Schumacher and Brown Struggle on the ‘Mountain’, Qualify 10th and 12th
Morrison, CO – It took a clutch performance in the fourth and final qualifying session of the weekend Saturday for Tony Schumacher 
and the U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) to safely make it to Sunday’s elimination rounds of the 34th annual Mile-High NHRA Nationals at Bandimere Speedway just west of Denver.
Schumacher and the U.S. Army team struggled through both qualifying sessions Friday and, after today’s penultimate qualifying run, the seven-time Top Fuel world champion found himself outside the top-16 with one chance remaining on one of the trickiest racetracks on the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series schedule thanks, in large part, to the fact it sits more than a mile above sea level at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
But, Schumacher and his team know only the strongest wear their colors, and the U.S. Army Soldiers they represent possess a mental, emotional and physical strength like no other, so Schumacher and his U.S. Army Dragster simply took to the track and reflected those strengths. The result was a run of 4.007 seconds at 306.74 mph down the 1,000-foot straightaway that earned Schumacher the 10th spot in the qualifying order and a first-round meeting with Australian David Grubnic Sunday.
Upon exiting the U.S. Army Dragster after the weekend’s final qualifying run, Schumacher, who won this event in 2008 on his way to a sweep of the three-event Western Swing, was offered a football analogy by track announcers to explain the heroics.
“It’s only a Hail Mary if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he was quick to reply after extending his decade-long streak of consecutive events he’s qualified for to 237. “These U.S. Army guys are the best in the business and I can rely on them to know what it takes to get the job done when it matters the most. The level of engineering and teamwork on display at the racetrack, especially on days like this, is reflective of the Army’s leading-edge technology and the powerful, realistic training of its Army Strong Soldiers.
Was there a little anxiety somewhere deep down inside of us with just one last chance left on a tricky racetrack to get it done? Sure there was. In a sport like this, anxiety is part of everyday life. The question is, what do you do with your anxiety? Some people fold under the pressure, we just don’t. We did what we had to do but, in fact, we had so much left. We were so soft because we had to be.
Better to race from 10th or 11th than being on the outside looking in. It’s not like this has been a problem track for us. We’ve won this race before. The thing about this weekend, I think honestly, is we have such a unique tune-up on our car, it’s so cool, it’s so good, it’s so different from everything we’ve had data on for such a long time, that you come here and this is way different than anything we’ve been doing lately. I’m just happy to be in the show. We’ll come back tomorrow and do what we always do on Sundays, and that is to try and take care of business.”
Schumacher’s DSR teammate Antron Brown, the defending Top Fuel champion and last year’s Mile-High Nationals winner, improved on his Friday struggles, as well, and placed his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster 12th in the qualifying order. Brown made it down the track in 4.043 seconds at 306.26 mph on his fourth and final qualifying run of the weekend.
“We’re picking away at it, little by little, and it’s coming around,” said Brown, who will face series points leader Shawn Langdon in his first-round matchup Sunday. “We’ve just got to get in line with what the track has to give you. And the track on the second run today was actually pretty good. It gets cool quickly when the wind blows and the little bit of cloud cover brought the track temperature down. And we stepped it up. Tomorrow’s going to be hotter. The good part is the conditions when we make our first run Sunday will be a lot like they were when we ran our second run today. Once you get going, everything starts to pan out and you know what to do from there. The first round will be pretty decent. When the track gets tricky is the second round, and then the semis get really tricky. We’re headed in the right direction. Now, we just need to stay on that path from the first round on tomorrow.”
Elimination rounds begin Sunday at 1 p.m. EDT with ESPN2’s delayed broadcast set for 6 p.m. EDT.
