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QUALIFYING ROUND RECAPS

PRO STOCK Q1 (4:50 p.m.): Jeg Coughlin Jr. posted low of the round and was likely very happy to earn three bonus points as a result, but he and every other racer will want more out of their race cars in the second round of qualifying. Coughlin posted a 6.696, the only 6.60 in the first Pro Stock session of the weekend as crew chiefs struggled to get cars to hook up in the first 60 feet of the track. Most cars made smooth passes to the finish line, but no one, not even Coughlin, got there as quickly as we’re used to seeing. 

FUNNY CAR Q1 (5:30 p.m.): The high-powered nitro cars struggled on a hot track and blistering heat with low e.t. being a 4.157 by Bob Tasca III, a run that would have been 15th last weekend in Virginia. It’s a nice turnaround for Tasca who blew up a body in Virginia, but doubtful it will last through tonight’s session. Tommy Johnson Jr. (4.167) and Matt Hagan (4.192) had the only run below 4.2 seconds of the 15 teams that made runs. A total of 17 cars of hand, with Del Worsham and Terry Haddock opting to wait for cooler conditions.

TOP FUEL Q1 (5:50 p.m.): The dragsters, like their Funny Car brethren, struggled mightily with the conditions with only one three-second run being clocked, a 3.997 by Phoenix runner-up Scott Palmer and his CatSpot crew. Behind him in the order were two more unexpected names, Gainesville runner-up Shawn Reed, who carded a 4.019, and Palmer's CatSpot teammate, Dom Lagana, who ran 4.083. Thirteen cars made runs, with Pat Dakin getting no time after being unable to back up after his burnout and Terry Totten, in terry Haddock’s car, and Bill Litton, in the Worsham family, entry, opting to sit out the tricky conditions.

PRO STOCK Q2 (8:23 p.m.): Stop us if you’ve heard this before: Friday came and went with Greg Anderson in pole position. He made a 6.674, buoyed by a stellar 60-foot time (.981), to take three points into the second day of qualifying. Several teams made big improvements, particularly in the early portion of the race track, and it showed in the final product. Five racers posted times quicker than 6.7 seconds, including Jeg Coughlin Jr., who scored two points with a 6.683 run. That wrapped the first day of qualifying with five points in the JEGS Route 66 NHRA Nationals winner’s pocket – not a bad day in the office. 

FUNNY CAR Q2 (9 p.m.): Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but the big, bad Advance Auto Parts Camaro carried Courtney Force to the No. 1 spot in the cooling air on a cooling track in Bristol with a number that no doubt will be low e.t. with two hot days ahead of us. Force’s 3.993 was the only three of the session and was nearly a tenth ahead of J.R. Todd’s 4.072 for the No. 2 spot. Stacked up behind Todd’s DHL Toyota are Robert Hight (4.077) and first-session leader Bib Tasca III (4.078). Jonnie Lindberg is on the bump spot with a 5.346.

TOP FUEL Q2 (9:35 p.m.): Defending event champ Clay Millican finished Friday the same way he finished Sunday a year ago, on top and looking down at the pack after powering his StrutMasters/Great Clips dragster to a 3.817 in the evening session. Five-time event Tony Schumacher sits second with a 3.830, just a few ticks ahead of the 3.832 of teammate Antron Brown, who, surprisingly, has never won this event. Fifteen cars made runs on the opening day.

PRO STOCK LOW QUALIFIER GREG ANDERSON: "We tested up here a couple weekends ago so we know what the track is and we know where the bumps are. We worked on our suspension a lot and our cars in general, so I think we did the best job of anyone today. It feels great. It’s hot out there, it cooled down tonight, and you know going into this session that if you don’t make a good run tonight it’s going to be an uphill battle tomorrow. 

"We were the only team out here testing and I think that’ll turn out to be an advantage for us. If we take the No. 1 qualifier spot, I think we’ll be able to point to that. Qualifying hasn’t been the problem for us this season, it’s been racing well on Sunday. We just need to find a way to trick ourselves into thinking Sunday is Saturday, maybe it’s all in the head. We certainly aren’t going to back off qualifying because we don’t think it works to win from No. 1. We’ve done that plenty before."

FUNNY CAR LOW QUALIFIER COURTNEY FORCE: “It was a great run; it was really hauling the mail down there. It was a little bumpy and I had my hands full, but it stuck and that’s all that really matters. We were able to pick up those bonus points and every point counts. A good job done by my guys and a great start to the weekend. We missed it a little in the first round but they went back and looked at what went wrong and made the adjustments.

“It feels good [to have a car like this]. The consistency has been there and we’ve been able to seal the deal and get those wins, but there’s still a long way to go. I’m just trying to keep myself grounded and focused because things can change overnight – we’ve seen it before – so just focusing on each round and each run, one by one, to get to the end of the season.”

TOP FUEL LOW QUALIFIER CLAY MILLICAN: “This car has been a rocketship but I have to tell the truth: I knew we went 3.81 but I didn’t think there was anyway that would hold up [as low e.t.]. ‘Grubby’ [crew chief David Grubnic] went up there to make sure that we got ourselves nice and safely in the field and we weren’t necessarily swinging for the home run. I guess everyone else was being a little conservative, too. I believe there was more track out there than that.

“Tomorrow it’s going to smoking hot again and the challenges are the same for everybody: calm them down enough, get them going early, and send them on down through there. Our team is a fan of the new track prep, but this isn’t about track prep, it’s about that big ol’ ball in the sky. When the track that gets that hot it’s hard to get these cars to go down the track. They make so  much power I don’t know how anyone gets them down the racetrack, but that’s why I talk a lot and not tune a lot.”

Friday recap: Courtney Force, Clay Millican, Greg Anderson lead classes after Friday. 

FEATURES

Tony Schumacher is really glad Larry Dixon isn’t racing this weekend. Wait, come back. Don’t go to Twitter yet, we just took The Sarge out of context. We’ll let him explain. 

“This race on Father’s Day, it couldn’t be more perfect. It’s always perfect when Larry Dixon is not here (laughs). Don’t take that the wrong way,” said Schumacher. “I love Dixon and he’s a good dude, but it used to seem like he always won on Father’s Day. I’ve been fortunate to do it a few times in my career, as well. We have another great opportunity to win on a great day like this and to be able to present the trophy to my father. That would be fantastic, especially after the drought we’ve had.”

The Don Schumacher Racing dragster contingent owns one Top Fuel win through 10 races, a far cry from the excellent start the team had a year ago. When teams showed up to Bristol in 2017, DSR dragsters had won six of 10 available Wallys and looked poised to pick up a seventh in the final round. Clay Millican spoiled that party and the DSR dragsters went on to win just three times over the final 14 races of the season. They have four wins over the last season’s worth of racing. 

For some teams, that’s success. For DSR? Not so much. It should be noted those are internal expectations. Schumacher boasts arguably the best Top Fuel Dragster in the field right now, perhaps second only to Steve Torrence. While Antron Brown and the Matco Tools team have struggled, Leah Pritchett owns a Wally herself and looks poised to pick up more. 

Good times are likely around the corner for Schumacher. Maybe even this weekend. 

Ten races into the 2017 season, Antron Brown had two wins and two runner-ups and a gaudy 24-8 round-win record. This season, he’s sub-.500 at 9-10 with no final-round appearances. The easy jump-to-conclusion answer is that it’s because the team lost gifted tuner Brian Corradi over the winter—he moved to Courtney Force’s Funny car team and already has four wins this season -- but it’s more than that.

“Losing such a crucial element of your team is always going to hurt, but that’s only part of the problem,” said Brown. “When Brian left, we had to fill that [co-crew chief] void to work with Mark [Oswald], so we took our car chief, Brad Mason, who’s put our cars together for the last eight years and moved him up. So then we don’t have a car chief, so we took Kyle [Weekley], who’s been our cylinder-head guy for the last five years, and moved him into Brad’s position, which is a very hard position, where you have to dissect and fix everything on the car, like the management systems, and he has to learn all that. Then we had to take Matt Sackman, who was our clutch assistant, and put him onto cylinder heads, and so we have a new guy as clutch assistant. We’ve got a lot of people learning new jobs.

“On top of all that, we didn’t have a very good Countdown at the end of last season, which is why we didn’t win the championship. We won 53 rounds that season, but only nine rounds during the Countdown [champ Brittany Force won 41 rounds all season, but 16 of them were in the Countdown], so we had to try to fix those issues, too. It all just compounded on us.

“On top of that we had some parts failures that put us behind, so we were problem solving instead of trying to race. We switched out whole clutch combination around before Chicago -- -putting in four new discs each run -– and we’ve been building on that since. Our parts issues are fixed, our race car is right, and we’re going down the track almost every run and picking away at it.  I think we’re really ready for a win. This would be a good race to do it at because it’s one of only two I’ve never won.”

Gainesville runner-up Shawn Reed is making his first appearance since the four-wide event in Charlotte. Where the Hughes Oilfield/Paton Racing had already won another round and was in the thick of a match with eventual champ Steve Torrence and Terry McMillen when the engine suffered a devastating “pan to hat” explosion that sidelined the team’s efforts.

“Something in the valvetrain went wrong and it just split everything,” he said. “it was a mess. For some reason our engines are eating bearings at 700 feet. We have the exact same parts as Dom [Lagana], and Capco [Steve Torrence} and Scott Palmer and theirs don’t do that; the only difference is that we were running a different kind of injector, so for this race we’ve switched over to the same one they’re running. We hope that will solve the problems. We’ll make a shot checkout pass and check the bearings and go from there.”

Reed enters the event hot off of a victory in his Pro Mod drag boat last weekend on Forrest Lucas’ man-made lake in Wheatland, Mo., and hopes the mojo continues here. The season certainly has started off well and he thinks he has a car that can contend.

“You can look at our runner-up in Gainesville and say that a lot of cards fell our way, and they did, but we know this car can run good,” he said. “In Gainesville, I think we could have run with Richie [Crampton] in the final, but we had some mistakes in the pit area and ending up bending a valve when we started it so we couldn’t even run, but I think we showed everyone a little something about this team.

Reed and team will skip next weekend’s Norwalk event (he's running the boat in San Angelo, Texas) and run the Epping race two weeks later, then sit out until the final two events of the Western Swing [Sonoma and his homestate event in Seattle], then finish up a 10-race schedule by running the final four events of the season.

Racing three weekends in a row takes a toll on everyone who hits the road, whether they’re crew chiefs, hospitality workers or drivers. Courtney Force is no exception. She, like everyone, has had a long month since the NHRA fired cars up in Chicago at the JEGS Route 66 NHRA Nationals. 
 
“It has been a whirlwind,” Force said. “I haven’t been home to California in over a month. I love this life though. I have been able to do some amazing things on the track with this Advance Auto Parts Chevrolet Camaro Funny Car thanks to my crew chiefs Danny Hood and Brian Corradi. Through Advance Auto Parts and Big Machine Records, I was able to attend the CMT Awards in Nashville and give away a home in Florida through Homes for Heroes.”

Both on the track and off the track, a drag racer’s work is never done. While she comes into the Fitzgerald USA NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals with a 173-point lead, Force isn’t resting on her laurels. 

“This is just the beginning of the season and we just have to maintain our focus,” Force said. “So much credit goes to my team and the job that they have done. I am trying to keep up with them and perform well as a driver. We are in the points lead right now and we stretched it a little more with the win in Richmond. Our focus is getting to Indy and having a cushion and locking into the countdown. Get back to me then about how we are doing. That is when we are really going to need this momentum.”

For context, Ron Capps led Matt Hagan by 129 points after 10 races a season ago. Dominance changes shape and form year in and year out, this year, it belongs to the Advance Auto Parts team. One of the quickest cars in the field (3.97-second average elapsed time), the ability to remain consistent throughout a handful of track conditions has made the difference in 2018. 

Reigning Funny Car world champ Robert Hight was part of the winning team in special pre-race charity shotgun-shooting contest staged by the Bristol Dragway. And, in other news, the sun came up again today, the earth continued to spin on its axis, and gravity still makes things fall to the ground.

The event, which helped promote the event and raised funds for Speedway Children Charities and was held at the Kettlefoot Rod & Gun Club, just across the state border in Bristol, Va. 

Inviting Hight, a former championship trap shooter in his pre-driving days may seem to be a little like inviting the fox into the hen house, and that his team, which was sponsored by the Marsh Regional Blood Center in nearby Kingsport, won should be no surprise, although the humble Hight downplayed his role in the victory the competition, which also included fellow drivers Clay Millican and Alex Laughlin and Top Fuel Harley rider Rich Vreeland. 

I did pretty good; I didn’t beat some of the guys who shoot all the time, but did beat all the other drivers,” said Hight, whose busy schedule precludes him from hitting the range very often. “I was shooting a gun I’d never shot before and I shot a gun that shoots high, so I couldn’t shoot the way I normally do. You have to tell yourself to get up to it and cover because it shoots flat.

The competition was a three-round affair with sporting clays, skeet, and trap. Hight, naturally, did his best work in trapped and helped his team compile 201 points while second place was a distant 148.

After the Seattle event and before heading off the Night Under Fire match race in Norwalk, Hight take a trip to the prestigious Grand American World Trapshooting Championships in Sparta, Ill., to watch the action at the sport’s biggest event.

Terry Haddock has been talking about and building the car for more than a year now, but this event will mark the official debut of his new Ford Mustang Funny Car. His dragster is here, too, and will be driven at this event by fellow Texan Terry Totten, who Haddock has been helping this season during his frequent outings with his own TNT Motorsports entry. Haddock last drove fulltime in Funny Car in 2015 but has concentrated on Top Fuel the last two seasons.

Haddock’s new Funny Car has distinct John Force Racing bloodlines, with an older JFR chassis and a still-unlettered black Mustang body from the JFR fleet, and beneath the body is some older but proven Force running gear.

With just his usual small crew on hand, Haddock will have to split his time and their duties between the two cars, meaning we probably won’t see them on the same session or even the same day. Even hours before the first session, Haddock was still not sure which would run Friday and which Saturday, but was leaning towards getting the dragster on the track first and the Funny Car if it’s ready. With 16 cars entered it should qualify easily, but the Funny car will face a stiffer challenge with 17 cars.

“I drove a Funny Car at some match races last summer so it’s not like it’s going to feel new all lover again, but I’m going to take it easy,” he said. “The car is brand-new and pretty and has a lot of good parts, so I’m not going to go all-out banzai to qualify. I want to learn and keep my parts good to last the season. We’re trying to be realistic. We’ll start with a 300-foot squirt and take a look at everything and go from there.”

Matt Hagan, Dickie Venables and the Mopar Express Lane team haven’t had a bad season, with a win at the season opener in Pomona and two runner-ups since, but, like everyone, they’re still chasing points leader Courtney Force and trying to navigate the new-prep world of NHRA racing.

“It’s hard to be competitive when you’re always guessing and trying to hit a moving target,” he said. “I feel so bad for my crew chief because Don [Schumacher, team owner] expects results and wants to win, but these guys are just so frustrated and it’s wearing on them. They’re putting a lot of pressure on themselves to solve it. We’re pulling the tires loose at midtrack when the clutch is coming at it. The car is doing what we’re asking it to; we just don’t have enough runs in these conditions and variable to know what it’s going to do. We’ve had an off-season, but have a lot of people. It’s changed the game for everyone.”

Pressure also is on the drivers, especially on Sunday, as they’re finding the need to pedal the throttle if the tires break loose and the win is still at stake.

“You feel really confident when your car is going down the lights and your lights get better but the cars not doing that All drivers are getting ready to pedal and thinking ‘Where are tires coming loose?’ and trying to mentally prepare yourself and think what you’re going to do. You have to be prepared to do it. Unfortunately, when that happens and you pedal and cylinders go out, you’re seeing guys blow the bodies off of these things. It makes for a lot of chaos Just knowing you’re going to have to leg it out and how are you going to react."

Alex Laughlin didn’t show up to Bristol Dragway with a new race car, but it might seem like it if all goes according to plan. First of all, yes, his Chevy Camaro boasts a new wrap. He shares sponsorship with the race this weekend and bears the Fitzgerald USA logo on the hood of his car. Laughlin will also drive a totally rewired car. 

“I came in yesterday midday, we were a little late getting here, but it all looks really good,” said Laughlin, who noted the car hasn’t been started yet. “It was kind of the last thing we could do that we know of to track this problem down. From here, I don’t know what our options are and that’s not a good feeling.”

Laughlin struggled following a decent start to the 2018 campaign. His average elapsed time fell off even as teammate Vincent Nobile earned a pair of race wins and both Erica Enders and Jeg Coughlin Jr. raced to the winner’s circle. He’s currently the only Elite Motorsports driver to not earn a Pro Stock win this year. 

“It sucked to lose on a holeshot,” he said of his first-round loss to Enders at the Virginia NHRA Nationals. “I’ve been really good early this year and I had the confidence I wasn’t going to lose a single race this year on a holeshot because we were doing so well. The bottom line is sometimes you just miss it. Nobody was stellar out there all weekend even during racing but especially during qualifying.”

Reaction time can be everything in Pro Stock, but the most important thing is getting the race car put together correctly. Laughlin has been solid to the 330 mark, only .003 second behind Greg Anderson, who leads the category in that mark. His Camaro has failed to keep up with the quick cars as it powers its way down the track, though. 

“We’ve been finding little things that have helped some,” said Laughlin. “It may be cool that it worked out the way it did with the wiring being the last thing. We’ve fixed all these little things that have added up and now that the wiring is fixed we should be able to take another big step.”

It all starts with Pro Stock qualifying at 4:30 p.m.

Two years removed from his Pro Stock world championship, Jason Line’s blue Summit Chevy Camaro couldn’t look much different from his teammate’s. The red Summit Chevy driven by Greg Anderson leads the field in nearly every incremental down the track, while Line’s struggles to clear the 60-foot mark. 

That shows the challenge in running and tuning multiple Pro Stock cars. Line also tunes the K.B. Racing cars driven by Deric Kramer and Bo Butner, both of which are struggling through the middle of the strip. It’s not as simple as plugging the same recipe into every car, unfortunately for Line. 

“Obviously, we’re not smart enough to (get the cars running the same),” said Line. “I don’t know the answer to that. If I did I would make the changes. We made some steps towards running well and got better each session, but we raced very poorly. So, we’re struggling on Sunday and not doing a good job there at all.”

The track condition, impacted by temperature and the number of runs on it, changes entering race day and Line isn’t pleased with how the team has adapted to those changes. While Anderson’s car is among the best in the class, the racer hasn’t reached the winner’s circle this year. Both Kramer and Butner earned wins in Topeka and Pomona, respectively. 

Line’s particular struggle relates to getting off the starting line. While he’s among the best from 60-330 feet, he averages a .993 60-foot mark. That’s below the class average (.985) and .005 second slower than Anderson. 

“Right now, we’re not good there,” said Line. “The track prep has certainly changed, and we haven’t adapted well to that. That’s how things go, though. Things change, and you need to adapt to them.”

And on whether Tim Freeman racing in the car Bo Butner wheeled to his first Pro Stock win early in 2017 helps with tuning: 

“I think it will help but it hasn’t yet.”

Tanner Gray earned his second Wally of the season by defeating Erica Enders in the final round with both a better reaction time and a quicker race car. That came after back-to-back rounds of poor reaction times, uncharacteristic for one of the best leavers in the sport. 

“I got my practice tree out and hit it a little bit, but other than that I just hung out in the back and listened to some music,” said Gray about his preparation for the final round. “That felt like the least pressure I had all weekend, which is weird I know, but that was the most relaxed round I had all day.” 

Enders and Gray raced for the third week in a row in Richmond with Gray taking the rubber match. He also defeated Enders in Chicago by .001 second after the two smashed identical elapsed times. The two-time world champion got the best of the second-year racer in their first meeting, after a top-end encounter got heated. That’s since been put to bed, but Gray heard it on social media following his defeat. 

“In my mind, I was thinking the worst has already come,” said Gray. “In Topeka, she beat me and everybody bashed me or whatever and after that I beat her. So, right there neither one of us showed we’re better than the other so it’s up to who has the better package. And that day I felt like I could leave with her, so we left the starting line and I looked over in third gear and was like, ‘damn, I think I got something for her.’ Then I looked over during fourth, fifth and sixth and didn’t even see her over there.”

Regardless of the outcome, Enders and Gray meeting up on race day makes for an incredible spectacle. The two are among the best in the category in reaction time average (with Enders holding a slight edge) and their cars have been tight all season.  

“It makes it fun for me,” said Gray. “I enjoy different challenges, and everyone out here is pretty tough. When you go up against her, Jeg, you know they’re going to be good and it’s very rare that they’re not good. So, when you race someone like that it’s a different challenge. It brings a different pressure, which is fun, and I enjoy that. I’ve always raced better when I had a slower car, you know? I’m like, “screw this guy, you know?” 

PHOTOS

Top Fuel points leader Steve Torrence used his phone to record some interesting angles from his pre-run warm-up in the Capco Contractors dragster.

Dom Lagana is making his third appearance of the season in Top Fuel as a teammate to CatSpot racer Scott Palmer.

Doug Kalitta, a three-time Thunder Valley nationals champ, is gunning for his first Bristol Dragway title since 2006.

Bristol-based fan Wille Estep airbrushed this t-shirt with a tribute to NHRA legend Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen, who died earlier this week, and is having it autographed by drivers.

Matt Hagan is running  special paint scheme saluting Shell's Rotella oil brand, which is used at the Mopar Express Lane stores that Hagan usually banners on his Dodge Funny Car.

Nitro at night provides some weird sights, like the header flames on Terry Haddock's Top Fueler, which terry Totten is driving this weekend.

A great fireworks show helped conclude the opening day of qualifying at Bristol Dragway.

PREVIEW

The NHRA Drag Racing Series moves to its third stop on the four-race swing, stopping at one of the most scenic tracks on tour for the Fitzgerald USA NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. There are eight races remaining to gain points before the Countdown to the Championship begins, making the stop at Bristol Dragway a critical one for teams in Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock. 

Steve Torrence doesn’t remember what losing feels like. He owns 12 of the Top Fuel Wallys handed out since the beginning of the 2017 season (35.3 percent) and perhaps more importantly, his race car ranks among the best in the class. The Capco Contractors Dragster averages an elapsed time of 3.769 seconds, third best in the class by .014 second, but nobody is as quick and consistent as the Capco Boys. That’s why Torrence leads the pack thus far. 

It doesn’t need to be that complicated for Courtney Force. She drives the hell out of the Advance Auto Parts Chevy Camaro, which is tuned to perfection by Brian Corradi and Dan Hood. The result? A car so dominant the team has four Wallys to show for it this season. Force is in the middle of her best season of all time and looks like a true championship contender after beating her father, John Force, in the Virginia NHRA Nationals a week ago. Things will get tough eventually (probably), but they’re making hay while the sun shines. 

Tanner Gray and Vincent Nobile are the only two Pro Stock racers with two wins this year. The youngest racer in the category (yes, that’s Gray now, not Nobile), owns round wins against rival Erica Enders in consecutive races. His Gray Motorsports Chevy Camaro lacks the great elapsed times some of the best cars in the class are putting up, but he’s making do with his driving while crew chief Dave Connolly steadily improves the car. That’s a lethal combination.