U.S. Army NHRA Racing 30th Annual NHRA Spring Nationals Final Qualifying Report
On a day they joined the nation in celebrating the 109th birthday of the U.S. Army Reserve, the U.S. Army Top Fuel 
driver duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown closed out qualifying for Sunday’s elimination rounds of the 30th annual NHRA Spring Nationals at Royal Purple Raceway on the outskirts of Houston.
Schumacher’s U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) laid down the third- and second-fastest runs of Saturday’s final two qualifying sessions, respectively, and locked down the final spot in the top half of Sunday’s elimination ladder. He opened the day with a run of 3.798 seconds at 321.50 mph that bettered his nighttime run from Friday, then topped that with a closing run today of 3.783 seconds at 316.67 mph. The two-time Houston event winner and seven-time event finalist wound up No. 8 in the final qualifying order and will face No. 9 qualifier Troy Buff in Sunday’s first round of eliminations.
“It was a great day to celebrate the Army Reserve’s 109th birthday and we went out there and had two of the best runs of the day after a little bit of bad luck on Friday,” said Schumacher, who won this event in 2005 and 2009 and was runner-up in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2015. “I surely wasn’t trying to run a 78 (3.78 seconds) that last run, but it is what it is. There was a lot of noise down the track, which means it was way through the clutch. We’re eighth, we’re running Troy Buff in the first round, and nobody’s easy to beat, so we’ll just go out there and hope our guys stared at their computers long enough to make everything right. We lost that first run yesterday, which put us a session behind, but I’ll also say I haven’t seen anyone else who’s done anything miraculous here this weekend. There are some smaller teams that have done an outstanding job here, and that’s great for the series overall. As for us, this U.S. Army team is loaded with incredibly smart people with some incredible parts and pieces, and even we’re a little off this weekend. We’ve had an incredible racecar all year long, so it isn’t like we’ve forgotten how to do this. We’ve just got to figure out what’s going on and, once we do, we’ll go out and make it happen tomorrow.”
Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR logged the second-fastest run of today’s opening qualifying session and had a stronger run going in the closing session before spinning his tires three-quarters of the way down the track. He stopped the clock in 3.785 seconds at 320.28 mph on his first run and 4.744 seconds at 152.33 seconds in the final run of the day. The 2008 and 2014 Houston winner and three-time runner-up held onto the No. 2 qualifying position he earned Friday and will face No. 15 qualifier Terry Haddock in Sunday’s opening round of eliminations.
“We had a great two days of qualifying – we learned something on all four runs that will help us for tomorrow, when it’s going to be cooler,” Brown said. “We’re just excited to be back here in Houston. It’s a big weekend for us with the Army Reserve celebrating its 109th birthday and have a lot of important people out here this weekend and there is a lot of synergy and a lot of energy going on around us. We’re No. 2 qualifier and we got six quality (bonus) points, so that’s a good thing. That last run, the tune-up crept up on us a lot because the weather got down to 74 degrees very quickly and what that did was it gave us a lot more power than we wanted and made our car a lot more frisky than we wanted it to be down the track. We spun the tires way down the track, but we now know exactly what to expect with that same tune-up tomorrow. Safe to say we tested some new stuff today and we had a solid run in the hottest part of the day in Q3 today. So all of that adds up to a great race day tomorrow.”
FS1’s delayed television broadcast of today’s qualifying is set for 2 a.m. EDT Sunday. Elimination rounds are set for noon Sunday with FS1’s delayed three-hour broadcast set for 6 p.m.
