Erica Nocita Returns to Pomona Raceway with Quick 16 East Championship in Hand
www.paddocktalk.com
10/18/06
Last April, when California native Erica Nocita flew all the way across the continent to drive her Chevy Cobalt Phase5 in her first NHRA Sport Compact Quick 16 race at Florida's Moroso Motorsports Park, she couldn't have imagined that six months later she would be crowned the category's Eastern champion. Making the most of the opportunity this season to compete against some of the country's finest bracket racers, the 23-year-old Nocita worked her way toward a pair of national-event victories which resulted in a well-deserved 2006 NHRA Quick 16 East title.
"We weren't even shooting for the championship," said Nocita. "We wanted to enter some races, try to get some points and see where we landed. After the win at Englishtown (N.J.) in May someone told us that we were in contention for the championship, and we were stunned. After that, everything kind of fell into place for us. The championship is a testament to just how good our Chevy Cobalt Phase5 can be, to the hard work of our race team and to all of the technical and engineering support we received from GM and Chevrolet."
Utilizing the steady performance of her Chevy Cobalt Phase5, and capitalizing on her West Coast bracket-racing experience, Nocita scored her first win of 2006 at her debut event in West Palm Beach (Fla.). It was an impressive victory against an ultra-competitive field of cars that demonstrated Nocita's savvy driving skill, as well as the reliability and consistency of her ECOtec-powered Chevrolet.
"The Chevy Cobalt Phase5 is perfect for Quick 16 competition because it is so consistent," said Nocita. "We were used to running in a strict bracket where you can't break out at all. To run the Quick 16 class was kind of interesting because you get a .5 (five-tenths) of a second cushion. Bracket-racing consistency means everything and our goal wasn't to run eight or nine seconds every pass, our goal was to stay in the low 11s, run that number every time and have a little in the bank so that if we needed to, we could bump it up. The great thing about knowing we were going to run our number is that even though some of the other guys had faster cars, they couldn't duplicate that number a lot of the times. We knew our Chevy Cobalt Phase5 would run the same number every time and in bracket racing, that's gold."
One month after her win at West Palm Beach, Nocita turned in another impressive performance at the NHRA Sport Compact Nationals in Englishtown, N.J., and scored a second-consecutive national-event victory. Starting from the No. 13 position, the senior student at Azusa Pacific University (where she is pursuing a double major in business and chemistry) posted steady numbers all afternoon en route to the race win, putting her one step closer to the Quick 16 East championship.
"Our goal this year was to win at least once," said Nocita. "To win two back to back at West Palm Beach and Englishtown was something we didn't expect. Even as good as our Chevy Cobalt Phase 5 performed, we achieved far beyond what we expected."
"I always look forward to racing at Pomona," said Nocita. "We're expecting a great weekend because we've done a lot of work on my Chevy Cobalt Phase5, so we'll see what happens. After Pomona we'll run the Battle of Imports and an IDRC event at Palmdale. This race will be especially fun since I'll have my teammate, Pete Selders, battling for the Quick 16 West championship."
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