Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, Minn.
 

1 – Top Fuel winner Antron Brown hitting his stride late in year - again - Antron Brown reached his 133rd final past reaction-time ace Shawn Langdon, Steve Torrence (the driver he’s chasing in the standing), Mike Salinas (who had just recorded a monster run of 3.654 seconds at 338.26 mph), and finally Leah Pruett, whose results all day had altered the standings.

“I was shakin’, butt-cheek-quivering ... changed my drawers three times,” Brown quipped. “You got 12 cars that are no joke. Every race is a final round.” Then to the crowd, he asked, “Were you not entertained today?!”

Brown improved to third place, brushing aside Brittany Force and shaking up the standings a bit with just one race, the points-and-a-half U.S. Nationals, left before the Countdown kicks off in mid-September. The three-time champion captured his first $10,000 victory and three Countdown-point prize in Saturday qualifying’s Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge.

Of final-round opponent Pruett, Brown said, ““You know when you’re racing those TSR [Tony Stewart Racing] cars and Leah. She is hungry right now. That girl is full-blown beast mode. I was like ‘Oh, Lord, here we go. Here we go.’ We knew what they were capable of, and we just went out there and just wanted to make another lap. We thought we were going to pick it up a little bit more, but the track got so good it ate us up just a little bit, and I think that’s what happened to Leah where it ate them up a little bit, too. We were both pushing to go quicker. By the end of the day, when you look at those numbers, we were very consistent today. And that’s what it took to get the job done.
 
“We started off with a great lap, and I think that just set our tone for the day,” Brown said. “We were the quickest and fastest of the first session. Then we just go into race mode where you’ve got to race smart. You can’t throw Hail Marys and if they don’t stick then you just lose a run because you overpowered the racetrack. So, [crew chief Brian] Corradi and [co-crew chief Mark] Oswald stayed in that zone, and that consistency pays off. And that’s what wins, and that’s what wins championships.”

After winning against Tony Schumacher, Pruett did points leader Justin Ashley a favor by bumping off third-ranked Force in Round 2. Then she didn’t help Ashley – she eliminated him in the semifinal. 

2 – Funny Car winner Ron Capps hits milestone - Not only did three-time and reigning Funny Car champion Ron Capps record his milestone 75th career victory by defeating Robert Hight in the final Sunday, but he also earned his second of the season and his seventh at Brainerd International Raceway.

That 75th triumph ties him on NHRA’s all-time winning list with Top Alcohol Funny Car legend and Top Fuel driver Pat Austin.
 
“First of all, 75 wins is crazy,” Capps said. “Pat Austin has been one of my heroes, and I got to be around him early in my career as a crew guy. And I always strived to be Pat Austin. To watch him, ice in his veins, just some huge match-ups for me to stand behind their car back then. I used to look at the list and was like, ‘Pat Austin, 75 wins — that seems so out of this universe,’ so when I came around the corner after the final and saw a ’75 wins’ sign, it blew my mind.”

“Our NAPA guys work so well as a team and work so hard, and I just don’t want to make a mistake,” Capps said.

Of crew chief Dean “Guido” Antonelli, he said, “Guido, I can see it in his eyes when he’s racing Jimmy Prock [Hight’s crew chief]. Robert Hight and I talk about it all the time; it’s very cool because you know they’re going to push each other and sometimes one of them makes a mistake and pushes too hard. But as the conditions got better and better today, we were convinced they were probably going to go [3].85. That’s what Jimmy does, and Guido didn’t want to make a mistake and push too far, so the way I staged, the car probably went .86. I could hear Robert all the way down, like a video game, and I was like ‘C’mon baby, just make it,’ and it was a huge relief.”
  
3 – Dallas Glenn defeats teammate Kyle Koretsky to win in Pro Stock - Pro Stock points leader Dallas Glenn joined Antron Brown (Top Fuel) and Ron Capps (Funny Car) in the winners circle. Glenn beat KB Titan Racing teammate Kyle Koretsky in the final round for his fourth triumph of the season and eighth in all. 

Glenn said the last time he took part in a race at Brainerd International Raceway, he was a crew member for three-time champion and Brainerd favorite son Jason Line.

“And we parked it in the winners circle then, too,” he said.

Glenn didn’t have a lot of time to savor his accomplishment. He had to load up the team hauler and drive it the 20 hours or so back to the KB Titan shop in North Carolina.  

 

 

 

5 – Salinas leaves huge impression on Brainerd International Raceway - In his quarterfinal Top Fuel victory over Clay Millican, Mike Salinas powered his Valley Services dragster to the third-fastest pass in class history at 328.26 mph. It is the fastest in the class this entire season. 

Salinas lost to eventual winner Antron Brown, who said Salinas “dropped a bomb in that last round” after advancing past Salinas into the final. Salinas’ top speed is third on the performance list behind two of Brittany Force’s late-2022 marks (338.94 at Pomona Finals last November and 338.43 last October at St. Louis). Eight Funny Car passes among four different drivers have been faster.

Salinas also set low elapsed time of the meet at 3.654 seconds on the 1,000-foot Brainerd International Raceway course.

6 - Bobby Bode emotional after tagging wall in first round - Bobby Bode saw his Funny Car get beaten up in the first round of eliminations Sunday, then he beat himself up.

On his quickest pass of the season (3.929 seconds) at his career-best speed (322.50 mph), Bode fought to salvage his car after it made a hard move to the right. But it scraped the wall and tore a sizeable gash in the body.  

After a few moments leaning against his car, visibly upset, Bode tearfully said, “We work so hard, then I go out there and do stupid stuff like that. It was going good. I flickered it. I thought I had a good light. [He launched with a .079-second reaction time.] And then it started hunting towards the right. I cranked the wheel as hard as I could, and it just never came back. I hope it didn’t get the chassis, because we’re done. We don’t have a back-up chassis. Thanks for all the fans. Great memories here, but this was not one of ’em.” 

When his father, Bob Bode, earned his first and only Funny Car trophy, here in 2010, Bobby Bode was sitting in the stands, enjoying a blue sno-cone. And the young Arizona State University junior who inherited Dad’s Funny Car still laughs at the winners circle pictures from that day, when he smiled for the cameras with blue lips. And he said he’d love to follow in his father’s footsteps, win at Brainerd, and treat everyone to a blue sno-cone. But his opening-round results put that idea on ice.

 

 

 

7 – Trio of new winners marks penultimate Mission Foods program at BIR - A trio of multi-time series champions – Erica Enders (Pro Stock), Antron Brown (Top Fuel), and Robert Hight (Funny Car) – were first-time winners in the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge during Saturday qualifying.

Enders started this weekend with three bonus points in her “Countdown bank account” through the previous seven Pro Stock cracks at the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge rewards. But she doubled her balance Saturday, finally winning the specialty race for her class. Enders defeated Deric Kramer in the final round.

“I unintentionally double-bulbed Deric Kramer, so that part sucks and overshadowed the excitement of winning for me,” she said of her starting line miscue. “That’s not how I race. I make a living being an honest racer.” Still, she said she was especially happy for her sponsors “because coming into the year we thought we do were going to do some good – and we haven’t. So it’s very meaningful.”

Also winning the Mission Foods Challenge for the first time were Top Fuel’s Antron Brown and Funny Car’s Robert Hight.

Brown, who denied Brittany Force her first bonus-race victory, said afterward, “On that last run, we dropped a hole at half-track. [Crew chief Brian] Corradi had it reeled in there. But hey – we got some Mission tortillas. I’m tellin’ you – we’re going to make some fried chicken tortillas with a little watermelon on the side. If you want some, come get some, baby!”

Hight chased down Matt Hagan in their final-round match to keep the points leader from scoring consecutive bonus-race victories in the Funny Car version. Hight’s crew chief, Jimmy Prock, said that, like Brown’s dragster, Hight’s Camaro had a cylinder out downtrack.

“I really feel like we got away with one,” Hight said. “You don’t go up there and try to run 3.98 and beat Matt Hagan. You’re going to get beat most of the time. We got away with one there. We’ll take it.”   

 

 

10 – Top Fuel class collectively decides to call off Friday’s second qualifying session - The NHRA’s Top Fuel class made the decision during Friday night qualifying not to run the second session in the interest of safety and in the wake of what the teams determined was inaction by sanctioning-body officials. 

Crew chiefs and team owners sacrificed the best qualifying conditions of the weekend at Brainerd International Raceway and collectively decided not to run on the 1,000-foot course after a 50-minute oildown clean-up robbed them not only of daylight but also a safe racing surface. BIR doesn’t have lighting along its dragstrip.

What triggered the situation was Blake Alexander’s oildown in the left lane at the start of the second session of Funny Car qualifying. A connecting rod on his Jim Head Racing/Pronto Ford uncharacteristically broke during his burnout and the containment pan dumped oil on the track when he launched. The resulting 50-minute clean-up robbed both nitro classes of precious daylight and the best racing surface. Seven more Funny Car pairs made runs, and most lost traction.

Josh Hart, owner-driver of the R+L Carriers Dragster, said, “It was a terrible situation for the Safety Safari. The clean-up effort unfortunately was not suitable for either Funny Car or Top Fuel. The action should have been stopped as soon as NHRA realized Funny Cars couldn't make it down [the track].

“Instead,” he said, “NHRA tried to rush the class and wasted money, effort, and almost cost a couple people their cars, because the sun was going down and the track was a Slip ’n’ Slide. Whatever the motivation was for this decision did not have our safety in mind at all.”

Hart said, “Most all crew chiefs and owners tried to call NHRA, and the phone was not answered. So we collaborated on the decision not to even start any Top Fuel car.”

Kyle Wurtzel, who was in the opposite lane from Hart on Friday night, poised to make his run, said, “I’m not sure whose idea it was. One of my crew guys told me, ‘We are pushing you back, and we are not running.’ So I hopped out of the car.”

Brittany Force had posted a No. 3 elapsed time in the Top Fuel’s first qualifying session and had hoped to improve on that in the second session, lamented the turn of events but took a pragmatic attitude about it.

“Unfortunately, because of uneven lanes and lack of light with the sun going down, we lost our second qualifying pass, which is really disappointing,” she said. “After that first solid run, we were really going to step it up and push this car in the best conditions we would have all weekend. That’s the way the game is played. Everyone else had to follow the same rules, so we’ll pick up where we left off.”

All classes received two more qualifying chances Saturday to set the field for Sunday eliminations.

The only racer not all that unhappy with the Friday night “Minnesota Mutiny” was Doug Kalitta, who had taken the provisional No. 1 position in the opening session. He kept the No. 1 spot until Justin Ashley swiped it in the final session Saturday.

10 (b) – It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to - Doug Kalitta arrived at Brainerd International Raceway ready to celebrate his 59th birthday with a breakout performance that would give him that elusive victory and first since the October 2020 St. Louis race.

He started out the weekend as the No. 1 qualifier in the first session, and he kept it when a collection of Top Fuel crew chiefs and team owners decided not to run the entire second session. He hung onto it through Saturday’s early session. But Justin Ashley spoiled that, passing him in the final session by .011 of a second.

Then Clay Millican finished ruining Kalitta’s party, defeating him in the opening round of eliminations.

Another birthday boy, Robert Hight, fared much better this weekend. He won the Funny Car edition of the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge for the first time during Saturday qualifying. He started eliminations by beating Bobby Bode and Dave Richards, who just had upset then-points leader Matt Hagan. Hight, who turned 54 years old Sunday, reached his 99th final round, knocking off boss John Force. But Ron Capps spoiled Hight’s birthday bash in the battle of the three-time champions.

You would cry, too, if it happened to you.