Qualifying ended Saturday at Route 66 Raceway without much movement at the top of the sheet.
Doug Kalitta stayed No. 1 in Top Fuel. Jack Beckman remained on top in Funny Car. Erica Enders kept the lead in Pro Stock and Angie Smith never moved from the top of Pro Stock Motorcycle.
The lineup stayed the same.
The pressure didn’t.
Kalitta locked up his second straight No. 1 qualifier with Friday’s 3.720-second pass at 338.17 mph in his Mac Tools dragster. Maddi Gordon ended up second at 3.738 and Billy Torrence finished third at 3.746.
Josh Hart grabbed headlines Saturday by setting the track speed record at 341.25 mph, but Kalitta still left with the top spot and a first-round bye waiting for him Sunday.
“Getting the No. 1 qualifier today is a good thing,” Kalitta said. “That last session last night was kind of interesting, because everybody was kind of one-upping one another, and it got down to us, and as a driver, you’re sitting there going, ‘Man, I sure hope we can pull this off.’”
Kalitta knows qualifying sheets stop meaning much once helmets are strapped on Sunday.
“You try to stage real shallow because that’ll get you the best E.T. out of it,” Kalitta said. “Anytime you get down to the end, and you know there’s another pair behind you, you’re just hoping to stay ahead.”
Beckman finds himself standing in familiar territory.
Last year he qualified No. 1 in Chicago and spent Sunday making certain nobody took that spot away from him. The path looks similar this year.
His Friday pass of 3.913 seconds stayed untouched through the final day of qualifying, putting him back at the front of a Funny Car field that continues stacking names behind him.
Ron Capps ended qualifying second. Austin Prock moved into third.
Beckman wasn’t interested in talking much about his own work afterward.
“I’ve always felt like my job, as a driver, in terms of interacting with crew chiefs, is to let them think consciously a little bit more,” Beckman said. “In other words, when we don’t make a good run, and they’re looking at the numbers, I said, ‘Tell me what you would do differently, knowing what you know now.’
“I think our struggles were more of trying to do things to get more speed out of this car and we took one step back, but three of the four qualifying runs we got great data.”
Erica Enders finally has something she hasn’t had much of this season.
Room to breathe.
The six-time Pro Stock champion held onto the No. 1 position with Friday’s 6.542-second run at 209.92 mph, earning her first top qualifying effort in nearly two years.
That may sound strange attached to the name Erica Enders.
For years, her place has been near the front of the ladder and somewhere near the final round. This season started with a lot more questions than trophies.
Now she rolls into Sunday chasing career victory No. 50 at the same track where she earned her first Pro Stock victory.
“It’s super exciting. I love racing here at Joliet,” Enders said. “I started racing Super Comp dragsters here back when I was in high school, so I’ve been coming here an awful long time.”
Then she said something that probably made a few people nearby stop what they were doing.
“So, it would be fitting if this was where the tide started to turn and it has so far this weekend, securing the No. 1 spot and then winning the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty deal,” Enders said. “It’s a great start to the weekend. Tomorrow’s the day that matters, and I really, really want one of those diamond Wallys.”
Angie Smith enters Sunday with the quickest motorcycle rider in the field and hasn’t given anyone much reason to believe that changes easily.
She led qualifying on Friday. She led it again Saturday.
“When you are the No. 1 qualifier and you know you have the machine, the motorcycle that I do, I have to focus on one round at a time, go do my job and the cards will fall how they want to fall,” Smith said.
“Hopefully, tomorrow, about 4 o’clock, I have a trophy, and we’re partying in the winner’s circle.”
SATURDAY #2FAST2TASTY – ENDERS, DEJORIA FIND SOMETHING BIGGER THAN BONUS MONEY AT ROUTE 66
The checks cash the same whether they come on Saturday or Sunday, but racers have never treated Mission #2Fast2Tasty rounds like side shows.
Not at Route 66 Raceway.
Saturday looked like bonus money on paper, but inside the pits there were drivers carrying more than points into those races. Erica Enders had spent the opening stretch of this season looking for the rhythm that built six championships. Alexis DeJoria had spent months performing like a breakthrough was parked just around the corner.
By the end of the day, both left with something they badly needed.
Shawn Langdon and Gaige Herrera also collected Mission victories, but Enders and DeJoria were the more prominent stories because both suddenly looked a lot more dangerous heading into Sunday’s eliminations.
Enders looked like Enders again.
The six-time Pro Stock champion defeated teammate Greg Stanfield with a 6.563-second pass at 208.75 mph to earn her first Mission #2Fast2Tasty victory of the season. It came one day after she secured her first No. 1 qualifying position in nearly two years.
For most drivers, that would simply be another solid weekend.
For Enders, who has spent years making “normal” mean final rounds and trophies, the first part of this season had looked unfamiliar. Now she heads into Sunday chasing career victory No. 50 at the same track where she earned her first Pro Stock win in 2012.
“It’s super exciting. I love racing here at Joliet,” Enders said. “I started racing Super Comp dragsters here back when I was in high school, so I’ve been coming here an awful long time.
“So, it would be fitting if this was where the tide started to turn and it has so far this weekend, securing the No. 1 spot and then winning the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty deal,” Enders said. “It’s a great start to the weekend. [Sunday is] the day that matters and I really, really want one of those diamond Wallys.”
DeJoria opened the season with a runner-up finish and has spent much of the year showing flashes of a Funny Car capable of making deep runs in eliminations. The speed has been there often enough that people around the pits had started waiting for the results to catch up.
Her final against John Force Racing teammate Jordan Vandergriff barely had time to become a race.
Vandergriff developed clutch problems and shut the car off before staging, while DeJoria shook the tires and clicked her car off almost immediately, coasting to an 8.301-second run at 82.43 mph.
Nobody saves that time slip, but everybody takes that win light.
“I’m finally back in a winner’s circle, and that’s good even though it came at the cost of my teammate, and it was a lackluster final,” DeJoria said. “We got the ‘W’ and that’s all that matters. The win went to a JFR car so that’s great.”
DeJoria said she never stopped believing the win was coming.
“I just had a feeling we were going to win it,” DeJoria said. “I just knew in my heart. It was one of those things. That’s actually the first time we didn’t get down the track. It shook really hard, but we made it three out of four runs.”
Langdon earned his first Mission victory of the season by defeating Justin Ashley with a 3.770-second run at 336.57 mph after spending most of the weekend trying to calm down a race car that looked like it wanted to outrun itself.
Gaige Herrera collected his second Mission victory of the season in Pro Stock Motorcycle, using a .024-second reaction time to edge Angie Smith in the final.
Herrera knew exactly what he was up against.
“It was a good final there,” Herrera said. “I knew I had to try to get any advantage I could on the starting line.”
Then Herrera said what many in the pit area were already thinking about Sunday.
“She’s got the bike to beat this weekend and my hat’s off to her,” Herrera said. “She’s been doing well this year so far and so has Matt and all of team MSR. It’s been making the class much more fun and interesting. It’s going to be a good day of racing tomorrow, for sure.”
