One day after his second explosion fit for the highlight reels this
season, Tony Pedregon powered his Q Horsepower Chevy Impala SS to a
trip to the winner's circle at the 11th annual Torco Racing Fuels Route
66 NHRA Nationals.

Tony Schumacher won his fourth event of the season at the expense of Hot Rod Fuller.

Another
Tony - Chicago's own Tony Schumacher - took center stage in Top Fuel
with an event-best time and speed in the final round, while Kurt
Johnson (Pro Stock) and Chris Rivas (Pro Stock Motorcycle) drove away
with event titles as well.

Point standings (top 10) for NHRA professional categories following
the 11th annual Torco Racing Fuels Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66
Raceway, the tenth of 24 events in the  NHRA
POWERade Drag Racing Series -

Top Fuel

1.  Tony Schumacher, 897; 2.  Antron Brown, 707; 3.  Larry Dixon, 705;
4.  Hillary Will, 620; 5. Rod Fuller, 594; 6.  Cory McClenathan, 559;
7.  Brandon Bernstein, 512; 8.  Doug Kalitta, 451; 9. Doug Herbert,
448; 10.  David Grubnic, 445.

The ADRL Summer Drags hosted by Knoll Gas Motorsports Park in
Martin, Michigan, has been officially postponed. The event will be
completed at the next event in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The failure to get the event completed was not due to a lack of
effort. After a nasty storm washed out Saturday's competition just
after the first round, Sunday was intended to be a hot-lap affair to
complete eliminations. 

If only the circumstances would have been that easy for Kenny Nowling and his ADRL team.  

Sunday's final results from the 11th annual Torco Racing Fuels Route
66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway.  The  race is the tenth of 24 in
the  NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series:

Top Fuel -- Tony Schumacher, 4.499 seconds, 329.83 mph def. Rod Fuller, 5.259 seconds, 223.14 mph.

Final round-by-round results from the 11th annual Torco Racing Fuels
Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway, the tenth of 24 events in
the  NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series:

TOP FUEL:

ROUND ONE -- Hillary Will, 4.539, 314.17 def. Cory McClenathan,
4.590, 321.04; Rod Fuller, 4.540, 309.34 def. Doug Kalitta, 4.560,
327.59; Morgan Lucas, 4.599, 316.90 def. Alan Bradshaw, 4.653, 304.74;
T.J. Zizzo, 4.668, 313.07 def. Antron Brown, 7.549, 122.47; Tony
Schumacher, 6.698, 190.59 def. Bob Vandergriff, 6.765, 288.09; Larry
Dixon, 4.787, 261.57 def. Troy Buff, 4.877, 308.35; Doug Herbert,
4.686, 293.86 def. J.R. Todd, 8.718, 98.14; David Grubnic, 5.132,
284.15 def. Brandon Bernstein, 5.936, 173.54;

QUARTERFINALS -- Herbert, 4.722, 302.01 def. Grubnic, 5.276,
190.03; Lucas, 4.654, 307.02 def. Dixon, 4.829, 265.06; Schumacher,
4.565, 326.56 def. Will, 4.599, 325.14; Fuller, 4.602, 323.58 def.
Zizzo, 4.647, 313.88;

SEMIFINALS -- Fuller, 4.678, 316.45 def. Lucas, 6.345, 214.08; Schumacher, 4.568, 330.23 def. Herbert, 19.449, 85.55;

FINAL -- Schumacher, 4.499, 329.83 def. Fuller, 5.259, 223.14.

A thunderstorm approached during the middle of the second round of Top
Alcohol Dragster eliminations to delay racing at the 11th annual Torco
Racing Fuels Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Route 66 Raceway in Chicago.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe weather warning for
thunderstorms and strong wins in Will County, Ill. Track drying and
racing will resume after the storm blows through.

For the third straight year, and sixth time overall, the $20,000 top prize in
the team competition in the annual JEGS Sportsman Allstars race went to the team
from NHRA’s Northeast Division. At the end of the competition, which features
the best sportsman drag racers from each of NHRA’s seven geographic divisions,
the teams from Division 1 (Northeast) and Division 2 (Southeast) were tied with
900 points each but the Division 1 team claimed the title via a tie breaker,
which factored the overall performance of each team. The Division 4 (South
Central) team finished third.

With only 24 hours notice that he would be driving in the Torco Race
Fuels NHRA Route 66 Nationals, former Funny Car world champion Mark
Oswald stepped back into the driver's seat and through the course of
qualifying blasted his way in the A&R Transport Dodge Charger R/T
to the No. 2 spot - just behind his teammate Melanie Troxel.
 
Until Thursday evening, Mark Oswald was planning to assume his usual
duties as co-crew chief on Troxel's nitro Funny Car, but his plans were
changed with one phone call from team co-owner Mike Ashley. Oswald has
been out of competition since 1997, but his return netted a personal
quickest and fastest run of 4.757-seconds at 328.46 m.p.h. in the final
qualifying session of the day.
 
“I didn’t have a lot of time to get prepared for this race - I got the
call from Mike at like midnight Thursday night letting me know that I’d
be driving, but this car is so good that it made the move back behind
the wheel easy for me,” Oswald said.
 
“This was a great day for the entire Gotham City Racing team. My
teammate Melanie Troxel is number one qualifier and one of our
sponsors, A&R Transport, is based right here in Joliet, so we’ve
really been able to put on quite a show for them, too,” he said.

ProCare Rx driver Melanie Troxel made history Saturday as the first female to take the top qualifying position in Funny Car as

Melanie
Troxel might have let the first victory by a female slip by but there
was no way she was going to miss out on the first No. 1 qualifier.
(Roger Richards Photo)

she raced to the head of the pack with a blistering 4.752-second 327.27
m.p.h. quarter-mile in qualifying at the Torco Race Fuels NHRA Route 66
Nationals.
 
The final qualifying session originally scheduled for 4:00 p.m. was
postponed more than three hours due to severe thunderstorms and tornado
warnings. When the track was finally cleared and racing resumed, the
atmospheric conditions had improved dramatically, giving crew chief
Brian Corradi the opportunity to push Melanie's ProCare Rx Dodge
Charger R/T to the limit and all the way to the top spot.
 
“If we had run this session on time, I don’t think you’d have seen a
lot of .70s – maybe a couple, but we really needed it to cool off and
the track to tighten up like it did in order for us to go full bore at
it and give the track everything we had,” Troxel said.
 
"We went up there to try a few different things, and just get down the
track, and, honestly, I had never run a .70 before, so I wasn’t really
anticipating that we were going to take that number one spot away, but
I knew the second I hit the throttle that the car was on a seriously
good run, and it was quite a handful out there. It was a pretty wild
ride,” she said.

Surrounded
by ADRL racers, series president Kenny Nowling demonstrates some of the
hand signals he'll be using to stage and signal the start of each pair
of elimination-round competitors at the 4th annual ADRL Pizza Hut Sumer
Drags in Martin, MI. (ADRL Communications photo)

In an
unprecedented move for major-league drag racing, the Flowmaster
American Drag Racing League presented by the National Guard is
returning to the sport's roots with hand-signal starts at its 4th
annual Pizza Hut Summer Drags at Knoll Gas Motorsports Park in Martin,
Michigan.