Las vegas Report
By
Joe Sherk
April 15, 2007

Yates Third Pro Stock Driver to Reach Milestone

LAS VEGAS, April 15, 2007 -- Jim Yates reached a Pro Stock milestone of 400 round wins Sunday with a first-round win over Erica Enders in the SummitRacing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"That's a big accomplishment," said the veteran driver of the Wiley X Eye Wear/Sea Ray Boats Pontiac GTO. His first round win came in 1990. In between, he's competed in 362 races, won series titles in 1996-97 and 25 national events in 58 final rounds.

He joins a limited list that includes (in order of round wins) John Force (Funny Car), Warren Johnson (Pro Stock), Kenny Bernstein (Funny Car/Top Fuel), Kurt Johnson (Pro Stock) and Larry Dixon (Top Fuel).

Yates had a near-perfect .009-second reaction time against Enders, who experienced handling problems and shut off early. Yates was timed in 6.776 seconds at 203.43 mph.

Yates was not happy with his second round effort, however, because he red lit against low qualifier Jeg Coughlin, who won with a 6.764.

"We gave it our best shot," said Yates. "I was happy with what we accomplished this weekend, but I'm not happy with the red light. We will be testing before our next race in Atlanta (April 27-29) and I will be working on my reaction times.

"We are making a lot of progress tuning our new chassis and Bill (Jenkins, engine builder) is making more horsepower. We are looking forward to going to Atlanta."

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