SHOULD FUNNY CAR DOMINATOR HIGHT DARE TO DREAM THIS BIG? SURE – WHY NOT?

Written by Susan Wade    Sun, 2019-04-28 08:00

 

Funny Car points leader Robert Hight said during a lull in the action Friday at the NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals that his three-victory, three-top-qualifying start to 2019 has his head spinning a bit.

“It’s hard to even dream this big,” the two-time series champion from John Force Racing said.

But he’s going to keep doing it.

Hight secured his fourth No. 1 starting position of the season and 64th overall Saturday with a 3.883-second, 325.92-mph performance on zMAX Dragway’s 1,000-foot course in the Auto Club Chevy Camaro. Now he has even bigger plans for this weekend and for the whole campaign.

He’s the most successful Funny Car racer at this Concord, N.C., venue, with five victories that include the 2012 and 2014 four-wide affairs. So as he tries to seize No. 6 Sunday, he also will be seeking his fourth victory in the first six races and back-to-back trips to the winners circle for the first time this year.

“If I can just leave on time, we ought to be in the final,” Hight said.

He’s confident, not cocky. And who could blame him? Reflecting on Steve Torrence’s unstoppable Countdown sweep in Top Fuel last fall, Hight said, “That’s the kind of stuff you’ve got to dream about.” He also said his team has “enough parts and pieces to finish the year.”

Grounding him is the realization that while he’s this potent, “you force the other teams to get better.” So he’s ready for them but he’s equally energized because he didn’t win in 2017 until mid-season, at Denver, and he didn’t win last season until post-Memorial Day, at Chicago.  

“I don’t think ever in my career I’ve had a car this dominant, when you look at how competitive this class is,” he said. Citing his boss’ unmatched run in the 1990s and early 2000s, he said, “When John was doing it [dominating], he had a car that was a tenth of a second ahead of everybody else. You don’t have that anymore. From [places] 1-12, there’s just hundredths separating us. So it’s pretty amazing for us to be running this well.

“It makes my job pretty easy,” he said. “You pretty much know this car’s going to go down the track, as long as you don’t screw it up.”   

But Hight said he thinks he did screw it up Friday, when he lifted from the throttle in his only chance of the rain-plagued day, allowing Jack Beckman to earn the provisional No. 1 position. Hight had been concerned his car was going to pull him across the center line. So he settled for a 3.935-second elapsed time rather than the 3.88 he said he knew it was capable of running. Beckman was tops Friday with a 3.891-second pass.

Hight made up for it when it counted – in the final qualifying session Saturday. That’s when he unleashed his 3.883, the only 3.88 of the Funny Car class so far this weekend. Beckman pulled up to the line in the next – and final – quad. A problem late in the run for the Infinite Hero Dodge driver’s run ruined his last-ditch chance to regain the lead.

“That [3].88 was out there last night under stellar conditions. Then for us to go out and do it when the track is 115 degrees, that’s pretty impressive,” Hight said.

His first crack at advancing to the semifinals Sunday will come against No. 16 Bob Gilbertson (a hometown racer and businessman from Gastonia, N.C.), reigning class champion JR Todd (8), and continually improving Bob Tasca III (9).

Hight’s strategy Sunday, he said, will be the same as it is at every four-wide race.

“I try to keep everything simple. We race ourselves and the conditions,” Hight said.

Although he has won more times here than any other Funny Car driver, Hight said that gives him a sense of security: “It does. It really shouldn’t. Everything changes from year to year. It’ll change from now till we get back here in the fall.”

No matter what, Hight loves this racetrack. He still owns the track speed record (333.91 mph)  from April 2017 (as well as both ends of the national record at 3.793, 339.87). The Southern California resident even said he loves the people as much as the gleaming modern Bruton Smith-owned and-operated racetrack and is one of the places on the tour where he would consider living someday, maybe.

Right now, all he wants to do is make himself at home again Sunday in the winners circle.

 

 
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