This past weekend’s Lucas Oil Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway in Minnesota was a tale of one racetrack with two different personalities.

Three-time Top Fuel champion Antron Brown spoke for many teams when he said, “All-and-all it was a good weekend here at Brainerd.” But current Funny Car champion Ron Capps summed up the event for many teams, as well: “This whole weekend here at Brainerd was a lot of adversity.” For many teams, it was both.

The facility was beautifully groomed, the Safety Safari did an excellent job trying to present two equal lanes and prepare the racetrack (particularly following rain showers Friday), and the fans turned out in force. But after blistering-hot weekends at Seattle and Topeka, the Minnesota northwoods brought a respite for drivers. The cooler-than-before temperatures turned out to be no guarantee of a smooth race day.

Winners Steve Torrence in Top Fuel and Bob Tasca III in Funny Car mastered the surface that turned persnickety Sunday. But despite fun at the Zoo campground, positive energy from a full house, and some truly happy moments (several pros set career-best elapsed times and speeds, for example), race day was a bit weird and disappointing – and for some kind of painful.

Most of the crazy events of race day took place in the second round, when temperatures rose and the track no longer was generous with prime conditions.

The Top Fuel quarterfinals began with Josh Hart sitting in his dragster, patiently awaiting the arrival of Tony Schumacher to the starting line. Schumacher’s crew had to replace the engine after it threw out connecting rods in the first round, then encountered an electrical problem, had to skip the warm-up, and made a mad dash to get in place for his first race-day meeting with Hart. Without any idea whether his car would start, he arrived to cheers from the crowd. Hart’s chances went up in smoke immediately, and Schumacher’s car had problems farther down-track.

Afterward, Schumacher thanked Hart for waiting and called him a class act. Hart said, “It was getting warmer out there and we had to wait a little bit for Tony. I don’t know if waiting hurt us, but I am going to look at the overall positives for the weekend.” They included his best qualifying starting position (No. 2) with his career quickest elapsed time (3.668 seconds) and four qualifying bonus points. “We really made the most of the qualifying run opportunities. Back-to-back runs in the 3.60s shows we have a strong dragster,” the top-five racer said.

Next up, Brittany Force – who had clocked low E.T. of the meet in the first round at 3.646 seconds – could muster just a 4.394, which was enough to move on past Billy Torrence . . . as they both lost traction and pedaled their dragsters. Steve Torrence got the better of Antron Brown in their ugly pedalfest with his round-worst 4.945-second time.

“Things got tricky in the second round for all of the teams,” Brown said, “and we’re bummed about that, because we wanted to keep making some strides in the points. We qualified in the top half of the field with that 3.70, our quickest pass of the year, and bettered that in the first round with that 3.68, and that was second-quick of the round.”

Justin Ashley and Shawn Langdon closed the second round by going down the track in 3.72 and 3.80 seconds, respectively, as though the track never had given anyone a hint of trouble.

Then it was the Funny Car class’ turn to experience the wacky. Capps got a solo pass, because Bobby Bode had a situation similar to Schumacher’s minutes before. After ,only to encounter a problem in trying to back up on the burnout. That forced him out of the car and over the wall to watch Capps smoke his tires at the hit of the throttle.

In the next pairing, Chad Green also had trouble on the burnout, but he got everything in order and lost to Tasca (who breezed to victory with the only three-second pass of the round). Next, both Robert Hight and JR Todd ended up on fire at the end of their second-round match as their engines let go later in the run. Both lost points for their oildowns. Todd blamed himself, perhaps unfairly, for his share of the carnage, and Hight called it a “disappointing end to what was shaping up to be a pretty good weekend.”

And finally in that round, Alexis De Joria knocked out top qualifier Matt Hagan after a messy launch that saw both smoke the tires and resort to pedaling it.

De Joria said, “This race has been somewhat of a struggle, starting with qualifying. We had one really good run which put us in the middle of the pack. We had Blake Alexander first round; definitely a good opponent. We were about equal as far as how our teams performed during qualifying, so it was anybody’s game. Second round, we were up against Matt Hagan, and we had lane choice, but both lanes were iffy. People were struggling to make it down both lanes, and neither Matt nor I made it down, so it was a pedalfest, and luckily, we came out on top. I definitely did my best pedal job in a long time, and I’m proud of that.” She red-lit against Capps in the semifinal.

Hagan said, “Things got hot and greasy in the second round and no one seemed to be going down the racetrack. We were one of the cars that couldn’t get down the track, so it ended up being a pedalfest. Alexis smoked it a little further out there and got it to recover. It was just a tough round. As a veteran driver, you feel like you should win because of pedaling the car, letting it relax and getting it hooked back up. It’s tough when you smoke it at the hit like that and don’t get any momentum to move forward.”

But Hagan had problems even before he arrived at Brainerd. He almost didn’t arrive at Brainerd. If, as the saying goes, getting there is half the battle, Hagan had his take on that Friday. He said, “It was almost the whole battle. I almost didn't make it. So I have to say a big thank-you to my dad for sending the plane up and getting me and bringing me up here. But man, three cancellation [of] flights . . . had to bum a rental car from a Dodge dealer a minute ago. I'm just really glad to be here.” And for his effort, he got the No. 1 qualifying position and a banged-up elbow.

“What a tough weekend,” he said. “We had three canceled flights and we were down a couple of crew guys that were sick. Our Mopar 85th Anniversary Funny Car ended up No. 1 qualifier but blew up a lot of parts doing it.”

Immediately after securing the No. 1 starting spot, he said, “She's running good, really hauling out the back door once the clutch went one to one. But she just kind of popped right there at the finish line and the body come back down on my elbow, man. We're running hard. It was a nasty little boomer. But No. 1 qualifier, we'll take some junk parts to get this 85th anniversary Mopar car in the No. 1 spot and give us a bye round [in eliminations]. So we'll take it. I'm going to go ice my elbow a little bit, maybe drink a stiff drink, and then go to bed.”

In the Top Fuel semifinal, Brittany Force found herself no long in command of the field. “Interesting weekend for our Monster Energy / Flav-R-Pac team at BIR this weekend,” she said. “We made three great runs during qualifying, our best a 3.661 at 334 mph that pushed us to the top. [Sunday] we improved in E1 running a 3.646 333,” Force said. “In the second round we had to work for it. The warmer track made for big changes for everyone. The car went up in smoke and I pedaled for the win light. Unfortunately, in the semis, we didn't have the same luck. Our car got up on the tires right at the hit and that was it for us. We kept the points lead.”

Her teammate, Austin Prock, has an injured hand. And Sunday he got his feelings hurt by losing a pedaling job against Billy Torrence. Procks aid, I feel like I let the guys down there. I know how to drive the car better than that and get it hooked back up sooner. There are times when the driver has to have the team's back, and that should have been one of those times. This Montana Brand / Rocky Mountain Twist team was having a good weekend, really started to turn things around. We'll keep at it, move onto Indy where we get points and a half. We'll be looking for a big points weekend there heading into the Countdown."

And Top Fuel’s Leah Pruett experienced both ends of the spectrum at Brainerd.

“As we’ve gotten further into the season, we’ve gotten further into our pool of knowledge. First session, we joined the rest of the field in having traction problems. It seemed to be difficult for all the teams. Going into Q2, we had a nice and spicy 3.70, which was something we felt was right inside our target for getting down the track, especially during a night session. The next day, we felt like we could improve upon that and our avenue was new. We tried a new theory of accelerating the car. At the end of the day, it is an acceleration game when we break it into multiple parts down the track. It was either going to throw down or throw up and what did it do? We ran almost the exact same time with a 3.70. That opened up a new Pandora’s box with theories about how we can apply power,” she said.

“We went back to our race-day tune-up for the final session to get ready for Sunday. We didn’t quite make it down the track. Going into race day, sometimes you’ve got mountains and sometimes you’ve got valleys. Race day was not our most shining moment. We dropped a cylinder, and I did not have my most impressive [reaction time] against somebody we continue to race throughout this entire season, I think more than anyone else [Langdon]. We will peak again. We’re still in a healthy spot in the championship, and now we’ve learned more and we’ll gain more.”

In Funny Car, Capps reached the final round but couldn’t stop Tasca. And he was a bit frustrated because of the track becoming rather uncooperative and at the same time reassured by the way his crew chiefs, Dean Antonelli and John Medlen, were able to equip him to navigate the track (and take out closest competitor John Force in the opening round). Overall, he said, “This was a great, feel-good weekend for our team.”

 

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John Force said the visit to Brainerd, where he has won 11 times, was a “rough weekend for this PEAK Chevy team. We struggled to get down the track. But everyone else, Robert Hight in the Auto Club Chevy, Brittany in the Monster Dragster and the Prock kid with Montana Brand, they all ran well,” Force said. “We’ll be fine, we’ll get it figured out. We’re in the Countdown. That’s what matters. Points will reset, and we’ll be ready when it counts.”

Schumacher wasn’t injured at all, but he was mentally exhausted after this penultimate race of the regular season. In the semifinals, he became engaged in yet another pedalfest, that time with Ashley.

The eventual runner-up said, “Pedaling the car every single run until the final round, it just kicks your butt. These cars are beautiful machines but violent as the day is long, and it was epic. Second round, we couldn’t even get our car to start. We didn’t even fire the thing up on nitromethane before we went up against Josh Hart. I thank him for waiting, he’s a class act. It was one of those things today where you pretty much knew you and whoever you’re racing, you’re both going to smoke the tires so you’ve got to focus on what you’ve got to do. The track was so bald. Situational awareness is important. Understanding who you’re racing, understanding what the track is going to do, and what the car is more than likely going to provide for you, and being able to react to it is key to going rounds and reaching the finals on a day like [Sunday].”
 
“By the time we got to the final round, I thought, ‘Man, if we can get down this track, we’re going to win it.’ I swore at halftrack, I thought we had it won. We were so far out and it started spinning the tires and I still thought, no way two of us are going down this race track – it’s too hot, too slippery. But, at the end of the day, we got some good points this weekend and had a good run. We’re happy. I’m proud of my guys, they work so damn hard. It’s simply insane what they had to go through [Sunday]. We’ve got momentum. We’ve got a good car.”

And what more could anyone have hoped for from the fickle Brainerd racetrack?