NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

There’s no question that the weather is the biggest topic of the weekend at the FMP NHRA Arizona Nationals presented by NGK Spark Plugs as triple-digit weather has descended on the Valley of the Sun and seems to be laser-focused on Firebird Motorsports Park. NHRA has set up misters for fans, and there's plenty of water on hand to help stay hydrated.

Top Fuel’s Clay Millican, who is under a canopy for the first time in his career, is using a NASCAR-style cooling vest under his firesuit that recirculates a cooling liquid until just before the car is fired. In tests on Thursday, it brought his core temperature down to reasonable levels, ensuring comfort before he “stomps on that loud pedal” again.
 

“I can't remember racing here when it's been this hot,” said Pro Stock polesitter Greg Anderson. ”This is a record for me; it's a little bit out of my comfort zone, but so far, everybody has done a great job. It was a good, tight qualifying session both runs yesterday, and I'm looking forward to more of that today."

"It's hard to do, and I'm pretty damn impressed with the job everybody in this class did today," said Anderson. "Usually when you start the season and get your first nasty-hot weather, you'd expect to come here and see every other run be aborted or whatever because of tire shake. We didn't see that [Friday]. Everybody is getting smarter, and it just makes for better racing. It's a tough deal, but you just have to manage the racetrack the best you can. The racetrack’s really held up pretty good for the heat out there.”

Pro Stock’s naturally aspirated engines suffer the most in the heat, so Anderson and his Pro Stock peers have that challenge, too.

“Just from the first session to the afternoon session, we lost about four or five-hundredths of ET, and that's going to be probably 30-40 horsepower, just like that. You have to do other things to make the engine think it has power — gear ratio and things like that. You have to get all of the round pegs in the round holes, but it's hard to do.”

The nitro teams struggled, too, as there were only four three-second runs in Top Fuel and only three in Funny Car as teams fought for the right balance.

Four-time Top Fuel world champ tuner Bobby Lagana Jr., explained, "You just gotta get creative. You have to use all of your tuning tools: blower overdrive, compression, ignition timing, and a nitro percentage. Just take a bunch away from each one. You have to back off your clutch application, and that's where it gets dicey. It's hard to convince yourself that you can run the clutch that slow, but it won't wreck the clutch out of it, and the car will go down the track because the power is so pulled back. There's a balance there.”

The only recent comparisons anyone has are the last two years in Richmond, where the temps got to the high 90s, so a lot of the nitro tuners are digging back into that data for clues on how to solve the hot track on the first try. Teams usually get a warm-up run in the morning with the best runs recorded in the day's second session, but that's not the case in Phoenix.

“Except for Richmond, there's never an event you go to where the expectation is the first run might have the best conditions for the quickest run,” opined Jack Beckman, who clocked a 3.98 and sits second. “But, when NHRA shifted the schedule due to the heat forecast, I think that was a prudent move. We knew runs one and three will probably be our best track conditions, but you don't want to go to bed Friday night sweating if you're not the one in the show. That's a tough position to be in. We were there one race ago at Gainesville, going into the last session not qualified. So, to unload with the 3.98 takes so much pressure off, and now it allows us to try some things with the tune-up. We pushed a little bit hard on Q2, and that's OK. That will tell us what we need to do in Q4 and when we go into later rounds on Sunday.”

 

Gainesville Top Fuel winner Josh Hart didn’t make it down the track in Q1 Friday and could only manage a 4.05 in the afternoon heat, so the team will look to make its best run this morning.

“Yeah, that first run was a little sketchy,” he said. The Burnyzz Speed Shop/Speedmaster dragster got out there and thought we were gonna make it. It started off pretty smooth, and then just hazed the tire. Nothing good is going to happen on a hot track after something like that takes place. So, in the second run, we dropped a cylinder early, but we knew we needed to get down the track. So, we chugged it along there, shut it off a little bit early, but still threw a blower belt. We’ll be OK and get another shot at it [Saturday].”

Their Funny Car teammate, Alexis DeJoria, whose first career Funny Car win came here in 2014, added, “The conditions are super hot. I mean, it's ridiculous. Lanny (Miglizzi), our track specialist, said the track temp would probably get to about 150. That being said, John Force came over before Q1 and said, ‘Just get it down there any way you can. Obviously, it gets too crazy, you know, shut it off, and we'll race another time. Uh, but you know what you're doing.’ Just be careful.’ I said,’ OK … deal.’ “