All’s Well for Army Duo Midway Through Countdown
The march through the 2014 NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship reached the halfway point Sunday at Gateway Motorsports 
Park in Madison, Illinois with Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and his U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) atop the point standings and fellow U.S. Army and DSR driver Antron Brown having jumped from eighth to fourth after storming his way to his sixth event title of the season Sunday at the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals.
Along the way, Schumacher and Brown continue to display the level of engineering and teamwork that is reflective of the Army’s leading-edge technology and the powerful, realistic training of its Soldiers.
Schumacher scored back-to-back event titles in the opening two of six Countdown races at Charlotte, North Carolina and the outskirts of Dallas to bring a stout, 106-point lead to this weekend’s event on the banks of the Mississippi, just across the river from downtown St. Louis. He and the U.S. Army team continued their show of consistency by laying down top-three runs in all four qualifying sessions Friday and Saturday, including a solid second-fastest lap in Saturday’s final session.
But the seven-time world champion hit a stumbling block, of sorts, when he lit up the tires halfway down the 1,000-foot straightaway and fell to Terry McMillen in today’s opening round of eliminations. McMillen advanced with a run of 3.878 seconds at 316.90 mph while Schumacher rolled across the finish line in 5.283 seconds at 137.54 mph.
Despite the early exit, Schumacher moves to next week’s fourth Countdown event at Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pennsylvania with a 57-point lead over alAnabi Racing’s Shawn Langdon, who leapfrogged his way from fourth to second place after advancing to today’s final round against Brown.
“Every time we are on the track, this U.S. Army Racing team demonstrates the same attributes the Army looks for in its Soldiers – putting the mission first, a never-quit attitude and a refusal to accept defeat,” said Schumacher, who was vying for his third career Gateway event title this weekend after victories here in 2006 and 2010. “Last week, we went from being 50 points down to a 106-point lead in a matter of 24 hours, so naturally we came here with some huge momentum and planned to keep it going. We were pretty fast Friday and Saturday, made it down the track well each time. But today, we tried to replicate that in our U.S. Army car and it just didn’t do what we were hoping it would do. Unfortunately, it’s not a good thing to take a huge lead like we came here with and go out and make a mistake. You can’t give points back like that. But, in all reality, I’ll take smoking the tires any day over being underpowered. I don’t mind being aggressive. It’s how you win championships. We’re going to take a beating every now and then, but we’ll get it together and go back to Reading, Pennsylvania and it’ll be a great racetrack. It’s been very kind to me. We’ve obviously still got a great racecar, so we’re going to go out there and starting next week try to win the last three.”
Brown, meanwhile, was solid here all day after being ousted in the first round at both Charlotte and Dallas and entering the weekend eighth in the Countdown, 153 points behind his teammate Schumacher. The driver of the Matco Tool/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR opened with a run of 3.799 seconds at 319.22 mph to eliminate Brittany Force in the first round. He came back to beat McMillen with a run of 3.814 seconds at 316.45 mph. And then he rode a tremendous holeshot to beat Steve Torrence – Schumacher’s closest Countdown pursuer entering the weekend – with a run of 3.846 seconds at 317.87 mph to Torrence’s 3.817 seconds at 324.36 mph. The difference maker was Brown’s reaction time of .035 of a second to Torrence’s .091 of a second.
That set up the final-round matchup against Langdon, the defending Top Fuel world champion Langdon, the No. 5 qualifier who took care of Pat Dakin, J.R. Todd and Bob Vandergriff along the way today.
Brown had another clean run while Langdon smoked his tires just as he approached the finish line, and the driver of the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR lit up the final-round win light here for the third year in a row and for the fourth time in his career. His run stopped the clock at 3.844 seconds at 315.42 mph while Langdon crossed the finish line in 4.035 seconds at 279.38 mph.
It was Brown’s sixth event title of the season and the 31st Top Fuel win of his career. His previous wins at Gateway came in 2009, 2012 and 2013.
“This was a big day for us,” said Brown, the 2012 Top Fuel world champion. “We came to this race and knew our backs were against the wall. The last four races, we’ve been working hard but, no matter what we did, our car was just not cooperating with us. But we got it back. Now, our car, we’re close, we’re competitive and we pulled off this win today. St. Louis has always been a turning point for us. When we come to this race, it seems the more pressure that’s on us, the more our backs are against the wall, the more focused our team gets on what needs to get done. It shows you how brutal this class is. Top Fuel is just incredible in competition and anybody can win. All these Countdown boys, they’re coming out and they’re playing hard because everybody wants to win a championship, it’s so even out there. We just had to do what we needed to do today and it worked out to get us back into that fighting mode. With three races left, we’ve just got to keep pushing and doing what we’ve been doing because it’s still anybody’s championship out there.
