READING, Pa. — By the time the race-halting showers came Sunday at Maple Grove Raceway, Morgan Lucas already had rained on Melanie Troxel’s parade.
He defeated his Top Fuel teammate in the opening round of the National Hot Rod Ass’n’s Toyo Tires Nationals, killing her chances to make the field of eight for the inaugural Countdown to the Championship.
Lucas, who had failed to qualify for seven races and had seven first-round defeats in the previous 16 Powerade Drag Racing Series events, defied expectations that he would “take one for the team” and extend Troxel’s chances.
 Troxel had said, “We have our destiny in our own hands.”
But it slipped from her grasp as her teammate recorded a 4.650-second pass at 321.12 miles per hour in the Lucas Oil Dragster to Troxel’s 4.588/328.54 in the Vietnam Veterans/POW MIA Dragster.
Lucas had said beforehand that he was “in a crazy, awkward position…[between] a rock and really big hard place.” But evidently they decided to race without favors. If she made the Countdown field, she would earn it on her own. In the end, Lucas got the starting-line advantage and beat Troxel by .028 of a second.
“We went up there to race. If we didn’t win that round, we don’t deserve to be in the Countdown,” Troxel said after her shocking setback. “We can proceed positively from now to the end of the season, and I think we can win some races. And maybe we’ll play the spoiler’s role in everybody else’s game.
“It’s disappointing,” she said, “but I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I wouldn’t have wanted them to hand it to us. We went up there to race, and that’s all there is.”