| Hamstra makes it happen in Houston |
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They just kept coming, but Jason Hamstra turned away three Al-Anabi Racing entries along his way to picking up a third ADRL Pro Extreme (PX) win Mar. 26, at Royal Purple Raceway near Houston, Texas. Driving an Andy McCoy Race Cars-built ’70 Duster, Hamstra started from the middle of the pack, qualifying eighth in the 16-car field with a 3.71-seconds pass at 206.73 mph. Hamstra managed a come-from-behind win over Al-Anabi’s Alex Hossler in round one of racing after Hossler left with a .020 advantage off the tree, but Hamstra’s 3.70 at 208.91 translated to a four-thousandth-of-a-second margin of victory over Hossler’s 3.72 at 207.85-mph pass.  He faced the owner and leader of the Al-Anabi effort in round two, where Sheikh Khalid Al-Thani of Qatar left .077 too soon, giving Hamstra the break he needed as his car broke almost immediately off the launch and he coasted to an 8.57-seconds pass at just 67 mph.The semi-finals pitted the past two Rookie of the Year winners against each other, as Mick Snyder, who lives just three miles away from Hamstra back home in tiny Demotte, Indiana, lined up his ’63 Corvette in the opposite lane. Snyder also got away first with a .026 holeshot, but his 3.70 at 206.10 wasn’t quite enough to fend off a career-best charge of 3.67 seconds at 209.62 mph by Hamstra. That left only Tutterow in the final, who left a little too soon with a .012 red light that negated a 3.69 at 206.61-mph run, while Hamstra tripped the win light with a 3.68 pass at a career-high 209.82 mph. “I didn’t see his red light, so I just ran it as hard as I could to the finish,” Hamstra said in victory lane. “It was nice and smooth. We just left it the same from the semi-final lap and just went up there and sent it again and it made another great run.”
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