because you want to SEE it

U.S. Army Racing Drivers Can’t Slow Down Torrence

NHRA Top Fuel Point Leader Takes Down Schumacher and Pritchett on his way to Charlotte Victory

Concord, NC – U.S. Army Racing’s Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher, Antron Brown and Leah Pritchett looked at this weekend’s 11th annual NHRA Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway as their last “real” opportunity to make a move for the 2018 Top Fuel world championship. The problem was championship leader Steve Torrence was up to the challenge.

Torrence defeated Brittany Force in Sunday’s Top Fuel final to earn his fourth consecutive win in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series’ Countdown to the Championship playoffs and squeezed his grip on the competition even tighter. He dispatched Pritchett in the second round before eliminating Schumacher in the semifinals on a holeshot. Brown put up a formidable run against Schumacher in the opening round, but he couldn’t keep up with “The Sarge” who posted the fastest run of the weekend to start the day.

Schumacher, winner of the first Carolina Nationals in 2008, was looking to begin another memorable run to the Top Fuel championship Sunday aboard a very consistent U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR). His path to history started with the three-time Top Fuel world champion and winningest Top Fuel driver at zMAX Dragway. Following four consistent qualifying runs, Schumacher made an early statement with his pass of 3.699 seconds at 329.91 mph to edge out Brown, who also made his best lap of the weekend at 3.736 seconds at 328.14 mph.

Next up for Schumacher was an opportunity to close the gap in the points on Clay Millican. Schumacher left first and never trailed with his lap of 3.712 seconds at 330.55 mph to best Millican’s run of 3.729 seconds at 328.86 mph. The semifinal matchup with Torrence marked the third time the two had met in the first four Countdown races. Torrence got the jump at the starting line over Schumacher, who posted a faster lap of 3.718 seconds at 329.42 mph, and raced to the holeshot win with his lap of 3.728 seconds at 328.38 mph to continue his incredible winning streak.

“That was a rough one man,” said Schumacher, a the eight-time Top Fuel world champion. “We had a better package than Steve (Torrence) did, but .049-second lights are hard to come by. I don’t know. Ouch. The worst run we made all weekend was a 3.74. I can tell you this is a great team. It was really impressive what these U.S. Army Racing guys did here in Charlotte. I give a lot of credit to (crew chief) Mike Neff and (assistant crew chief) Phil (Shuler). They came in here with a package and just made it better all weekend. We talked about it being a bracket car in qualifying and then we came out in first round and put up fastest pass of the weekend. They were on their game and I know I was too. I’m just still wondering how those .040-lights keep happening against me. We needed to beat Steve to have a legitimate chance in the championship, but that didn’t happen today. We’ve got two great tracks for us left and all we can do is go out with a bang carrying the U.S. Army colors.”

Brown welcomed the opportunity to revive his title hopes with a venture to zMAX where he won a Countdown race in each of his previous two championship campaigns. The driver of the Matco Tools ‘Tools for the Cause’/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR fought mechanical “gremlins” Friday leading to a rare bottom-half of the ladder qualifying position. If he was in fact going to rekindle any championship fire, he would likely have to take out the top three in the championship standings to reach Sunday’s final. It started with his 70th career matchup against his U.S. Army teammate and Brown’s team led by crew chief Mark Oswald and assistant crew chief Brad Mason put a stout machine under him, but it wasn’t enough to move on and keep his title hopes burning.

“We wanted the upset on that first round today,” said Brown, the 2011, 2015 and 2016 Charlotte winner. “Our team has hit a good stride. We struggled this whole weekend and to finally get it back together and then get eliminated in round one today, it’s just disappointing. We really needed that run in Q3 or Q4 to set us up good for race day, but we’ll go to (Las) Vegas and keep working hard. Our main focus is to get a good qualifying run in on that first day and get ourselves high in the field. If we can do that, I know we can contend to win the race, so that’s the focus now. We’ve been on the wrong side of everything this year and hopefully Vegas will be our turning point and we can get on the right side.”

Pritchett, driver of the Papa John’s Pizza/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR, entered Sunday with aspirations of becoming the first woman in NHRA history to claim crowns in two different categories in the same season with a strong Charlotte performance. She opened Sunday with an impressive pass of 3.707 seconds at 324.67 mph and edged Richie Crampton’s solid run of 3.750 seconds at 317.79 mph. The win provided the two-time 2018 winner an opportunity to knock off Torrence and avenge her semifinals loss in St. Louis during the second event of the Countdown. Crew chiefs Tod Okuhara and Joe Barlam lined her up in the right lane for her 15th career race versus Torrence, but unfortunately, her shot at a sixth win over the championship leader ended abruptly when her machine over powered the track almost immediately. Her run of 4.222 seconds at 219.76 mph couldn’t stop the Torrence express who posted a lap of 3.716 seconds at 330.96 mph to score his 14th consecutive round win.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t slow down Steve today,” said Pritchett, who ranks fourth in the championship standings with 2,297 points, 295 behind Torrence. “We feel like that loss was the result of some self-inflicted issues. We found the power, but what it really probably came down to was that we should have picked the left lane (in the second round). We were going in the right lane. We had done well in it, but by the time Tony (Schumacher) got done in front of us the lane didn’t have the rubber down that we thought it would. So we had to back it down a little bit at the starting line. Once we did that we were behind. When we did put the power to it, we smoked the tires and it was all over from there. The bright side is that we always learn from these experiences. We learned a lot about being in tune with our car and the conditions. We’re a bit down about the championship situation, but we are making progress and we’ll come out in Las Vegas even stronger than we did coming in here.”

Share
  • MBE Button 290x
Team/Series News
Follow Us On Facebook
Facebook Pagelike Widget