gateway international Raceway near St. Louis.

"The people that we had were having trouble getting the job done so I made some personnel changes. I was approached by some other guys in Pro Stock that were looking to make a switch and I was looking to make a switch and we got together."

Elliott joins Marnell Motorsports after working, most recently, with Ron Krisher's Pro Stock team.

Marnell, 52, said the addition of Worden as a test driver will allow him to keep pace with the competition in the highly competitive Pro Stock category.

"I did a lot more (testing) this year than I've ever done but the competition is just getting tighter and tighter and tighter and it's just requiring more passes and fine-tuning these things better," Marnell said.

The days of showing up to a national event and tweaking the car on the first couple of qualifying runs are a thing of the past, Marnell added.

"You can't afford to be off at all," said Marnell, who has two career Pro Stock victories. "When you unload that car out of the trailer, it has got to be ready to rock and roll and if you're not, you start behind the 8-ball and you're going to have a real difficult time catching up.

"That's kind of where we've been lately; when we start off and make a bad pass to start with and we're out in front of the pack and the track's not as good and then it's just almost impossible to catch up. We just decided that wasn't working for us and we needed to do something else to get back in the game and (these changes are) what we're doing."

The changes didn't stop at the personnel level, Marnell added.

"We're also making some major changes to the car," he said. "Mike is bringing some of his own ideas and we're making a bunch of changes to the car; we're going to get it worked out. We've already tested (at Gateway) last week and we brought our 60-foot times down three-hundredths of a second and that's huge in this sport.

"We've made some other major changes to the car and I think they're going to work. I'm really confident that we're going to -- I'm not going to say that we're going to go out there and hit a home run right in St. Louis -- but I can tell you I really think we're going to be further down the road than we were. I really believe that if we can get the car qualified and make decent passes on Sunday, we can go rounds and we can win races."

Alderman, who has been competing with a Dodge Neon for the first part of the season, will join teammate and team owner Allen Johnson with the new car. The team tested the new car at Bristol Dragway this week and Alderman, who is 10th in Pro Stock points, said he liked the feel of the Stratus.

"The new Stratus will be a good car for us," Alderman said. "The car is much more drivable than the Neon was and will be fine aerodynamically."

"We couldn't make our car live past 1,100 feet," Force said. "Finally, I talked to (teammates Tony Pedregon and Gary Densham), finding out if there was anything different I was doing as a driver.

"Turns out, my burnouts were a couple seconds longer and with this combination, the engine actually was dying when I came to the line because of the long burnouts."

"Midnight Mayhem" will hit the quarter-mile from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday. Admission is $10 for racers and $5 for spectators.

On Saturday, the all-truck Hot Truckin' & Big Rig Spectacular will occupy the facility from noon to 10:30 p.m. and will include racing in several categories, a custom truck show, a wheelstanding exhibition truck and a burnout contest. Admission is $15 for adults, $10 for senior, military personnel and high school students and $6 for children 6-12 years of age.