EVENT RESULTS EVENT NOTEBOOK POINTS AFTER EVENT ROUND-BY-ROUND RESULTS FINAL ROUND RESULTS			EVENT GALLERY

 

SUNDAY NOTEBOOK - SUNDAY RANDOM RACEDAY NOTES

JOHN FORCE GOES WIRE-TO-WIRE AT SEATTLE - No NHRA nitro Funny Car driver has been more dominant than John Force at Pacific Raceways in Seattle.

The 16-time world champion was at his best again Sunday, winning for the eighth time.
Force clocked a 4.173-second time at 302.48 mph to defeat former teammate Gary Densham, who slowed to 5.808 seconds.

“I want to win, that’s what it’s all about,” Force said about his thoughts before he met up with the veteran Densham. “Forty years ago, I raced (Densham) in a 64 Funny Car (field) (in Seattle). We were having so much fun down there in the staging lanes. I know I’m supposed to be serious and it is race day, but when you are racing a friend and he comes up here on a budget and look how good he does. I always say if I lose to my teammates, I didn’t lose and if I lost to Gary Densham I wouldn’t have lost because he is still a teammate of mine. It was fun racing him.”

This was the 141st win of Force’s career and third this season. Force also has wins at the season-opening Winternationals and Norwalk (Ohio) July 6.

This also was Force’s 78th win in a Ford, which tied him with NHRA Pro Stock legend Bob Glidden as the winningest Ford driver in any motorsports series.

“Ford better re-thank me,” Force said with a laugh. “I’m going to call them up (Sunday night). They are aware of all of it. Look, Ford has been nothing but good to me and we don’t know where it is going to go.”

Ford is expected to leave NHRA racing after the 2014 season.

Force qualified No. 1 at the Northwest Nationals and beat Jeff Diehl, Cruz Pedregon, and Alexis DeJoria before ousting Densham.

“It was a fun day,” Force said. “I have to get to the gym (Sunday night). I get some wine, but I’m still going to the gym. That’s pretty pitiful when you fall off the treadmill because you drank too much wine, but I have to stay on the routine. It was a better day today. I’ve been reading those articles and I’m starting to believe my own bullsh**.

KALITTA EARNS GRATIFYING TOP FUEL VICTORY AGAINST BROWN - Points leader Doug Kalitta urgently needed Sunday’s Top Fuel victory at the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Northwest Nationals, for a number of reasons.

That it came against Antron Brown, his closest challenger, only made the accomplishment more satisfying.

Their two tool-company-sponsored, same-color-schemed dragsters were a yellow, red, and white blur as they ran virtually side by side down the Pacific Raceways 1,000-foot course.

Kalitta, in his Mac Tools Dragster, laid down what Brown called “a monster run” of 3.844 seconds at 318.84 mph.

Brown countered with a 3.887-second elapsed time at 311.70 mph in the Sandvik Coromant/Matco Tools, losing to Kalitta for the second time in as many final-round meetings this season.

Kalitta defeated Brown in March to win the Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla. And that was his lone victory of 2014, despite advancing to seven previous final rounds. Meanwhile, Brown piled up five victories and had narrowed the gap to just 46 points. So Kalitta knew he had to start making the most of those money-round appearances . . . and not simply for the money.

The aggravation of not closing the deal had weighed on him a little.   

“It kind of makes you wonder,” Kalitta said. “I’m real proud of Jim O  [crew chief Jim Oberhofer] and all my guys on this Mac Tools car. They’ve got it running good. It’s a consistent car, and I’m just trying to do the best I can in that thing. The competition is tough out here. We’ve been banging on the door, trying to get another final and another win – and it couldn’t be at a better place than Seattle.”

He will take a 76-point advantage over Brown to the Lucas Oil Nationals at Minnesota’s Brainerd International Raceway in two weeks. But Brown promises he and his Brian Corradi- and Mark Oswald-led team won’t let down, not even now that they have a break from their grueling schedule of seven races in the past eight weeks.

"We'll just keep our heads down and get after it in Brainerd and Indy to end our regular season, and see if we can make some points up on those Kalitta boys and sneak around them before the Countdown starts,” Brown said.

"We're still in the fight, and we're not giving up. We are ready for a heckuva fight,” he said. “That was a monster blow by them today in the final round. We threw our best shot out there, and we thought it would be good enough to win. But they just threw a monster run out there. They got us this weekend. But that's all right - we'll be back."

And that’s what bothers Kalitta.

“Antron, he’s been winning all the time,” Kalitta said.

He indicated he didn’t see any sort of pattern to his runner-up finishes: “It was what it was. There was never a lack of effort and trying to make it happen, I can tell you that. Just getting to the final at these things, with the way the competition is in all the classes, in my opinion, is something you should be proud of. We’re just glad to get another win.”

He said his blueprint was “trying not to beat ourselves out there and trying to go rounds.”

But that almost happened in his semifinal race against another ambitious contender, Shawn Langdon, when he smoked the tires but won just the same.

“Running against Shawn there, I thought for sure he’d go blowing by me, because my car was spinning the tires and I was like, ‘Well, I’ll just run this thing and hope that it doesn’t blow up before the finish line.’ Fortunately it didn’t. But it was a plenty close race. It was a good day for Connie [his uncle and team owner, Connie Kalitta] out here. We’ll just drag it up to Brainerd and see what we can do.”     

With his 35th victory, Kalitta tied "Big Daddy" Don Garlits on the NHRA's all-time Top Fuel career-victories list. He needs five more to leapfrog Kenny Bernstein into the No. 4 spot.

“That is very cool. I’ve been keeping an eye on that one for awhile,” Kalitta said of the achievement. “It’s a big deal for me. He’s somebody I’ve looked up to and continue to look up to. So we’ve inched in to tie. That’s very cool.”

This marked the first time anyone from the Kalitta family, including Connie Kalitta and the late Scott Kalitta, had won at Seattle. Doug Kalitta said he had no clue why his family has had such a difficult time here at the track south of Seattle.

“I don’t know. It’s just one of those deals,” he said with a shrug.

“I knew we could do it as the day was unfolding,” Kalitta said. “It got pretty hot in the final, but the track stayed pretty good, both lanes. They’ve done a great job with the track this year. It seemed like one lane was better than the other in the past. It was pretty even out there, I thought. People were going back and forth between lanes with lane choice, and it was good.”

And so was that feeling he had when he posed for winners circle pictures with John Force (Funny Car) and Jason Line (Pro Stock) then headed down the road to the airport to fly himself home in his private jet.

LINE GETS SECOND PRO STOCK WIN IN A ROW - If Jason Line proved anything the last two weeks, it’s that he’s going to be a force to reckon with in the Countdown to the Championship.

Line won his second consecutive NHRA national event, his latest title coming Sunday at the Northwest Nationals.

Line used a holeshot to beat his Summit Racing teammate Greg Anderson in the finals at Pacific Raceways.

Line clocked a 6.61-second elapsed time at 210.67 mph, while Anderson came in at 6.608 seconds at 210.54 mph. The difference was at the starting line as Line had .028 reaction time compared to Anderson’s .033 light.

“It was a very good day for KB Racing,” Line said. “We got both cars in the finals and what more can you ask for? We also got Greg in the top 10 and he’s not going to look back. He has a good car and the truth is he drove better than anybody else did (Sunday), but as we all know in racing timing is everything.”

This was Line's 34th career win and third of the season as he also won the season-opening Winternationals, and on July 27, Line beat V. Gaines in the finals at the Sonoma (Calif.) Nationals.

Anderson needed the points more than Line in the final round, but they raced heads up.

“Not on our team” said Line when asked about allowing Anderson to win. “He doesn’t want to win that way and nobody wants to win that way. How do you feel good about winning if you had somebody give it to you? That guy is a champion many times over and he didn’t get that way by having people giving him races. He wouldn’t want it that way.”

Anderson, a four-time NHRA Pro Stock world champion, had heart surgery February 6.

Due to the surgery, Anderson sat out the first five races of the 2014 season. Jimmy Alund replaced Anderson in the seat of Summit Racing Equipment Chevy Camaro and won the Four-Wide Nationals April 13 at Charlotte.
Anderson returned to the seat at the O’Reilly Auto Parts SpringNationals in Baytown, Texas April 25-27.
Line, who qualified No. 3, beat Mark Wolfe, V. Gaines, Shane Gray and Anderson Sunday.

“We were both OK,” said Line, who has already clinched a spot in the Countdown to the Championship. “I was good when I needed to be and the car definitely wasn’t great this weekend, but it was good enough and sometimes par is good enough. It is what it is. I’ve certainly given a lot of them away when I should not have and maybe the last couple of weeks I got a couple back.”

SCARY MOMENT - Top Alcohol Dragster driver Mark Taliaferro was shaken but exited his car on his own power following a brutal second-round crash Sunday at Pacific Raceways during the O'Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Northwest Nationals.
 
Taliaferro had the instant round-win in his left lane with Garrett Bateman’s foul start in the right lane. But he continued to charge hard. As soon as his own car started to lose traction, it got sideways.
 
It darted across the center line at half-track on its right side, and the nose struck the right guard wall head-on. It smashed out a section of the wall and burst into flames. It barrel-rolled twice and hopped onto the wall. The dragster, spraying parts and pieces, rode the wall for several hundred feet downtrack.
 
Two flatbed trucks hauled the remains of the dragster back to the Odessa, Texas, driver’s pit.
 
“I'm feeling good. I'm lucky,” the Odessa, Texas, racer said after NHRA emergency medical personnel examined him onsite and released him.
 
“I was trying a little too hard out there,” he said. “It seemed like it was out of the groove. I saw the second shift light come on and felt it spinning the tires. So I tried to help it by putting it in second. But it just made it worse.
 
“The main things is I am all right. We can get another race car,” Taliaferro said after two flatbed trucks hauled the remains of his car back to his pit. “I'm just disappointed in myself. I've never had a crash before. It just got away from me. I was trying too hard, and these cars just aren't too forgiving.” 
 
MECHANICAL CARNAGE – The O’Reilly Auto Parts Northwest Nationals started Sunday afternoon to look a bit like the May event at Atlanta Dragway.

In just the sixth run after racing resumed following Mark Taliaferro’s nasty Top Alcohol Dragster, Jack Beckman rode out a massive explosion in his Don Schumacher Racing-owned Valvoline MaxLife Dodge Charger.

“There’s nitro in the tank,” Beckman said, offering an explanation about why the supercharger backfired and blew the body off early in the run. “Everyone asks what causes these things to blow up. It’s the fuel tanks. They’re full of dynamite.”

With what sounded like a mixture of disgust and disappointment, he said, “It’s a shame. It’s extra work for the crew. We’re not going to get a chance to run for the trophy. I don’t like doing this. We’ve got to fix this thing. We’ll go through it bumper to bumper. Hopefully we’ll find it was just a parts malfunction.”

A large chunk of the body flew over the right retaining wall and landed in an open, grassy area. No one was injured.

Beckman’s accident looked frighteningly similar to the one he had about four months ago. His blow-up there was one of several – three involving DSR drivers and another that blew a gapjng hole in the right side of Tim Wilkerson’s Ford Mustang body.

Beckman, an analytic racer, also showed his human side Sunday. He said, “The problem is even if it was [a parts failure], how do you know it’s not going to happen again? And if you’ve been through this enough, you get a little bit gun-shy.”

RETURNING THE FAVOR – U.S. Army Dragster driver Tony Schumacher paid back Top Fuel rookie Jenna Haddock for her taking advantage of his traction troubles in her debut two weeks ago at Denver. They met again in the opening round, with him the top qualifier and her No. 16 again. Sunday’s run was more memorable for because it was his 1,000th elimination round.

RAW DEAL FOR DIEHL, COLLEAGUES SAY - Independent Funny Car owner-driver Jeff Diehl worked hard through hot, tricky track conditions here this weekend, putting in his rear-view mirror the Sonoma Raceway mess that involved him. But several other drivers in the class expressed displeasure this weekend at Pacific Raceways at the way the situation had played out, speaking up on Diehl’s and Hale’s behalf.   

A likely power surge caused a timing malfunction at Sonoma Raceway during the final qualifying session in which both Diehl and John Hale, paired at the tree, had one last shot at making the field.  Australian Peter Russo was on the bump spot with a 6.248-second elapsed time at 99.36 mph from an early-shutoff run.

With the glitch in the scoring system, neither Diehl nor Hale clocked a time, although their runs appeared to be quick enough to qualify. Hale made a complete pass, while Diehl pedaled his car. But they were off the grid, and Russo, who sat out the session, remained in the field at No. 16.   

“If the starter or NHRA believed that they could not give an accurate time slip for the cars, then they should have shut us off and let us go refuel and come back and complete the runs,” Hale said. But Bob Lang, substitute NHRA race director that weekend, cited the rulebook, didn’t deviate from the letter of the law, and disallowed any do-overs.

That, veteran racer Gary Densham said, was uncompassionate.

“I realize that NHRA is the boss . . . but I want to think we all love this sport and we’re all in it together, whether you’re an official, a racer, a manufacturer, or whatever you are. And it seems like we’re getting too much conflict,” Densham said. “There’s no compassion.

“We make mistakes,” he said of all racers. “We have something break that we don’t plan on breaking. We oil the racetrack, it costs us thousands of dollars. We didn’t want to do that. We say we’re sorry. That’s not good enough – give ‘em a bunch of money.

“They have something happen like last week with Plueger [John Hale driving the Steve Plueger-owned entry] and Diehl. Both of them made passes obviously way better than a 6.24 to get in. But ‘Sorry, guys – you’re out of luck.’

“Even if they absolutely had to stick to that rule, even in that case it was silly,” Densham said, reasoning that if the bump had been lower, say, 5.35 seconds, Diehl’s and Hale’s cases might have been questionable. “Any of these cars, I don’t care if it’s running on six cylinders, if it goes to half-track it’s going to run better than 6.24. It’s that simple.”

But he said, “It wasn’t so much that they threw the runs out. It’s the way they did it. In the old days with Steve Gibbs – don’t get me wrong, I had arguments with him and I lost – he’d come over and say, ‘I’m sorry. This is the rule. I can’t do anything about it. I know you got screwed. Can I help you out someplace down the line, maybe give you a better pit at your home track or couple of extra passes or something? We’re not seeing that. It seems like every issue, we seem to be combative on what we’re doing.”

Diehl wasn’t interested in being combative, though.

“Something malfunctioned, and it took us out,” Diehl said. “It hurts a small team financially to take that abuse, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It just puts awareness to it. They probably ought to try and figure out how to right something that goes wrong like that once in awhile.

“I understand where they stand, too,” he said. “NHRA needs to look at it and figure out what to do when something like that happens again and make it a little fairer. It’s not really fair not just to not do anything about it.”

But Diehl took the high road, saying, “I’ll take the loss. I’m over it. ”

When he learned some of his colleagues we supporting him, he said, "I appreciate that, but for me to dwell on it, that’s just going backwards. I’m not going to fix it. Whatever. It’s one of those things that happen, I guess.”

Diehl shouldered some of the responsibility for his result.

“I could have done a couple of things different as a driver, too,” he said, accepting culpability for attempting a run at all in that situation. “I told myself not to go, then I went because Hale went. So I’m kind of mad at myself, too, on the whole thing . . . but whatever. What are you going to do about it?”

SEXAGENARIANS SHINE - No. 15 qualifier Gary Densham, at age 67 the oldest Funny Car competitor, scored a trio of upsets before he met 65-year-old John Force in the final round.

First he took out No. 2 starter Courtney Force with a 4.314-second pass at 286.86 mph, despite having a cylinder out. Then he eliminated No. 7 qualifier Tim Wilkerson in the quarterfinals, although he registered a snoozy .159-second reaction time and said he “shut it off a little bit early.” He reached the final round, his first since the 2008 Sonoma race that he lost to John Force Racing’s Robert Hight, by outrunning Matt Hagan with a 4.28-second elapsed time and a .0004-second margin of victory.

Densham and Force had raced in a final seven times with Force holding a 4-3 edge. Densham’s previous final-round meeting with his former boss came 10 years ago at Englishtown, N.J. And his first final against Force was 20 years ago at Brainerd, Minn. Force won that first one, but Densham has won his previous two encounters with the 16-time champion (including at Brainerd in 2002). Densham was seeking Sunday to snap a winless streak that stretched back to the 2004 U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.  

TWO SHADES OF GRAY – For the third time this season and the third time in the quarterfinals, the Brothers Gray – Shane and class rookie Jonathan – met each other in eliminations. Jonathan won the previous two times, at Bristol, Tenn., and Epping, N.H., and Sunday was Shane’s turn. At Pacific Raceways, they had identical reaction times (.045 seconds), posted 6.5-second elapsed times, and ran 210 mph in their Camaros. Shane prevailed with a 6.574, 210.87 to Jonathan’s 6.591, 210.24.

RUTH REMINISCES - Northwest drag-racing pioneer Jerry Ruth, whose dragster was on display at Pacific Raceways this weekend, said, “I did meticulous preparation. My cars were all very beautiful cars. You'll hear that. I like to think your very best effort's at the shop. Now they carry their shops with them, so it’s a little different. They can machine parts and do a lot of clutch work and stuff. We had just begun to do that when I quit running. We started to re-service the clutches at the track.

“Basically, what you built – the engine, the supercharger, all the injector parts – all depended on how good of a job you did before you got there,” he said. “Then after you got there, you twisted knobs every now and then, maybe to hone it, but you couldn’t overwhelm it. If it was off, it was off throughout the event. You kind of knew right away when you started running if you were going to have a good day or not by how the engine was handling. These are fuel-burning engines, and they don’t like mistakes.”

One adage has carried over from Ruth’s time to the present: “There's a thousand ways to lose and only one way to win.”

Said Ruth, “It takes having everything right for you to win. You can do anything to lose. It's real easy to lose. Fuel drag racing is extremely hard to do. Guys with money, guys with engineering, [have been overwhelmed]. Drag racing is a process of elimination [no pun intended]. And the reason it has been so progressive is that you have a lot of people and a lot of work day after day, honing the sport with a lot of research, and they work their way forward.”

He said "you can tell by the payroll" that drag racing is a more cerebral sport than some might imagine.

"You can get a good driver to drive for $50,000 to $150,000. But crew chiefs, they can go from $100,000-$400,000."

 

 

 

 

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK

TOP FUEL

SCHUMACHER RECAPTURES NO. 1 - Piloting his U.S. Army dragster, Tony Schumacher retained his No. 1 qualifying position from Friday and will lead the Top Fuel category into eliminations. Schumacher will make his 400th NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series start against rookie Jenna Haddock in the opening round.

“We have a great car,” Schumacher said. “I wouldn’t want to race me tomorrow. The fact that we went down both lanes just shows what (crew chiefs) Mike [Green] and Neal [Strausburg] have been looking for for a long time. We just didn’t go down the track but we were first or second each session and had some .820 60-foot times. They’re making some great calls. Our initial launch is what we’ve been longing for. Everyone knows that if you get the car moving, you can apply clutch quicker.”
 

MOSH-PIT PASS - JR Todd has made it clear. The Top Fuel driver is all in for being part of Kalitta Motorsports – well, except for possibly ending up on the bottom of the infamous starting-line mosh pit. He said he’s not too keen on being flattened.

“This is the only place I want to be. I wanted to be here for a long time, and I finally got the chance to make it work” the Optima Batteries Dragster driver said. “It’s just one big family over here. We like to have a good time, but we’re serious about it at the same time.”

All seriousness and sensibility fly out the window when a Kalitta car wins the event. Once the final round is completed, the team dissolves into one massive raucous, punching, wrestling starting-line scrum that resembles one of those comic-book dust-ups depicted by a cloud of dust and fists and legs sticking out. It’s something Todd said he tries to avoid.

“I have yet to be involved in one,” he said. “And I don’t see myself being in one, either. I like watching ‘em and even better, giving them a reason to have one. I’m much safer at the end of the track when one of those things is going on.

“If I’m on the starting line when one’s going on, I’ll be the last one on the mosh pit,” Todd vowed. “I’ll wait until everybody’s piled on and maybe jump on at the end. You got Jim O and Jon O (the Oberhofer brothers), and look at some of the guys on my team. There’s some big guys around here, and I don’t want to be in the middle of that.”

He said, “I’m definitely not a fighter, by any means. So maybe I should wear all my gear to the starting line.”

Todd, No. 8 on the grid, will meet No. 9 Steve Torrence in Sunday’s opening round.

LOOKING ALL AROUND - Shawn Langdon, the No. 3 qualifier, isn’t looking past Sunday’s first-round opponent, Clay Millican. However, he can’t help but look backwards to last weekend’s Sonoma race and ahead to the Countdown to the Championship that begins in two races.       

“The Sonoma race weekend was great for the Al-Anabi team.  That (all-Al-Anabi Racing) final round was really a win-win situation,” Langdon said, lamenting only that he couldn’t beat teammate Khalid alBalooshi so he could share the winners circle that day with sportsman racer dad Chad Langdon.

“We definitely have both these Al-Anabi cars turned around. This is about the time we started getting hot last year,” Langdon said, “so it’s the perfect time to get ready for the Countdown.

“I think you can call one good race a turn-around,” he said. “When we won in Bristol in June, we were able to get the win, but we were just making runs down the track and happened to race the right people at the right time. We did have a little bit of that Sunday in Sonoma, but we were able to make some pretty strong runs on Sunday in the heat.” And he has done that in Seattle this weekend.

Langdon, the reigning champion, has secured his berth in the Countdown for the sixth straight season and is taking aim at points leader Doug Kalitta. “It’s great to be in the Countdown, but we still need to track down Doug Kalitta and try to get that No. 1 seed for the playoffs.  It will be very difficult to do that, but I wouldn’t say anything is out of the question. We need to average gaining 50 points a race so that won’t be easy, but it’s doable. We have lost out on a lot of qualifying bonus points this season, so collecting those would help a lot.”

Langdon earned three qualifying bonus points for leading the field in the first session Friday and two from Saturday’s final session for a total of five.

FIRST-ROUND DUELS - Tony Schumacher and Jenna Haddock will have a rematch of their Denver first-round meeting in Sunday’s first round of eliminations. Just as they were at the Mopar Mile High Nationals, Schumacher is the top qualifier and Haddock No. 16. She was making her professional debut, and she beat Schumacher, who had smoked the tires of his U.S. Army Dragster.

Haddock, of Temple, Texas, and Schumacher, who just moved from Chicago to Austin, are one of two pairings of fellow Texans. Spencer Massey, of Fort Worth, and Troy Buff, from the Houston suburb of Spring will square off against each other in Round 1.  

In other pairings, it’s Richie Crampton against Terry McMillen, Bob Vandergriff against Antron Brown, Doug Kalitta against Mike Salinas, Khalid alBalooshi, the Sonoma winner, will meet Brittany Force, he Sonoma No. 1 qualifier.

AMALIE OFFERS CONTINGENCY PROGRAM - Amalie Oil continues to have its prominent presence on Terry McMillen’s dragster. But Steve Subick, the Tampa-headquartered company’s western regional sales manager, said Amalie Oil has established a contingency program for sportsman racers

“We saw an opportunity to commend and support the sportsman people. A lot of the oil companies have pulled out, so we stepped up. We’re offering up to $500 for first place, up to $300 for second place, depending on their class. We’re doing all 24 national events, and we’re going to be doing divisionals, as well. For the divisionals, we’re going to be paying $100 first place, $50 second place. In order to participate – it’s a two-way street – we ask the sportsmen to support us, as well, and buy a couple cases of product. We have special pricing at the track available. We have a presence on the [Manufacturers] Midway. We’ll always have an Amalie rep at the national races.”

FUNNY CAR

FORCE REMAINS ON TOP - John Force entered Saturday as the top qualifier but briefly lost the top spot to his daughter Courtney in the final qualifying round. John rallied with a track record run of 4.057 seconds at 307.86 mph in his Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang Funny Car on the final run of the day to take the top position from his daughter. This is Force’s fourth No. 1 of the season and sixth at Pacific Raceways.
 
"I was overloaded today, had too much on my plate," said Force. "And then she bumped me. I figured Robert (Hight) would do it, he didn't. (Crew chief) Jimmy (Prock) turned around and said, 'What do you want to do?' I said, 'Turn 'er up.' We knew what it would do, but you really don't want to show the competition what you have. If you can hold your cards and get them in the evening, then you can step on it.”
 
Courtney, who won last weekend in Sonoma and moved to the number two position with her run of 4.082 at 306.33 in her Traxxas Ford Mustang, will face Gary Densham on Sunday. The 2011 Funny Car world champion Matt Hagan qualified third with a run of 4.100 at 302.69 in his Mopar Express Lane/Rocky Boots Dodge Charger and will aim for his second win of the season when he faces Terry Haddock.

 

DENSHAM STILL PLUGGING AWAY - Gary Densham said this weekend he was searching for something. But it wasn’t likely he would find it. “I’m still trying to find that bucket of money so I could run my car a little more often,” the longtime Funny Car racer said.

“We’ve kind of struggled the last couple of races. Our car’s really run well for the last four or five years, for as little as we run it. You can see we were kind of slipping behind [because of] new technology. The stuff that we’ve been running is 10 years old or older. So finally I broke down and bought a newer blower, which is tremendously better. But between doing that and having to learn how to do it and having Greg [crew chief Greg Amaral] retire, we’ve been kind of struggling. But we’re getting closer,” Densham said. ”It’s coming back around like it’s supposed to.”

Amaral has been Densham’s tuner for a long time, and he has relied on him mainly because he trusts the man who taught him all about auto mechanics – himself. Amaral, years ago, was one of Densham’s students at Gahr High School in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos, Calif. “We miss him dearly out here,” the retired schoolteacher said.

After taking the fifth spot in the order after the opening session and closing Friday qualifying in 13th place, Densham had to work his way back into the field of 16. He was 18th with one more chance, and he barged into the field at No. 15 with a 4.303-second elapsed time at 292.46 mph on that run.

He’ll have to face No. 2 Courtney Force, who won this race two years ago for the first of her five victories and won last weekend at Sonoma by beating her father in the final.  

But Densham isn’t worrying about the what-ifs. He’s counting his blessings.

“I’m so lucky that I’ve got 80 percent of the people I had when I ran fulltime. I think they’re the best crew in this whole pit,” he said. “My biggest problem is that they’re all trying to be responsible adults, and it just isn’t working out for me. They want real jobs and houses and mortgages and wives, and they’re spitting kids out so fast I can’t keep track of their names. Besides trying to find the money to run it, it’s hard to find the time to run.”

The self-deprecating Densham, 65, joked that he had plenty of time: “When you’re so old and decrepit you can’t even get a job as a Wal-Mart greeter, you’ve got plenty of time.”

WATCH THIS, YOU GUYS - Seattle-headquartered Rottler is a leading manufacturer of heavy machines used in engine building and servicing, and three of those machines are in Funny Car Tim Wilkerson’s race shop at Springfield, Ill. This weekend, and for this weekend only, Wilkerson’s Shelby Ford Mustang bears pictures of those machines and Rottler’s name.
 
And the Funny Car favorite, who’ll start race day from the No. 7 spot and meet Del Worsham in the opening round, got to introduce a contingent from the Rottler plant to NHRA drag racing Saturday.
 
"Our day with all the Rottler people was really something special. We had about 120 folks with us in our pitside hospitality, and not too many of them had ever been that close to a Funny Car or the team,” Wilkerson said. “Andy Rottler, the owner of the company, was here and at his first-ever drag race, and he was pretty excited and wide-eyed. They were all great people, and it was a lot of fun to run this cool-looking car for them."
 
Rottler hosted a series of Demo Days for racers and engine-builders, this past week.
 
"We're really thrilled to bring the Rottler folks out to the track with us and run this car for them," Wilkerson said. "They've been great to work with and we own three of their machines, which we rely on every day. Our goal is to spread the word about their products to all the racers and engine builders.”
 
"See? If you get it to run on all eight it's a good race car," the owner-driver said. "We were struggling to get it to do that, and we made all of the first three runs on seven cylinders for at least part of the lap. Once we got it sorted out, it's right in the mix and a fun car to drive. Hopefully we'll be able to keep this up Sunday and win some more rounds.”

WHAT A DIEHL – “Surfer Dude” Jeff Diehl knew he wasn’t going to be one of the two odd-men-out in the Funny Car lineup by the time he rolled to the starting line. So the lower-budgeted journeyman wisely decided to save the wear and tear on his equipment and pulled out of line just before his final chance to run Saturday.

Local legend ad nationally recognized Bucky Austin missed the 4.361-second bump, and Paul Lee joined him on the sidelines with mechanical trouble that prevented him from making a fourth qualifying pass. His “reward” was a first-round meeting with No. 1 qualifier John Force.  

TOP-HALF HURRAH - Alexis DeJoria, driver of the Kalitta Motorsports Patrón XO Cafe Toyota Camry, earned three bonus points and rode her late Friday performance of 4.101 seconds at 303.23 mph to the No. 4 qualifying position.

“The Patrón XO Cafe team had three really good runs in qualifying,” she said. “We got down the track and had some of the quickest runs of the session. We’re qualified in the No. 4 spot, which is really good for our team. We’ve wanted to do that in qualifying over these past few races but had somehow landed towards the bottom. Tomorrow we’re starting in the top half of the field and we get lane choice, which is always a good thing.”

No. 13 Tony Pedregon will be her first hurdle.
 

SUNDAY MATCH-UPS - Opening-round match-ups include No. 3 Matt Hagan vs. No. 14 Terry Haddock, No. 5 Tommy Johnson Jr. vs. No. 12 Jack Beckman, No. 8 Cruz Pedregon vs. No. 9 Ron Capps, and feuding Robert Hight, No. 6, and Bob Tasca, No. 11.

 

PRO STOCK

STILL THE ONE - Pro Stock’s Johnson retained his No. 1 qualifying position with his Friday effort in his Mopar / Magneti Marelli Dodge Dart, with his run of 6.535 at 211.86. It is the 35th No. 1 of his career and his third at this event. He has four No. 1 qualifying positions this season, but has yet to win when he starts from the top spot.
 
“The guys did an awesome job here,” Johnson said. “All four rounds low and building up them baby points. That last round the track was representative of what we will see tomorrow. We made a really good run and we just need to keep doing what we are doing and be very consistent. If the driver does his job, we can get this thing done.”
 
Teammate to Johnson, Jeg Coughlin qualified fourth with a run of 6.553 at 211.13 and he will face Larry Morgan in eliminations. Shane Gray, who was the No. 1 qualifier at the most recent event, qualified second at 6.538 at 211.96 in his Gray Manufacturing Chevy Camaro and will race Travis Mazza in the opener.

WHO VS. WHOM? - Elimination pairings in Pro Stock have top qualifier Allen Johnson with a bye run, Vincent Nobile (8) vs. Dave Connolly (9), Jeg Coughlin Jr. (4) vs. Larry Morgan (13), Jonathan Gray (7) vs. Chris McGaha (10), Jason Line (3) vs. Mark Wolfe (14), and V Gaines (6) vs. Matt Hartford (11).

 

 

NOTHING BUT A SMILE - Travis Mazza isn’t a household name, not even among his Pro Stock driving peers. But he’s probably one of the easiest ones to spot. He’s the one with the smile on his face.

The reason that comes so easy for him, he said, is “just showing up to be here, the excitement, the fans, the friends, the family . . . these Pro Stock cars are just a lot of fun. I think it’s easier to smile than it is to do anything else.

“The business I’m in, people ask the secret. I said, ‘It’s real easy. We all learn the same things in our company. We’re all supposed to advocate the same practices. But the smile is my secret. It’s easy to make people want to be around you.’ It’s a nice little secret everyone has,” Mazza said.

Mazza, who’s based in the Fort Lauderdale-Deerfield Beach, Fla., area, works for JM&A Group, which provides automotive training consulting and insurance products for car dealers throughout the country to sell. His company, which partners with more than 3,400 dealerships, is the factory OEM provider for Volkswagen, Kia, and Audi financial products.

“I grew up in Mount Vernon, Ohio, about 11 miles north of Newark, near Larry and Diane Morgan. They’ve known me since I was two years old,” he said.

“I grew up around drag racing with my father. I raced Super Gas until 2007-2008, then work took me to Brazil for two years. After I hung up my helmet, I’ve been coming with Larry and Diane to many of the races. I’ve been involved in the ownership of the cars, not the team or anything else, just the metal (the chassis),” Mazza said. “When I got back from Brazil last year, Larry said, ‘This year, we’ve got to put you behind the wheel a few times.’ So here I am.”

He said Morgan supplies the power and “I supply the feet and the hands when I’m in the car.”

Their combination resulted in a No. 15 spot in Sunday’s field. His first test will come against No. 2 Shane Gray.

Mazza’s fondness and respect for Morgan reflect a lifetime of association with the veteran Pro Stock racer and class advocate.           

“Larry is an absolute hoot to be around. I’ve been around them a long, long time, and it’s a lot of fun. I couldn’t have been more lucky [to be associated with Morgan],” Mazza said. “My father passed away 10 years ago, and he and Larry were great friends. He always wanted to drive a Pro Stock car and didn’t get the chance. I’m just so lucky that I had a teacher like Larry to show me how to drive one of these, because I think he’s one of the best in getting it from A to B.”

Mazza earned his Pro Stock license at Norwalk, Ohio, just before the recent race there. That’s where he debuted.

He said he has an angel riding on his shoulder when he goes down the quarter-mile. “The number that I licensed under in Pro Stock that was available – 321 – is the number my dad ran when he was driving in Super Gas in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I was very lucky – I think an angel, again, made that number available, because that’s a pretty old Pro Stock number. It probably shouldn’t have been available, but it was,” Mazza said. “Now I’ve got him riding with me at least on the doors and windows.”

KRAMER STILL LEARNING - Deric Kramer, competing in Pro Stock for the second year, said he’s running half a season by design. Whether he will decide to go for a full schedule anytime soon depends, he said, on performance, funding, time in the engine shop, and if he has engines that are fresh.”

V Gaines supplies his engines, and Kramer bought the car from his fellow Coloradoan.

“He’s been really good to us. He’s helping us out quite a bit,” Kramer said.

“I never built a door car before this,” Kramer said. “I was always in a dragster, never been in a door car before. So V spent a lot of time, showing me the ropes. Every time we go test and he’s down there on the starting line when I go, he gives me some pointers if he sees something I can work on. It’s been really helpful.

“I used to race Comp Eliminator. And A/Dragster automatic was what I raced. I won a division race. My dad ended up winning the Mile High Nationals 10 years before I debuted in Pro Stock at the Mile High Nationals. That was pretty exciting.  When I was going to high school and college, he raced an econo dragster in Comp Eliminator. We were No. 1 qualifier a handful of times in Competition Eliminator. So we did OK,” he said.

“I’ve learned a lot more just about racing in general here than I ever did in the sportsman ranks. It’s amazing how much more there really is to learn,” Kramer said.  

The DeVry University graduate with a degree in electrical engineering makes a living writing iPhone apps. But his first job Sunday as No. 12 qualifier is to race No. 5 Greg Anderson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FRIDAY NOTEBOOK

TOP FUEL

IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY - Tony Schumacher robbed early leader Shawn Langdon of the Top Fuel class’ provisional No. 1 qualifying position Friday evening with a 3.804-second elapsed time at 318.32 mph in his U.S. Army Dragster. But he said he was more impressed with his 3.818, 315.42 performance on Seattle’s Pacific Raceways 1,000-foot course in the opening session of the Northwest Nationals.

“The car was excellent on that last run,” he said, but I think the run this morning [actually, at about three o’clock in the afternoon] was better.” That’s because it came in the heat of the day - in conditions that mimic race-day conditions - in the less-favored left lane.
 
Schumacher said he thought that time would hold up through two Saturday sessions. Then he said with a laugh, “This is Seattle. It could be 65 degrees and cloudy. If it's like that [Saturday], no, it's not going to hold up at all. If it's hot an sunny, like we expect, it’ll hold up. There are a lot of cars that will be running in the low (3.)80s, but I don't think anyone's going to run .79 in the heat of the day.

“If they do, man, they deserve the spot -- and they can have it!” he said.

Schumacher has found out the hard way that being Top Fuel’s No. 1 qualifier hasn’t paid off this year. In the previous 15 races, not one top qualifier has won. His turn came at Denver, when he smoked the tires and Jenna Haddock won her first competitive round.

MAN, OH MAN, THE GIRLS! – Top Fuel owner-driver Steve Torrence reveled in his 2012 victory here at Pacific Raceways, not because it was his third that year but because he got to share the winners circle with Pro Stock's Erica Enders-Stevens and first-time Funny Car winner Courtney Force (as well as Megan Ellingson from the sportsman-level Super Street class).

Shawn Langdon, the Top Fuel runner-up that year, had no idea just how motivated Torrence was. Said Torrence, "I was sitting in the car in line to run and saw Erica win, then Courtney. I knew I definitely wanted to be the guy to stand in the middle of them. There was no way I wanted to lose this one."

(It was a normal reaction for a 29-year-old single fellow. But his male ego took a bit of a bruising immediately after he got his wish. After he rode back to the starting line winners celebration with Enders-Stevens, Force, and Robert Hight's daughter and Force's niece Autumn Hight, he said, "it dawned on me I was the oldest one in there!")

Torrence, in the Capco Contractors Dragster, is motivated this visit by a few other to-do items. He already has won as many elimination rounds (15) as he did in all of last year, but he hasn't been to a final round. He's fifth in the standings but is looking to move up a spot or two before the Countdown fields are set two races from now. And he wants to atone for his uncharacteristic, season-worst qualifying position of 11th from last week at Sonoma, Calif.

He advanced to the semifinals at six of the year's first seven races but followed with five straight first-round defeats. He said he's not unhappy with his place in the rankings right now, but "if the Countdown started tomorrow, we’d only be 60 points behind.  If you got on a little streak, you could make that up pretty quick. Right now, though, we’re just going to focus on Seattle and getting this bad-ass hot rod qualified back in the top half of the field and going rounds.”

The Kilgore, Texas, racer said he has a better race car than he had a year ago, when he won at Bristol, Tenn., and was runner-up at Indianapolis. As proof, perhaps, is the fact he and Antron Brown have earned qualifying bonus points in more races than any other Top Fuel drivers (13) and Torrence has earned more total qualifying bonus points (49) than anyone other than season-long points leader Doug Kalitta (64).

LUCKY CHARM? - Like Funny Car’s Jim Head, Top Fuel owner-driver Terry McMillen is one of the leaders in employing female crew members. He gave a start to University of Northwestern Ohio graduate Marla O’Guin, who later worked on Alexis DeJoria’s Tequila Patron Toyota and currently turns wrenches on Jack Beckman’s Valvoline MaxLife Dodge. One of McMillen’s protégés is 15-yearold Emily Lewis, a straight-A student from Maple Valley, Wash. (about 15 minutes away), who’ll be a sophomore at Tahoma High School this fall.

Lewis, whose father and grandfather race in Division 6, met McMillen at this race last season, kept in touch with the Elkhart, Ind.-based driver through e-mails, and earned an invitation to interact with the team this weekend.

“She’s just coming in to learn what’s going on,” McMillen said. “She wants to pursue a career in Top Fuel or Funny Car. I’m going to try to help her get there. Maybe when I retire, she’ll be ready.”

The rather shy Lewis beamed when she declared, “I want to drive Top Fuel. That’s my dream ever since I was a little girl eight years old.”

She said she’s excited to be partnered with McMillen, even if her duties this weekend consist only of washing parts and shining the Amalie/UNOH Dragster.

Ironically, it’s the same job her dad, Jaysen Dickhoff, had at this event in 1995, when the facility was known as Seattle International Raceway and Ron Capps was a Top Fuel driver for team owner Roger Primm. Dickhoff was a student at nearby Kentwood High School when the Primm team selected him to be an intern at this event. “I did the same things she’s doing. I did get to tighten down the head studs on the block,” he said.

Capps won that race, the first one of his career. So maybe a second-generation of Lewis interns will bring McMillen good luck as he seeks his first NHRA event victory. McMillen was last among the 16 entrants at the close of Friday qualifying.    

SPENDING HIS INHERITANCE - Ron Smith hauled his Top Fuel dragster from his airplane hangar at Kapowsin, Wash., about 40 miles south of Pacific Raceways, and dusted it off for his annual visit to the Northwest Nationals. And the retired Boeing information technology specialist said it cost him his year’s worth of Social Security payments to do it.

And then he didn’t get a run in during either qualifying session Friday.

During the warm-up before the first session, “we got the mags in the wrong place,” Smith said. So the volunteer crew had some extra work to do because of that mistake.

“This is the only one we do,” he said of his lone Mello Yello Drag Racing Series appearance at his home track. “We always come out, and we’re just hoping to get our best time and mile-an-hour. We have some fun. We work all year on it. So it’s a chance to see whether what we’ve done will work. Our stuff’s pretty antiquated, compared to most of the guys. It’s a real low-buck deal. We save up our Social security and have enough money to come out once.”

Smith said he isn’t entertaining any notions of running more races on this tour. “It takes too many guys to run it. They all have jobs, and I can’t afford to fly everybody there,” he said.

He said he would like to run at Spokane County Raceway, one of the IHRA’s newest member tracks. He said he’s hoping operator Craig Smith (no relation) will invite him. “That’s easy for the guys to get there. They don’t have to take a lot of time off work, and I don’t have to pay for a lot of motels and flights,” Ron Smith said. “I just do it out of my own pocket. I save my Social Security [payments] for a year. It gives me about enough money to run it once.”

Smith gave 42 years of service to Boeing, at its nearby Renton, Kent, and Bellevue plants and its Missile Production Center. But as Smith stood in his pit, staring at his dragster, he said, “I keep thinking maybe I’ll get an airplane.”

BETTER AFTER BANG - Bob Vandergriff’s first run in Seattle ended with a bang.

“It broke a little margin off the valve, but everything was fine and leveled everything from the manifold up. The motor was fine, we were running down the race track and it was just a freak deal,” the C&J Energy Services Dragster owner-driver said.

Vandergriff came up for his second qualifying run and put down a 3.812-second elapsed time at 318.77 mph that left him fifth overnight.

 

 

FUNNY CAR

 

FORCE OFFERS PEEK AT HIS PLAN - John Force participated in an interview Friday evening that lasted just 5 minutes, 24 seconds – perhaps one of his shortest in awhile. But he covered an impressive array of topics. First he spoke of how he turned his tire-smoking run into the provisional No. 1 position. Then he expounded on the condition of this racetrack that's about his age, Friday's head count, reality TV, a CBS feature, and next year's sponsors and plans. He included his go-to catch-phrase "chasing Corporate America" – what Force conversation would be complete without it? – and took full advantage of his class-quickest and fastest 4.085-second elapsed time at 308.07 mph that gave him center stage.

"It got loose down there on the first run. Got back in it. Hate to punish it, because you could hurt a motor, and that's costly. But it didn't hurt it," he said of the run that started him in eighth place. In his second pass, his Castrol Ford Mustang responded better to the 1,000-foot Pacific Raceways course that the Fiorito family reportedly has improved. Said Force, "It rattled a little bit, but it went. If they're spending money on a racetrack, then they are investing good for the race teams. A bad racetrack hurts a lot of parts. The crowd, for a Friday afternoon, this isn’t bad. I think tomorrow will be a home run. It usually is here." But he stopped far short of endorsing this facility as one of the NHRA's better tracks: "Nah, I can't say that. Better for me personally. I love coming here."  

With both manufacturer Ford and sponsor Castrol leaving the sport at season's end, Force will need to strike a deal with a different automaker and a fresh sponsor. And a slow pace with that search, to hear Force's rambling explanation, is hindering efforts to land another reality show such as A&E's "Driving Force." But CBS is preparing a one-hour special presentation of the Force family.
He said, "I'm chasing corporate America and investing money to find it with agencies. CBS [has] been filming back home for weeks, and to get one hour on prime time Sunday morning will be great for our sport and great for our family. I'm also working to get back into reality TV, but one of the bumps holding me up is until we get our sponsorships locked in, I can't sign a reality show. They'd just have a cryin' old man all the time if I wasn't racing – that ain't no show. A lot of new deals hit just in the last few weeks. It is just like a race car. A race car doesn't want to run and it goes for months and then it gets fast and that's us right now with (crew chief) Jimmy Prock."

Force promised that son-in-law Robert Hight (the John Force Racing president) and daughter Courtney will continue to race Funny Cars in 2015 and daughter Brittany will be compete in Top Fuel for a third season. "My daughter [Brittany] is going to race before me, I guarantee that. I've set her on fire and I've crashed her in that Top Fuel car and she’s livin' it.

"If anyone is going to sit out, it's going to be me. And I don't want to do that. I'm going to stay in the business. I love it. I can't imagine not being able to come here. It scares me, but fear makes you work harder. I'm busting my butt to get there, and I'm going to make it. I'm going to be out here with you guys next year. The car may just say 'Brute Force' on the side of it, but it’s going to be here. It may be a leaker, like I used to be, but at least I get to race. I will race anything. I don't care if it is a Pro Bike or an A-fueler. I'll go back and drive for [Jerry] Darien. Anything that I can find the budget to do to be here."

HIGHT WOBBLES FRIDAY BUT STILL HAVING GREAT YEAR - Robert Hight started the Northwest Nationals in the Funny Car class' respectable sixth-place slot and got slower Friday as his Auto Club Mustang continued to drop cylinders. He began Saturday's final day of qualifying 14th in the order. He said he's still aiming for the top half of the eliminations ladder and wasn't overly concerned about his Friday problems, because, he said, "I have the best crew in the business working on my [car]."

He has led the field four times at Seattle but never has won here. In 2005, he was runner-up to John Force Racing colleague Eric Medlen but hasn't reached to the finals since then.

Hight, who won at Denver to open the Western Swing, said, "If you can't win three in a row in the Western Swing, the next best thing is two out of three. John Force Racing has a streak going right now, since we have won the last three races. And I want to keep that going."

He said his Mike Neff-led team is "continuing to focus on consistency and getting everything ready for Indy and the Countdown. Mike Neff has a really good handle on the tune-up, and I am rededicating myself to bringing my 'A' game to my driving."

With his victory two weeks ago at Colorado's Bandimere Speedway, Hight has tied his career-best mark for victories in a single season with five. With one more victory this season, Hight will become just the seventh Funny Car driver and the third JFR driver to win as many as six races in one year. The others are John Force, Tony Pedregon, Kenny Bernstein, Don Prudhomme, Cruz Pedregon, and Bruce Larson.

All he needs to do to keep his points lead going into the Brainerd, Minn., race is to qualify here.

"It is great to lead the points and win multiple races in the regular season," Hight said, "but the last six races are the most important. I am not looking past Seattle by any stretch of the imagination. There are three things left for our team to do. We want to win the Traxxas Shootout in Indy and then win the U.S. Nationals again. Of course, our goal hasn't changed since the Winternationals. We want another Funny Car championship."

LEE WORKING WITH NEW TUNE-UP - Paul Lee remains among the top 16 Funny Car qualifiers in his McLeod/Worsham Dodge Charger. But at the provisional No. 16 spot, he’ll enter Saturday’s final two sessions with no time. But he expressed complete faith in his blended team.

"This is a whole new combination from Del and Chuck Worsham. We got a bunch of new parts. They want to go fast. We’re not out here just to qualify. We’re out here to try to win,” Lee said. “I think we’re going to do really good this weekend. We’ve got some really good crew guys: Cory Lee, James Williamson, Eugene Gray. We have a lot of experienced guys.”

Williamson is a Southern California auto-shop teacher who occasionally works with the iconic schoolteacher-turned-Funny-Car-racer, Gary Densham. Gray also is a member of part-time racer Bob Bode's Funny Car team.

CAN'T COUNT HIM OUT - DHL Toyota driver Del Worsham didn’t make a pass in Friday's first session. One of his Kalitta Motorsports crew members said Worsham wasn't feeling well. But the veteran covered the 1,000-foot course in 4.136 seconds at 298.34 mph to close the day at No. 7, a mere five-thousandths of a second slower than No. 6 Ron Capps.   

 

PRO STOCK

 

TWEAKS DO THE TRICK FOR JOHNSON - Allen Johnson sped to the top of the Pro Stock charts Friday, quicker than he could say, "Magneti Marelli Offered by Mopar Dodge Dart."

He did it with a 6.535-second pass at 211.86 mph. And he earned the maximum bonus points for the day (six – all of which could become significant during the Countdown). His 6.537, 211.83 was quickest of the second session.

That put him in line for his fourth top-qualifying position of the season and boosted his hope of scoring not a Western Swing sweep but a Western Swing bookending. He opened the three-race stretch with a sixth victory at Denver.

Johnson is seeking his 25th career victory Sunday, and his accomplishments so far this weekend have come after his J&J/Mopar team worked on making some adjustments to his Dodge Dart set-up after a quarterfinal loss last weekend at Sonoma, Calif.

“We made two really good runs today, collected some important little points, and we're happy with the set-up after making some wholesale changes from Sunday at Sonoma to here to try to make the car a little more race-able,” Johnson, who last won at Seattle in 2006, said. "It seemed to really help, so we’ll get after it again tomorrow and see what we can do. The goal is to collect as many qualifying points that we can and win this to try to close the gap on [points leader] Erica Enders-Stevens before the Countdown begins."

Enders-Stevens did not enter the Sonoma race and is not competing at this event, as her Elite Motorsports team prepares for the title run. She'll return to the tour at the next race, at Brainerd, Minn.

CALL AN AUDIBLE? - Gray Motorsports driver Dave Connolly said before qualifying began for the Northwest Nationals that he and his Charter Communications Chevy Camaro team "have a good game plan for Seattle." Ahh, but he anticipated rain. "It seems like anytime it rains at this race and there is a delay, we do pretty well," Connolly said.

Aside from a few pesky sprinkles Friday, the weather was unseasonably hot. And Connolly ended the first of two qualifying days in 11th place with no better showing than a 6.613-second elapsed time at 209.14 mph.

He wasn't depending on his hunch about the weather, though.

Said Connolly, "We know we've been able to handle whatever that racetrack throws us. That gives us some confidence going in there where it can be tricky with very, very fast weather and cool conditions or a hot track that gets pretty greasy. We need to learn how to race in all conditions, and Gray Motorsports is up for the challenge. We aren't exactly in test mode, but we're going to school and sitting in class every weekend right now."

FINE WINE, FINE TIME - Shane Gray shaved a little time from his early-Friday effort and picked up some speed to run the fastest Pro Stock pass of the day Friday (211.96 mph). His 6.538-second run in Friday's second session was a slight improvement from his first clocking of 6.540. Following both sessions, he was second only to Allen Johnson. "This team is like a fine wine. The longer we work together, the better it gets," the driver of the Gray Manufacturing Chevy Camaro said. "We're a work in progress, but we're better than we've ever been."

 

 

CHICKEN! – Greg Anderson's KB/Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro was consistent Friday, as he posted a 6.561-second pass at 211.20 mph in his first trip down the Pacific Raceways quarter-mile, then followed with a 6.562, 211.30 for the tentative No. 5 berth in the class that has exactly enough entrants to fill the field.

Teammate Jason Line, winner of last weekend's Pro Stock trophy at Sonoma, Calif., was No. 3 (with a pair of final qualifying chances left for Saturday.

"My Summit Racing Chevrolet Camaro is really good right now," Line said. "I have a great car, and we're definitely getting better. We weren't very aggressive that first session, but I was really pleased with how we ran, not just with my car, but also with my teammate Greg Anderson's Summit Camaro. To come out here and have both of us make decent runs was satisfying."

For his part, Anderson said, "We made two good runs today.  I wanted to step it up for the second qualifying session, but we kind of chickened out. The sun came out, but we should have gone for it. The car made two very consistent but soft runs. We had a good, solid car today. We just have to get a little more aggressive."

Line registered first a 6.549, 211.00, then 6.550, 211.36 – like Anderson, consistent. But in typical Line fashion, he wasn't satisfied. He wanted better, the best.

"That was not a good run," Line said of his first. "It went left and just shook at the top of low gear and going into second. It slowed down a lot, and if it hadn't done that we probably would have run as good as the other guys. It was on a really fast run, actually, until that point, so it ran well, considering. But I'd say that in the last two races and for about 15 runs that is the first bad run I've made, and we still qualified pretty well.

"I think there is the potential to improve for sure," he said. "Both Greg and I are going to do better, but the question is if we can improve more than the other guys. There is a lot of room tomorrow to get even better."