Winning four straight races at Bristol Dragway was special enough for NHRA Pro Stock driver Mike Edwards.
How he picked up that fourth victory on Sunday at the Ford NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals will be a moment he will likely never forget.
In one of the closest races in NHRA history, Edwards and No. 1 qualifier Allen Johnson raced to a virtual dead heat in the Pro Stock finals. With a brilliant .005 reaction time, Edwards and his 6.674 at 206.16 miles per hour was deemed the victor by less than an inch, with the margin of victory reading an improbable .0000, the first time that has ever happened in an NHRA final.
“I don’t even know how to describe something like this final in words,” said Edwards, who won for the second time in 2012 and 34th time in his career.
Winning four straight races at Bristol Dragway was special enough for NHRA Pro Stock driver Mike Edwards.
How he picked up that fourth victory on Sunday at the Ford NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals will be a moment he will likely never forget.
In one of the closest races in NHRA history, Edwards and No. 1 qualifier Allen Johnson raced to a virtual dead heat in the Pro Stock finals. With a brilliant .005 reaction time, Edwards and his 6.674 at 206.16 miles per hour was deemed the victor by less than an inch, with the margin of victory reading an improbable .0000, the first time that has ever happened in an NHRA final.
“I don’t even know how to describe something like this final in words,” said Edwards, who won for the second time in 2012 and 34th time in his career.
“It was just unbelievable. Sometimes it’s just your day and it seems like we come to this place and get healed up. Hats off to Allen Johnson and all those guys. They did an awesome job, too.”
On the losing side, Johnson, who had been the dominant driver all weekend, was understandably crushed after losing in what ended up an absolute dead-heat and one marvelous side-by-side final race.
“We’d rather shake the tires, hit the wall, do anything than lose like that,” said Johnson, who went 6.661 at 207.05 mph in the finals.
“We all thought we had it. Hats off to everyone. We did everything we needed to; he just did a better job in the final. Today just wasn’t our day.”
As for trying to explain a .0000 margin of victory, Johnson succinctly summed it up perfectly.
“That’s Pro Stock racing at its best,” Johnson said.
It is surely a race that will go down in NHRA as one of the closest and Edwards was plenty pleased to end up the victor in such an historic race.
Racing against Jim Yates in Seattle, Edwards once was in a race featuring a .000 win margin, but Sunday’s final against Johnson topped even that.
The circumstances certainly had something to do with it, as Edwards, who qualified No. 2 with a 6.641, picked up his 16th straight round win in Thunder Valley.
Only Bob Glidden and his five straight wins at Columbus can top what Edwards has done the past four years in Pro Stock in Bristol.
“I can’t explain it. We just run exceptionally well here,” Edwards said. “I wanted this four in a row so bad that I came here right after Englishtown and tested here for two days.
“I’ve never done that at the next track coming up. I wanted it real bad. It’s just an unbelievable feeling to do this. To come back here, it’s just an awesome deal.”
The pre-race testing paid off for both Edwards and Johnson, who also tested before the event.
Johnson’s Mopar impressed all weekend, taking the No. 1 qualifier spot with a 6.623 and racking up a series of 6.65s during the first three rounds of eliminations.
He slowed up slightly in the finals, but still ran well and coupled it with a great .018 reaction time.
But Edwards was dynamite on the staring line all day, starting with an .025 and a 6.664 at 206.57 mph in a first-round win against Larry Morgan.
A round later, Edwards had an .0017 reaction time against Jeg Coughlin Jr., and then added an .007 in an impressive semifinal performance of 6.680 at 206.54 mph in the semifinals against Erica Enders.
That carried Edwards to the finals, where he and Johnson delivered a tremendous piece of history.
“Some days, it just clicks,” Edwards said. “Some days you concentrate better than other days.”
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