Matt Hartford and his Total Seal, CIP1, GETTRX Chevy team were perturbed enough by the shock of having the rear end of their Pro Stock Camaro lock up at the starting line during Friday night qualifying for the Circle K NHRA Four-Wide Nationals. 

“We went to bed last night really disappointed in the fact that we knew we had a car last night that could go to the pole,” he said. 

Moreover, they were miffed they had little choice but to stay late at the track and miss out on a decent dinner. 

“Llast night, getting out of here late and stopping at the wing place for dinner, none of us were in a good mood, even with the food we had to eat,” he said.

 But Saturday’s results were much easier to digest. 

Hartford rebounded early Saturday with a 6.538-second, 208.52-mph blast down the zMAX Dragway quarter-mile that earned him his second straight No. 1 qualifying position and second career No. 1 start. 

“I think luck was on our side last night,” Hartford said, “because had we had that failure at 1,000 foot or even past the finish line last night, I think it'd be a whole different outcome today. And I'm not sure the car would be in one piece. So it was lucky for us that the car broke right here before we fired it up.  

“We just regrouped this morning and said, ‘OK, that run’s over. Come out here and we're first car out – which means we got to be pulled back some because the lane's not going to be as good – and let's just go up there and make a good run. We know we have enough to probably get into the top five, and if we make a great run, we'll go No. 1.’ And that's what we did,” he said. 

“We have a great team. The Total Seal, CIP1, GETTRX Camaro is a rocket ship right now. It's the best car I've ever had. It's the best team I've ever had. And we're just going to see if we can start trying to capitalize on it,” Hartford said. 

He said he wasn’t especially confident he’d see the results he did. 

“There was not even a thought in my mind. We came in this morning with the idea of we can go into the top five. If we make the right run, we go No. 1,” he said. “Honestly, I think some of the other cars we expected to run quicker in Q3, I think a few of them missed it. And had a couple of them hit on it, it might have been a little bit closer. But that's a lot of fun right now.” 

He laughed at how inexperienced he is with top-qualifier protocol. 

“I've never been in this position,” he said, confessing that he had to ask someone at the top end who’s associated with the media, "What do I do now?" When he was told, “Well, you got to go to the media center,” he said, “I'm like, ‘Where is that?’" 

Curiously, Hartford’s two top-qualifying positions have come at four-wide races, but he was blunt about his ability to take advantage of that.  

“Look up our stats on how we do in eliminations. It hasn't been good,” he said. “So we got to change that tomorrow. We need to come out and I need to do my job. The car is doing its job right now. 

“We've had, I think, the best car since E2 in Gainesville,” he said. “Dallas Glenn, I would say, has the second-best car or at times the best car. But between the two of us, we've had the best cars consistently since Gainesville, and he's capitalized with two Wallys. We've got zero.” 

Hartford is coming on strong, just like the Pro Stock class. 

He said, “I think the class is as hard as it's ever been since probably going back into the late ’90s, back in the time when [a particular engine builder] would lease an engine to five different people at one race and they would all qualify with his engine. I think that was a really tough era then. But I think when you look now, there are 16 cars that I feel that can qualify on the pole any given weekend. 

“Highlights of this weekend: There's 23 cars. Second highlight is we qualified No. 1. The other highlight was the quad of Cuadra. That's pretty neat to see a family like that. They've got four cars campaigning, and you need great people to have a great business. But you need all these sponsors to help you, because these cars run on money. And I don't care what class you're in, but for Cuadra to be able to fund four cars competitively says the devotion that he has towards the class. People are going to look at that and say, ‘Wow, we can come out and we can race,’ because he's leasing everything,” he said. 

“You look at [Brandon] Miller's coming out here and racing. [Alan] Prusiensky has been helping guys get out here to race. It's making the class stronger. I am not shocked to see 23 cars. I think you're going to see other races this year. I think Indy, I think you’ll see more than 23 cars at Indy. So I think we have the best class. I think we have the strongest class, and I think we have the most competitive class,” he said. 

Hartford competes with himself as much as he does against his competitors – and four-wide fashion magnifies the difficulty, he said. He said he has enough pressure, but add in the fact he knows crew chief Eddie Guarnaccia and the team give him a superb car, and the pressure ratchets up. 

“Oh, absolutely. If we can get the driver in the car to ever be on the same page, at the same race, we've proven we can win races,” Hartford said. “Denver last year, the driver and the car were both good. We've also proven that when we have the car let us down, we can lose that race just as easy. There is a ton of pressure to go up there and perform.

"The four-wide is extremely difficult from a driver's standpoint. There's so much going on. The amount of mental stimulation with all four trees trying to come on and then even in qualifying when you have two or three cars instead of four, I think the starters, I don't think it's on auto start. I think the starter's flipping the switch, because we're having these super-long trees and then we're having short trees. So you don't know what to expect going into tomorrow, because every time we've gone up there, the tree's been really different.” 

Besides, he said, “Look, I said to somebody, they were asking about the pits, about these young guns. I said when I started in Pro Stock, I think I was one of the youngest guys in Pro Stock. I look around now, and Fernando [Cuadra Sr.], I think, is the oldest guy. Greg [Anderson is] next, and then it's me. How did that happen? So look, Camrie [Caruso is] crushing it out there and Mason [McGaha is] great. Dallas is always good. You just start looking at some of these younger drivers, and they're putting a lot of pressure on us.” 

But all he can do is stick to the message he discussed with his team Friday night. 

“The message was ‘Let's not try to overlook some of these details, because obviously there was a detail that we had overlooked, that is what cost us not to run last night – because overlooking these details makes us end up leaving the track really late and having to eat at places we don't want to eat.’ And that was really the message,’ Hartford said. 

“It's like, if we do our job right, we can get out of here on time and have an enjoyable evening. But just focus on the details. We're all going to make mistakes. That was a complete team miss why we failed last night. There was not one individual – it was our entire team could have recognized that problem at some point in time, and we didn't. So it's on our checklist of ‘Here's another one of the million ways to losing in drag racing,’ and we'll not have that one again.” 

No more nasty chicken wings for Hartford and his team. 

And next time he’ll have an idea where the media center is, too.