For Larry Dixon, the first round at the recently completed Auto Club NHRA Finals was unlike any opening round he’d faced all season long.

Even though the race was just beginning, the opening round against Mike Strasburg was an opportunity to put an exclamation point on an incredible season.

Win the first round and he would be the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel champion.

“I’ve never had so much excitement for a first round win in my life,” Dixon said. “An awesome job for my team. It was just one round today but it was all of the good rounds we’ve had previous. The second rounds and the semi-finals. They have all added up to this point. It’s a credit to Alan Johnson, Sheikh Khalid, Jason McCulloch and the whole Al-Anabi team. This is for everybody who pitches in to make this happen. This is what we do it for.”

 

 

For Larry Dixon, the first round at the recently completed Auto Club NHRA Finals was unlike any opening round he’d faced all season long.

Even though the race was just beginning, the opening round against Mike Strasburg was an opportunity to put an exclamation point on an incredible season.

Win the first round and he would be the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel champion.

“I’ve never had so much excitement for a first round win in my life,” Dixon said. “An awesome job for my team. It was just one round today but it was all of the good rounds we’ve had previous. The second rounds and the semi-finals. They have all added up to this point. It’s a credit to Alan Johnson, Sheikh Khalid, Jason McCulloch and the whole Al-Anabi team. This is for everybody who pitches in to make this happen. This is what we do it for.”

The 2010 championship is the third for Dixon. Previously he had won championships driving for Don Prudhomme and tuned by LaHaie.

“It was so long ago that I can’t remember,” Dixon said jokingly when asked how this title compared to his previous pair earned in 2002 and 2003.

This season’s crown will likely be one he’ll remember for a long time. He dominated both the regular season and playoff portions impressively. He won nine events during the regular season scoring an impressive 46 – 8 win loss record. After securing the point lead following the NHRA Midwest Nationals [St. Louis], he never relinquished the top spot.

Dixon carried a 14-2 win loss record into the final race of the season and needed only to win the first round to clinch his crown.
 
He was equally brutal in qualifying. Out of the 87 qualifying sessions, Dixon scored the top bonus point award [3 points] 33 times.

For Dixon, one of the more pleasing aspects of winning this title was seeing the joy from second-generation tuner Jason McCulloch, now a first-time championship crew chief.

 “I am so proud of him,” Dixon said. “I told him when we were taking pictures, “this will be on your resume forever. You have a championship as a crew chief.”

Dixon continued, “I fully believe he’s got the best guy in the business teaching him with Alan.”

And Dixon didn’t have to look too far for an example of why McCulloch was going to rise to the occasion on race day. Saturday’s final qualifying session turned out to be a tire-smoker and as a result his sophomore tuner was at the track early Sunday morning preparing for battle.

“He was already preparing short blocks, camshafts and all of this kind of stuff,” Dixon said. “Motors were changed and preparations were made for race day. The right changes were made and the calls were right.”

 After a week filled full of stories chronicling Tony Schumacher’s miracle finishes of the past, Dixon was not bothered in the least by the suggestions if his team slipped the seven-time champion was ready to pounce. Dixon had Alan Johnson, the catalyst in many of Top Fuel’s greatest championship runs in his corner.

“I know there’s a lot of talk about miracles but the guy who performed those is in my corner,” Dixon said. “He’s my cut man, he’s all of that. I watched him do that for many years with Blaine. I watched [Johnson’s brother] Blaine and Alan win their first race in Top Fuel against me in Pomona in 1995.”

If anyone knows what Johnson is capable of, it’s Dixon.

“We had the Slick 50 bonus on the line [back in 2001], after winning the Bud Shootout, the NHRA had a $50,000 bonus on the line. All of this money on the line and Blaine and Alan smoke down the track to a 4.68 to get low elapsed time and the win away from us. They took the Slick 50 bonus away and all of that.”

Blaine Johnson, a contender for the series championship, was killed in a 1996 racing accident. A year later Alan tuned Gary Scelzi to an improbable championship. Eight years later, Johnson tuned Schumacher to five consecutive championships.

Clearly Dixon feels blessed to be the driver of the Al-Anabi Top Fuel dragster. Getting to work with the Johnson family is a bonus.

“They’re such good people with such good hearts,” said Dixon, of the Johnson family. “They race. That’s what they do. I’m not so into myself that I don’t know if Blaine were still alive, he’d be driving this car. Blaine would be here talking to you guys. I’m just filling in for him.”

This season was one of redemption after losing the 2009 crown by a mere three points. Although, Dixon admits, the team raced just as hard in finishing runner-up as it did in winning the 2010 title.

“I don’t feel like we had anything to prove because you just race hard all the time,” Dixon said. “You race just as hard when you don’t qualify or lose in the first round. Everyone is out here racing for the same thing. It just clicked this year. There were a lot of races where we weren’t the best car but we just happened to be better on that particular run. I can think of a lot of rounds or final rounds where we weren’t the best car. One thing or another happened and we just managed to get the win light. They ended up adding up to enough points to win.”

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