NHRA News: Points battles taking shape after little ground is gained at U.S. Nat's (9/8/2004)

Points battles taking shape after little ground is gained at U.S. Nat's

By Rob Geiger, NHRA.com
9/8/2004

"We ain't dead yet and we don't plan on quitting any time soon."
– John Force

The 50th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals had the feeling of a make-it-or-break-it race for the handful of drivers still in contention for the four POWERade championships up for grabs this year. In the end little changed at the top of the charts, leaving five races and just 20 rounds of elimination racing left to be completed.

If they didn't already feel the heat, the small group of racers who have a chance to unseat current points leaders Tony Schumacher, John Force, Greg Anderson, and Andrew Hines need to push the panic button because they all have a lot of work to do if they want to steal away the big bucks from NHRA and POWERade.

Here's a brief synopsis of what the remaining players must do if they hope to finish with a flourish.

Top Fuel
The "Kings of the Sport" probably will have the most intriguing stretch run as the tour turns to the high-horsepower racetracks where the top teams always run well. As it stands, U.S. Army racer Schumacher has an even 1,500 points and a boatload of good karma after dedicating his impressive Indy win to his fallen friend Darrell Russell and presenting Russell's widow Julie with the best souvenir of all, the 50th anniversary Wally trophy.

Will Shoe add an '04 title to his one from '99?

Still, Schumacher knows he can't rest easy, at least not yet, as Mac Tools racer Doug Kalitta, who is 160 points back, and Budweiser/Lucas Oil professional Brandon Bernstein, 240 points back, certainly have the potential to catch him should he falter even a little bit.

With the exception of Kalitta's goose egg in Las Vegas, all three teams have won races at the five remaining tracks on this year's schedule. Schumacher has a single victory at each facility, including wins earlier this year in Las Vegas and Pomona. Kalitta has six wins overall at these tracks, including two Budweiser Shootout victories in Pomona, while Bernstein can take comfort in the fact his father has 10 wins at the same racetracks, including a sweep of the last four races at the end of 2003. (Kenny actually won four of the last five races but the shuffling of the schedule makes the Bud team the defending champs at this year's last four events.)

"I'll be happy when the arithmetic say it's impossible for anyone else to win," Schumacher said. "Until then, 100-something points on those guys doesn't mean much to me. We could have goofy weather or something and DNQ and that would be gone in one race. We're not going to let up one bit."

Funny Car
It's been a lot of fun watching Force and his closest rival, Gary Scelzi, go head-to-head in the last five races, including three consecutive holeshot wins – two by Scelzi, one by Force – at the last three events. But Force has managed to win two of the last five national events and outscore Scelzi by 92 points over that same time frame, leaving the three-time Top Fuel champ 206 points behind the 12-time Funny Car king.

Although it's unlikely that Scelzi's Hemi-powered Oakley Dodge Stratus R/T will make up two rounds per race on Force's Castrol GTX Start Up Ford Mustang, it's still a possibility. What Scelzi needs to do is make no mistakes and hope that he or his teammates, Whit Bazemore and Johnny Gray, can take out Force early and then go on and win the race himself, something he's only done once this year.

The Force/Scelzi race has been a blur.

Bazemore had control of the class for three races in the early summer months, but four first-round losses and no final-round showings in the last seven races has turned his 83-point lead over Force into a 227-point deficit. Maybe 2005 will be the year of the Matco Tools Dodge driver.

Like Bazemore, Force has a pair of teammates, Eric Medlen and Gary Densham, to help eliminate the opposition, not that Force needs the help.

"All the hungry dogs are back there taking shots at us, we know that," Force said. "But we ain't done fightin' either. They wanted to bury this old man last year. Tony [Pedregon] wins the title and breaks my streak and everyone pronounced me dead on the spot. Well, we ain't dead yet and we don't plan on quitting any time soon."

Note to trophy engraver: It's spelled J-O-H-N F-O-R-C-E.

Pro Stock
All that's left to do in Pro Stock is to put a rush order on the POWERade championship trophy and to immediately submit the paperwork to accounting to have a $200,000 check paid to the order of Gregory Anderson. All the reigning champ needs to do to successfully defend his 2003 title is earn 55 points in Reading, Pa., which means he needs get his Summit Racing Equipment Pontiac Grand Am the quarterfinals, something he's done at every race this year but one.

Anderson's record run is impressive.

After Reading, Anderson could take the rest of the year off, but that's unlikely as he'll try to use the last five races of the season to push the Pro record for wins in a single season to some unreachable level. Currently, he's tied with Force at 13 wins, a mark Force set in 1996. The 13 wins he already has accumulated gives him the Pro Stock class record.

"It's one of the major records in our sport," Anderson said. "It's hard to believe I'm at 13 wins. You just don't expect to dominate like that in this day and age, especially in Pro Stock. You don't even dream this big. But since we're here, we're going to push as hard as we can to break Force's record and then add as many more as we can because it might be a long time until someone gets a chance like this again. It's just incredible."

With three victories in five final rounds, Anderson's KB Racing teammate Jason Line could bring more glory to the factory hot rod class should he win the Rookie of the Year award. Line and Medlen are the top two contenders for the award, which is sponsored by the Auto Club of Southern California.

Pro Stock Bike
Like Anderson, Hines has led his class from the start of the season, which for Bikes begins in mid-March in Gainesville, Fla. It's been an historic run for the Vance & Hines Screamin' Eagle Harley-Davidson V-Rod rider as he and teammate GT Tonglet have successfully delivered the first low qualifier, first final-round showing, first win, first K&N Klash win, first national elapsed time record, and first all-Harley final for the popular motorcycle brand.

Hines won't have to worry about
what's behind him for much longer.

Even the 40 pounds the NHRA tech department added to all NHRA-accepted American push rod V-twin entries ended up being little more than a speed bump to the outfit, which is headed by arguably the brightest two men in motorcycle racing history, Byron Hines and Terry Vance.

With back-to-back wins at the last two races and three final-round showings over the last four events, Antron Brown of the U.S. Army race team is making the biggest charge at Hines, but even he admits that making up 51 points per race over the next three races in unlikely.

"I doubt those Harleys are going to fall off that much," Brown said. "You just can't hold them back for too long. Even if I won all three of the remaining races, they'd probably still have to have one or two first-round losses, and I don't see that happening."

Hines hasn't won since June at the Englishtown, N.J., event – after which they added the 40 pounds to his chassis – but he's reeled off five consecutive semifinal finishes and has yet to lose in Round 1 on a bike tuned by his three-time champion brother, Matt. It appears we'll have another Hines in the Hall of Champions very soon, although he might have to wait until Pomona to celebrate as this is currently the closest points battle on the charts.

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