Army Duo Widens Gap to Countdown Field

Schumacher, Brown Advance to NHRA Keystone Nationals Final near Reading

The best news coming out of this weekend’s 31st annual NHRA Keystone Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway near Reading, Pennsylvania is a hefty 100-point gap in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Countdown to the Championship playoff standings between the U.S. Army Top Fuel driver duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown and the rest of the field.

The not-so-good news for the eight-time and defending Top Fuel world champion Schumacher is the 94-point advantage Brown opened up Sunday with his third consecutive event title and seventh of the season.

Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster for DSR, who started the weekend trailing Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR by 77 points atop the Countdown standings, advanced from the No. 4 qualifying position to Sunday’s Keystone Nationals Top Fuel final against Brown. Much like the first two stops of the 2015 Countdown at zMax Dragway near Charlotte, North Carolina and Gateway Motorsports Park near St. Louis the past two weekends, Brown continued his incredible roll by beating a tire-smoking Schumacher for the 10th consecutive time in Countdown matchups, and he is off to 12-0 start in round wins with an eye on J.R. Todd’s record streak of 16 consecutive round wins to start the 2007 playoffs.

“There are no two ways around it – those guys are running really well right now,” said Schumacher, who was on quite a roll of his own at the start of last year’s Countdown, streaking to eight consecutive round wins en route to back-to-back wins at Charlotte and the Texas Motorplex near Dallas en route to his eighth career Top Fuel title. “You know, at the end of the day, it’s still going to be a battle to the bitter end. Last year, we won a couple of races to start off the Countdown and then we smoked the tires a few times and opened the door. The game’s not over, yet. It’s still a lot of fun, and there’s still a lot of racing left. We did well here this weekend, for the most part. The U.S. Army car was a good car here this weekend. The right lane was a little tougher for us there in the final. The sun was out – I don’t know, we’ll have to go back and look at it. But the car’s fine as we move forward. That final run, the car didn’t’ even move forward. It jumped straight up. I never even pedaled it because he was on such a great run. So, game over for today. What is it, 94 points right now? We’ve come back from further than that. They just have to make some mistakes. If they keep winning races, then it doesn’t matter, we’ll just keep fighting for No. 2. We blew it up hard in the first round today. We destroyed some stuff and the guys worked so hard to get us back on track and then we beat some great cars. Then, losing lane choice didn’t help us in that final, though. I wish we could go back and maybe stage a little thinner in that semifinal and get that lane choice back. But, who knows, Antron ran a 71 (3.714 seconds) in that right lane in his semifinal, anyway. They’re just running well right now.”

Today’s final pitted Schumacher, the winningest Top Fuel driver at Maple Grove with five career event titles, including last year’s dramatic win, against Brown, for whom Maple Grove was one of the few tracks on the tour where he had yet to score an event title in Top Fuel or Pro Stock Motorcycle. After three consistently strong passes, all in the vicinity of 3.73 seconds in his earlier round wins over J.R. Todd, Richie Crampton and this weekend’s No. 1 qualifier Brittany Force, respectively, Schumacher’s U.S. Army machine heavily smoked its tires at the starting line against Brown, who powered his way down the track unchallenged at 3.717 seconds at 328.46 mph for the final-round win.

The day wasn’t without drama for Schumacher and the U.S. Army team as, just past the finish line in the first-round victory over Todd, a broken crankshaft led to a fiery explosion at the back of his racecar and the team worked feverishly to rebuild the car in time for the next round. It was an excellent example of teamwork and the overcoming of adversity the has become a hallmark of this team that represents the U.S. Army, which like no other service has the scale and scope, the versatility and adaptability to do all that the U.S. Army does.

Brown, meanwhile, proved undaunted by starting the day as the No. 12 seed after the weekend’s lone round of qualifying Saturday with Mother Nature washing out the other three scheduled qualifying rounds. He picked up right where he left off last weekend on the outskirts of St. Louis by beating Clay Millican in the first round with a run of 3.742 seconds at 321.50 mph, then outraced Dom Lagana in the second round with a run of 3.734 seconds at 323.27 mph. Brown’s most impressive run of the day came during his semifinal win over three-time Top Fuel champion Larry Dixon. It was an incredible side-by-side matchup with Brown prevailing in 3.714 seconds 325.45 mph to Dixon’s 3.719 seconds at 329.75 mph. That set up the final-round matchup against his fellow U.S. Army driver.

“This day was just a true blessing,” said Brown, who became the first driver to sweep the first three events of the Countdown and, by winning his 12th round of this year’s Countdown, already has surpassed the 11 total rounds he won in his 2012 championship season. “That first round was a crapshoot and the thing I’m blessed to have on my side is (crew chiefs) Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald with this entire Matco Tools/U.S. Army team. To go out there and do what we did today and go down that track with no runs on it, was a monumental statement. We didn’t get real greedy. We just kept running what we thought the track would hold. We just raced the track, not the other competitors, and we were fortunate enough to come out with a win. The goal is to keep winning rounds. That U.S. Army team with (crew chief) Mike Green, Neal (Strausbaugh, assistant crew chief) and Tony are no joke. They go rounds. They made it to the final round again and we were able to get by them for the win and that was huge for us.”