DSR Heading to Pomona to start the 2016 Season

Pre-season testing prepares Brown, Matco Tools team for Pomona opener this weekend, live performance on FS1

BROWNSBURG, IN – The central reason for the recent domination in Top Fuel by Antron Brown and Don Schumacher Racing’s Matco Tools/U.S. Army team can be summed up in one word: acceleration.

Not just on the racetrack but also in continuous development.

You’ll never see the team led by crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald with assistant Brad Mason accept complacency.

Not even after a dominant 2015 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing season in which the Matco team produced its second Top Fuel world championship in four years and Brown won a career-best seven national event titles – 36 over the past seven years – and seven No. 1 qualifying positions.

“We’re not going in with the mindset we have something to defend or repeat,” Brown said. “Everybody’s slate is wiped cleaned when we get to Pomona.”

Brown is eager for the season to officially open Friday with the 56th annual NHRA Winternationals after spending most of last week testing at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park near Phoenix where his best time was 3.768 seconds at 297.88 mph, and the slow speed indicates one of his many early shutoffs including 3.758 (292.20), 3.775 (272.12), 3.825 (274.00) and 3.791 (320.13).

“We ran decent but we never run it all the way out,” said Brown, whose team clinched the Mello Yello championship a year ago at the penultimate event. “We had planned shutoffs at 800 feet and that’s what we did. We never leaned on it. We tested something on every run; most of it worked and a few things didn’t but that’s why we were out there.”

Brown owns 38 Top Fuel titles since joining the class in 2008 after winning 16 times in Pro Stock Motorcycle, but has not won the Winternationals in nine previous tries although he has won the NHRA Finals at Pomona three times.

However, he has advanced to the final round at Pomona 11 times including in last year’s Winternationals and Finals when he lost to DSR teammate Shawn Langdon both times.

“I hope we both get to the Finals on Sunday so I can beat him on live TV,” Brown joked.

Sunday’s championship eliminations will mark the first of 17 live telecasts with NHRA’s new broadcast partner FOX Network and FS1 that will carry all 24 Mello Yello events that will be complemented by encore broadcasts throughout the year.

“This new relationship with FOX already has been great and the season hasn’t started,” said Brown, who was interviewed live with Funny Car driver Alexis DeJoria on Saturday night during FS1’s live telecast of the Supercross race near Phoenix.

Brown also notes there will be added pressure on his Matco crew to get his dragster ready in short time between rounds on Sundays.

“Our Matco boys never had a break when we were testing because we were always changing something, and that is one way we’re getting ready for all these great live shows coming up on FOX and FS1.

“We threw the guys into the fire. We never did a routine service over four days of testing. They had to adapt and they did. We learned a lot.”

Hagan hopeful for another year of Pomona success to kick off 2016 NHRA season for Mopar/Rocky Boots team led by Venables

– In 2015 Matt Hagan and the Mopar Express Lane/Rocky Boots team came out swinging at the start of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season.

The team led by crew chief Dickie Venables and assistant Michael Knudsen won the first two events of the season and went on to win two more event titles en route to a fifth-place finish in the Mello Yello Funny Car points standings.

After a five-day test session at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park near Phoenix, Hagan and the Mopar team are ready to start the 24-race season at this weekend’s NHRA Winternationals at Pomona, where Hagan has won four event titles.

“Our test session was pretty tough, but it seems like when the pressure is on in qualifying or race day, Dickie (Venables) always finds a way to step up and make it happen,” said Hagan, the 2012 and 2014 Funny Car world champion. “I have enough laps under my belt that I feel confident driving the car no matter what happens during testing.”

Hagan was just thrilled to be back in the seat of his 11,000-horsepower Dodge Charger R/T after what felt like a long off-season. In years past, teams have selected to test in December or January but this year all Don Schumacher Racing teams waited until the first week of February to fill the tanks with nitromethane and hit the throttle.

“It’s been three months since I’ve been in the car and we did make some changes, but I’m pretty pumped that it’s time to go back to racing and be able to do what I love to do. It’s a cool feeling to be able to head out to Pomona and get strapped into a racecar that you know has a chance to win on Sunday.”

The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series events will be broadcast on FOX Networks’ Fox Sports 1 and with 17 of 24 events airing live beginning with championship eliminations at Pomona on FS1.

“It’s an exciting time for the sport,” Hagan said. “There’s a lot of changes and it’s going to be neat to see the fan response this year. Our guys are really going to have to be on top of it for all of these live events and that brings a whole different element into it that I think the fans will really enjoy.”

Capps, NAPA team ready for Mello Yello season

– For Ron Capps, it’s time. With four days of testing in the Arizona desert outside of Phoenix behind him, the second winningest driver in NHRA Funny Car history and his NAPA AUTO PARTS team led by crew chief Rahn Tobler are ready for this weekend’s NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, Calif., to open the 2016 Mello Yello Racing Series season.

“I always brag about the Winternationals because it’s more than a race at my home track growing up in California,” said Capps, who lives in nearby Carlsbad. “All you have to say is ‘It’s the Winternationals at Pomona.’

“It’s always been an exciting time, a fresh race to come to whether you’re a racer or a fan. Everybody has new paint schemes, brand new parts and everyone is well rested.
All the guys on our NAPA team are ready to get back after it and have that feeling of competition again.”

The 56th edition of the Winternationals marks the only time all year when every driver is tied for first place, and it’s a position Capps covets. He advanced to the Winternationals final round in 2015, when he lost to Don Schumacher Racing teammate Matt Hagan, and three other times left as the runner-up and is ready to repeat wins he celebrated in 1998 and 2009.

“You should be happy about getting to the finals but you hardly remember those times,” said Capps, who won two of his 44 Funny Car titles in 2015. “I’m just another sports fan, and we usually only remember who won.”

He and his NAPA team spent the week at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park south of Phoenix preparing for the new season.

“We tested a lot of new parts and Tobler was only having me go to halftrack on our early runs,” he said. “We ran good throughout the week and ended on a high note.”

The high note was his last run in the NAPA Dodge Charger R/T that was completed in 3.919 seconds at 320.66 mph on Saturday.

“We got everything accomplished that Tobler wanted. Most importantly for me was seeing what Tobler, (assistant crew chief Eric Lane) and the NAPA guys accomplished with improving the steering.

“We saw during the last half of last year that as hard and as quick as the Funny Cars were running they were becoming a bigger handful to drive. They have done as much as they could to help me better steer this NAPA Dodge when it wants to run in the 3.80s, and we’re going to be seeing a lot of those runs this year.”

A major change in 2016 that Capps embraces is NHRA teaming with new broadcast partner FOX including its FS1 channel. All 24 Mello Yello events will air on the Fox Network and FS1 including 17 that will be telecast live beginning with Sunday’s championship eliminations at Pomona.

“That will be a whole new feel on top of everything the Winternationals has offered in the past,” said Capps, who was interviewed live during the Jan. 9 telecast of the Supercross opener from Anaheim, Calif

“It’s a brand new era for NHRA Mello Yello drag racing.”

Langdon ready to kick off 2016 NHRA season at Pomona following successful test session near Phoenix with Red Fuel/Sandvik team

– A successful test session has Top Fuel pilot Shawn Langdon and the Red Fuel Powered by Schumacher/Sandvik Coromant team prepared for the start of the 2016 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season this weekend.

Langdon and his Don Schumacher Racing teammates along with many other NHRA teams participated in testing at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park near Phoenix last week leading to Friday’s season-opener in Pomona, Calif.

The team led by crew chiefs Todd Okuhara and Phil Shuler clocked a best time of 3.733 seconds at 313 mph over the four-day test session.

“The Red Fuel/Sandvik team has had a very successful test session,” Langdon said. “We probably made it down the track 75 percent of the time so we were able to gather a lot of information and data that we’ll be able to use at the first two races of the year.

“One of the runs we had a cylinder out down track but by our calculations that would’ve been our quickest elapsed time to date. That shows a lot of hope and promise and we’re excited for Pomona.”

This weekend’s NHRA Winternationals kicks off a 24-race season with 17 live events telecast on the Fox Network’s FOX Sports 1, including this Sunday.

Shawn has three career wins from his home track, Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, two of them from sweeping the Winternationals and Auto Club Finals last season.

“The team did a lot of homework in the offseason,” Langdon said. “They looked at a lot of things that they gathered throughout the past year, they’ve tried to put a lot of focus on improving the chassis, the tune-ups, everything. There were a lot of changes that we made and we were very happy with the progress of it all. A majority of the changes that we made we’ll be able to use in Pomona and we feel very confident that we’ll have a great racecar out there.”

Langdon’s name and driving skills were spread across social media outlets recently after an in-car camera view was posted on the Don Schumacher Racing Facebook page (facebook.com/shoeracing) that shows the drivers perspective of a run. As of Tuesday afternoon, the video had been viewed by more than 1 million people

“It’s pretty cool that so many people enjoyed that video,” Langdon said. “The video was a great example of what a driver goes through for a run. When I hit the throttle the video blurs a bit and then gets clearer as I go down track, and that’s exactly how it is when I make a lap. When I deploy the chutes it gets a bit blurry again and then clears back up. It’s such an adrenaline rush and I think the video captures every bit of that.”