U.S. Army NHRA Racing, 33rd Annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd Final Qualifying Report
Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher held onto the No. 6 spot and fellow U.S. Army driver Antron Brown jumped up to the No. 1 position 
during the final two rounds of qualifying Saturday for this weekend’s 33rd annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd (Minn.) International Raceway. Both NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel Dragster competitors and their respective Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) teams are honored and take great pride in representing the more than 1 million Soldiers who protect our freedom and our way of life.
Schumacher, who laid down the sixth-fastest run of 3.836 seconds at 332.43 mph during Friday’s second of two qualifying sessions, encountered issues during both his third- and fourth-round runs in his U.S. Army Dragster for DSR today. He smoked the tires three-quarters of the way down the 1,000-foot dragstrip early this afternoon, then got crossed up at the starting line in the late-afternoon session before crossing the finish line at 3.914 seconds at 309.98 mph. He’ll meet No. 11 qualifier Leah Pritchett in Sunday’s opening round of eliminations.
“You know, the mental, emotional and physical strength like no other displayed by our Soldiers is inspiring and plays a huge part in the U.S. Army team’s drive to be successful,” said Schumacher, who won event titles at Brainerd in 2000, 2004 and 2008, also reached the Top Fuel final here in 2003, 2006 and 2011, and has been No. 1 qualifier here six times. “What happened there at the starting line on that last run today, quite frankly, involves the mental side of this business. I don’t know what it did but I sat in the car for too long, I can tell you that. I went to leave, I was really trying to drill it and lay one down, but then I stopped. Then the light came on and he (Shawn Langdon in the other lane) left and I told myself not to double-step it, to just hammer it. It didn’t feel bad. It didn’t feel like it was all junked up. He wasn’t pulling away. He was just way out there. I thought, ‘Don’t lift and maybe I’ll have a good run.’ Hey, that’s qualifying. We’ve got a good car. That was just a terrible driving job. It happens. You hate to have (cooler and cloudy) conditions like that go to waste. But it doesn’t matter. We’ve got a good car. We’ll just get ourselves together and go out and do our jobs tomorrow.”
Brown, who was in the No. 4 position when he arrived at the starting line in his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR to finish the final qualifying session, put the hammer down and stopped the clocks with the weekend’s best Top Fuel run of 3.810 seconds at 318.77 mph. No. 2 in Top Fuel point standings entering the weekend, Brown knocked Top Fuel points leader Doug Kalitta off the No. 1 qualifier spot here and set up a first-round meeting Sunday with No. 16 qualifier J.R. Todd, who is Kalitta’s teammate.
“That’s what we were planning on,” said Brown, who was No. 1 qualifier for the third time this season, the 37th time in his career and for the first time in Top Fuel to go with three in Pro Stock Motorcycle at Brainerd. “We were pushing to run better. The first run of the day, the track was still hot, so we knew we wouldn’t be running for the No. 1 spot. But the cloud cover came in and everything looked good, so we pushed for it. We tried to get an 80 flat (3.80 seconds), or a 79, but it’s so humid out there, and even though the cloud cover came around, it’s tough to make power up here at Brainerd. The track is just tight and it kind of takes from your car. We looked at Tony (Schumacher) and (Shawn) Langdon in front of us and thought they were about to run really well. But it’s just tricky to get down the track, sometimes. My guys just did an incredible job. The whole Matco Tools, U.S. Army Toyota crew did an incredible job. We’ll take that No. 1. That’s three more bonus points, and a couple of points for first. We’ll just keep on chipping and try to get closer and closer to Kalitta a little bit. Tomorrow, we’ll just take it one round at a time. We’ve got that tough first-round matchup against J.R. Todd and we’re going to go after it. It’s not going to be easy out there so we might as well go out there in the first round and get down to racing.”
ESPN2’s two-hour qualifying show is set for 11 EDT tonight. Elimination rounds begin at noon EDT Sunday with ESPN2’s three hours of delayed coverage on ESPN2 beginning at 9 p.m.
