Pritchett Scores Win for U.S. Army at Denver

Schumacher, Brown Suffer First-Round Exits at NHRA Mile-High Nationals

For the third time in the last three years, a U.S. Army Top Fuel competitor earned his or her way to victory lane at the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway in the Denver suburb of Morrison, Colorado, as Leah Pritchett and her Mopar/U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher concluded a perfect weekend Sunday by winning this year’s 39th renewal of the event.

Fellow U.S. Army driver Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster for DSR, who won this event in 2016, laid down the third-best run of the opening round of eliminations Sunday, an effort of 3.852 seconds at 321.12 mph. He had an ever-so-slim starting-line edge against longtime rival Doug Kalitta in their 89th career meeting, scoring a reaction time of .064 of a second to Kalitta’s .067 of a second. Kalitta managed to cross the finish line in 3.849 seconds at 320.43 mph and illuminated the win light by a margin of just one 10,000th of a second and beat Schumacher by about 1 inch. It was Kalitta’s 39th career win over Schumacher. Only Clay Millican’s first-round run of 3.824 seconds at 327.59 mph was better than Schumacher’s and Kalitta’s.

“It was a phenomenal race – there’s no other way to look at it,” said Schumacher, who entered the weekend with three Mile High Nationals titles and nine final-round appearances in all. “You could be upset that the race is over, but you can’t be upset with what we did. It would’ve beat every other car but one with the reaction time and the ET (elapsed time) and we lost by one 10,000th of a second. We could say it put a hole out or some other excuse but it doesn’t matter because it was a great race. The car ran what we wanted it to run, I left like I wanted to leave, it was a phenomenal race. That’s just two drivers cowboying up and the fans got the win there. They paid money to watch that particular run. I said it was going to be a great race and it was.”

Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR, who won this event last year, needed trouble in the other lane occupied by Scott Palmer to have any hope for a first-round win after dropping a cylinder at the hit of the throttle. Brown crossed the finish line in 4.047 seconds at 300.13 mph to Palmer’s 3.894 seconds at 317.34 mph.

“It dropped a whole at the step of the throttle,” said Brown, who won this event for the second time in his career a year ago this weekend with a final-round victory over Pritchett. “I saw the (warning) light on but we just kept on going down the track and see if we could actually make it happen, anyway. We’re just going to keep working hard and keep our head down and go to Sonoma and go from there. All we can do is keep fighting. This is racing. You can’t let it beat you up and get you down. You’ve just got to keep fighting and keep going, take another step forward, stay versatile, keep working and keep our heads down.”

Pritchett, who qualified No. 1 for the second event in a row and for the second time in a row at Bandimere, opened with a methodical first-round win over No. 16 qualifier Terry Totten, stopping the clock in 3.857 seconds at 322.81 mph. She followed that with an impressive run of 3.806 seconds at 321.96 mph in the midday heat to beat Palmer’s 3.890 seconds at 317.34 seconds in the second round. In the Top Fuel semifinal, Pritchett and Millican posted identical elapsed times of 3.826 seconds, Pritchett at 312.93 mph to Millican’s 320.36 mph. The difference was Pritchett’s reaction time of .043 of a second to Millican’s .087 of a second. It was Pritchett’s ninth win over Millican in 15 career meetings.

In her second Top Fuel final in a row, her third of the season and her second in a row at Bandimere, Pritchett sealed the deal she could not a year ago against Kalitta. Pritchett got away cleanly and overcame Kalitta’s .056 to .075 of a second reaction time advantage by powering her way to the finish line in 3.831 second at 316.45 mph. Kalitta crossed the line in 3.852 seconds at 319.82 mph. It was Pritchett’s seventh win over Kalitta in 18 career meetings, and her seventh career win in 11 career final rounds overall.

“This is all because I have a phenomenal team and an incredible racecar,” said Pritchett, who jumped from fifth to third in the Top Fuel standings with her performance today, 183 points behind leader Steve Torrence and just 10 points behind second-place Millican. “We have some incredible, stiff competition but, from Friday to Saturday to today, nobody had a better racecar because, in my opinion, nobody has a better team. To do it in this fashion, it’s a couple of ways – this is the Dodge Mile-High Nationals powered by Mopar and Pennzoil, and we’re the 1320 Scat Pak R/T car and, on top of that, I was here in 1997 and got my very first Wally. I didn’t win the national championship in a Junior Dragster but my team did. And it is no different today – this team got me my first Wally here on The Mountain. To me, this win is bigger than winning the U.S. Nationals. Winning on The Mountain is doing something. The glory goes to God, it goes to Don Schumacher for giving me an incredible team, and everybody at Don Schumacher Racing who build these racecars for giving me something so safe, so solid. There’s a reason I always dreamed of driving for Don Schumacher Racing and this is it.”

After 14 of 24 events on the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series tour for 2018, the top-10 drivers in the Top Fuel class are:

1. Steve Torrence (1,132 points)

2. Clay Millican (959 points, -173)

3. Leah Pritchett (949 points, -183)

4. Tony Schumacher (930 points, -202)

5. Doug Kalitta (893 points, -239)

6. Antron Brown (750 points, -382)

7. Terry McMillen (696 points, -436)

8. Brittany Force (658 points, -474)

9. Richie Crampton (576 points, -556)

10. Scott Palmer (544 points, -588)

The three-event Western Swing continues with next week’s 31st annual NHRA Sonoma Nationals at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway. Once again, the FOX broadcast network will provide three hours of live coverage of Sunday’s elimination rounds beginning at 4 p.m. EDT.