Top Fuel racer Leah Pruett channeled a little Winston Churchill on Friday during the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series’ unique doubleheader at Bristol Dragway, adopting the “Keep calm and carry on” approach.

And it paid off, as she doubled down with the provisional No. 1 qualifying position for the Thunder Valley Nationals eliminations and a first-round victory over Doug Kalitta to advance in the New England Nationals make-up that was postponed last Monday because of persistent rain showers in New Hampshire. 

She claimed the provisional No. 1 starting position for the Bristol race with the 3.745-second, 322.42-mph pass to beat Kalitta.

The second Bristol-race qualifying session doubled as Round 1 of eliminations from the New England Nationals. And Pruett said she and her Neal Strausbaugh-tuned team were grateful to have that first run before Epping eliminations kicked in.

“We say we're racing Epping, and for us, we thought we had a grip on the Epping track. And we're very thankful for our Q1 that we had here, because we did not have it right and we had to throw so much at it. Basically, we smoked the tires in Q1 within the first quarter of a revolution. We've never smoked that quick. I was able to lift and save a supercharger there,” she said.
 
Surprisingly, her plight caught the attention of former racers, who were quick to send her text messages.

 

 

 

“We had extreme tire shake and ebbing, so much that people that are watching that are former drag racers are texting us like, ‘How do you shake in that very first moment?’ Usually dragsters shake around the tree, not right at that hit. And so here we had smoked right at that hit,” Pruett said “But for us we were not particularly worried about the qualifying. In Pro Stock, there's 20 cars. Here, there's 17. What you look at is the weather for Saturday, to be honest. We got a good shot of getting two rounds in tomorrow. So if we weren't in eliminations and we smoke the tires, you wouldn't be pedaling it right there. We've got our E1 hat on and ready to take it to the finish line, be the first one there, no matter what.

“It is definitely a new combination, qualifying and racing at the same time,” she said, “and you combine all those emotions in one and you're already tapped out. You just live at this high level of what's the best that you can be. And I'm very proud of our team for putting up that No. 1 spot for now.

“When you have chaos, you try to remain calm,” Pruett said moments after exiting her Rush Truck Centers Dragster.

She said that because she didn’t have confidence as a weapon, “instead you have to take action. And that's what we did. We went to every orifice of the race car that we thought was causing us this gigantic mechanical problem that has not been consistent with this year. That's from injector to manifold to short block to input shaft and then making the same tune-up calls as we would as if that Q1 didn't happen while you're running against Doug Kalitta and knowing that they're going to bring the heat.”

She said she and each of the crew members kept their emotions in check; remarkable, considering that she said, “We didn't make that call to swap everything out until a good 20, 30 minutes into our service, so that already puts our rhythm at the very top.”

 

 

 

 

Pruett already was amped up at the very thought of this hybrid event. Add to that the fact it was taking place at night, something that almost never happens when it comes to eliminations.

“I love running at night, and I'm always like, ‘Which visor do I run? What's the wind going to be like? What's the nitro and the smoke?’ And you're running after Funny Car, and it's just an incredible feeling,” she said. “And the fans here are so loud. I love it. They're almost as loud as the nitro cars.”

Pruett joined other early leaders for the Bristol event: Robert Hight (Funny Car), Erica Enders (Pro Stock), and Gaige Herrera (Pro Stock Motorcycle).

Two Saturday sessions will determine the New England Nationals winner and the starting line-up for Sunday’s Thunder Valley Nationals eliminations.

Pruett will go up against Mike Salinas, who eliminated Joliet winner Clay Millican. In other Round 2 matches, top Epping qualifier Antron Brown will race Steve Torrence, Brittany Force will continue to pursue her first victory of the year against Justin Ashley, and Tony Schumacher earned a bye run by dropping Shawn Langdon.

Force tied the track speed record at 334.48 mph in her Q2 victory over Josh Hart.

She will be trying Saturday to claim her first No. 1 qualifying spot of the season and the 14th of her career.

The chance to claim two victories at the same event isn’t unprecedented. The rain-interrupted October 2012 Reading, Pa., event finished with the Pro Stock Motorcycle final round at Las Vegas. Just two years later, in September 2014, the Carolina Nationals at Charlotte shifted to Texas Motorplex, near Dallas. In that instance, four pairs of Pro Stock drivers and all of the motorcycle class needed to complete first-round runs, and three rounds of racing were left for Top Fuel and Funny Cars. But this is the first time, at least in modern history, that two events are running in their entirety at the same time.

“For everybody, this is going to be a Bristol to remember,” Pruett said. “This is going to be an absolute race to remember, because it's the details for me – well, for all of us – that count. But I was watching Funny Car. There's drivers up there, they're qualifying just like we are in Top Fuel, but they're racing like they normally race on Sunday just digging in deep into basically Mexico, almost putting out both bulbs and they're going for that win light. And I'm like, ‘We can do it both ways.’ We want to get all of it. We want to get as many qualifying points as possible, get that round win. And Doug and I, I mean, we probably both didn't fully stage for -- it seems like -- a year in the car, but I'm sure it was only four or five seconds, but that point didn't matter because nobody had fully staged and we're just both trying to be so paper thin to get those points.”

"An incredible run" is what she called her Q2 pass edged out tentative No. 2 Brittany Force by two-thousandths of a second, No. 3 Steve Torrence by eight-thousandths, and No. 4 Justin Ashley by one-hundredth.

“I'm hunting down there in the left lane, and it's got some character to it. Go to throw the ‘chutes and I heard him right there and I'm just waiting for this glow in the left lane and it popped up. You get to enjoy that moment and then you go right back into race day tomorrow. Qualifying’s going to be different conditions, should be a little bit warmer. Not sure if that [3].74 will hold, because there's some really bad-to-the-bone teams out there.”

And she’s proving consistently this season that hers is one of them.