DSR takes provisional poles with record times at Las Vegas; Brown extends Top Fuel lead to 134, Johnson chipping away

LAS VEGAS – Don Schumacher Racing sits on both nitro provisional poles at Las Vegas after Antron Brown and Matco’s “Tools for the Cause” Top Fuel team and the Make-A-Wish 2015 Dodge Charger R/T driven by Tommy Johnson Jr. were quickest with track records Friday to start the Toyota NHRA Nationals.

Brown, Johnson and the other five DSR Mello Yello Drag Racing Series teams remain in contention for world championships with two events remaining the six-race Countdown to the Championship playoff.

But Brown and Johnson rest in very different positions.

Brown and his 2012 NHRA Top Fuel world championship team led by crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald are ranked No. 1 and extended their lead by two points over teammate Tony Schumacher to 134.

Any Mello Yello team leaving Las Vegas at the conclusion of the event Sunday with a 151-point lead will be crowned world champion after the race that is two weeks before the finale at Pomona, Calif. The most a driver can earn at a Countdown event is 150 points.

“We’re controlling our destiny by the way our Matco dragster is running,” said Brown, whose best time of 3.722 seconds at 326.95 mph was in the early evening session. “We didn’t come in here like we have a big points lead. We’re attacking it with everything we have like it’s the first race in the Countdown. We’ll let the chips fall where they fall.”

The chips have fallen pretty solidly in Brown’s favor recently where he won three of the first four Countdown events.

“We know clinching our second world championship won’t be easy,” added Brown, who is poised to earn his sixth pole through 22 events in which he has won a career-best seven titles. “We’re just trying do everything possible in our will and give it everything we have on every run. We just want to keep riding that wave and take it as far as it will go.”

On the other end of the championship battle spectrum is Johnson and the Make-A-Wish Dodge led by crew chief John Collins and assistant Rip Reynolds that have a long row to hoe to get closer to the NHRA Funny Car championship points lead. But they plowed the Las Vegas track with the two quickest runs of each qualifying session in the year’s penultimate event.

Johnson reset the track’s elapsed time record twice on Friday and holds the provisional pole with the day’s best track-record time of 3.931 seconds at 320.43 mph in the early evening session.

Johnson started the day ranked third and 147 points out of first place but was able to chop six points off the margin by earning three bonus points in each session. Points leader Del Worsham and Johnson’s DSR teammate Jack Beckman (Infinite Hero Foundation), who is 38 out of first, produced subpar performances and did not collect any bonus points heading into Saturday’s final two sessions scheduled to start at 1 and 4:30 p.m. (PT) before championship eliminations the next day.

“We have our backs against the wall because we have quite a lot of points to gain in two races, but anything can happen,” said Johnson, who is on the cusp of earning his third pole of the year and 13th of his career.

“We have a team capable of gaining those points and we came in here kind of with a carefree attitude because everybody has counted us out. That’s fine. Let’s just go out and have fun at these last two races and try to get two more trophies.”

DSR’s Shawn Langdon (Red Fuel Powered by Schumacher/Sandvik Coromant) was quickest in the first Top Fuel session with a time of 3.788. While he fell to fifth at the end of the day with a time of 3.768 that was at a track-record speed of 332.67.

DSR/SEC contribute to Matco’s ‘Tools for the Cause’

Don Schumacher’s Schumacher Electric Corp. and Don Schumacher Racing organizations have pledged a combined 10 percent from each DSR Mello Yello Series event title it wins during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.

DSR and SEC, the world’s largest manufacturer of battery chargers, each will contribute 5 percent to the Matco Tools’ “Tools for the Cause” program to help the Susan G. Komen foundation.

Wins by DSR’s Antron Brown in Top Fuel and Jack Beckman in Funny Car two weeks ago near Reading, Pa., contributed $10,000 into the Tools for the Cause coffer.

Another $10,000 is on the line this weekend at Las Vegas.