DSR Vegas Pre-race Team Reports – They are Ready!
BROWNSBURG, IN – There’s work to be done at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend for Matt Hagan and the Rocky Boots/Mopar Funny Car team, and they are ready for the challenge.At the previous NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series event two weeks ago near Reading, Pa., Hagan relinquished possession of the points lead in the Funny Car class to 15-time champion John Force. Hagan had led the points since racing at Englishtown, N.J., in early June.
The Rocky Boots team led by crew chief Dickie Venables tested on Oct. 9 at Lucas Oil Raceway near Indianapolis. It was Venable’s first test session with the team this year.
“I’m ready to get back in the swing of things after this break,” Hagan said. “We have a lot to get done in Vegas. It’s a make or break race for us. If we do really well there then we’re still in the fight and could possibly win a championship.”Force holds a 65-point lead – or a little more than three rounds of racing – over the Rocky/Mopar team.
“We have to get focused and make sure we go some rounds on Sunday. We can’t really control what anyone else does. We can only control what we do. The rest of it will have to take care of itself.
“I’m confident. Our guys are confident; they are rested up and ready to go. We just have to get back in the saddle.”
Hagan has a win-loss record in eliminations of 36-18 this season that includes four event titles. Ten of those round losses have come to his teammates at Don Schumacher Racing.
“It’s so tough racing my teammates. You look at our round losses in the Countdown and three out of the four are to our DSR teammates. It’s just tough.”
But Hagan knows the task that lies ahead.
“There’s no room for error. We’ve got to have two good races, he’s (Force) just got to have one bad one, and it’s got to play out that way. It’s very doable, it’s possible. You have to be confident.
“We just have to focus on what our car can do and not really who’s beside us, as hard as that is to do with a 15-time champ out there. But we can’t control how he qualifies, we can’t control who he runs, we can’t control how many rounds he goes. We’ve just got to go out there and try to go four rounds on Sunday and turn four win lights on and do it for two more races. I believe we can do it. I know that’s a steep hill to climb, but I’ve never won back to back, and I sure would like to these last two races.”
– Jack Beckman expected it would be a battle this year to defend his 2012 NHRA Funny Car world championship.
What he didn’t expect was that he’d enter the 23rd of 24 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series events without having won an event title at the first 22.
“It’s certainly not because we haven’t been competitive,” he said. “We have had a good year.”
Beckman along with crew chief Todd Smith, assistant Terry Snyder and the Valvoline MaxLife/MTS Dodge Charger R/T team this year have won the $100,000 Traxxas Nitro Shootout all-star event and advanced to the championship round three times, semifinals six times and earned two No. 1 qualifier positions.
“We challenged basically all year long, we just haven’t closed the deal when we really needed to.”
He knows he needs to close it at least once over the last two events including this weekend’s NHRA Toyota Nationals that begins Friday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Beckman will start the three-day event ranked third in points but trails 15-time champion and leader John Force by 126 and Don Schumacher Racing teammate Matt Hagan by 61.
“Force has found some magic and made us all look silly the last couple events,” Beckman said of Force winning the last two titles to pass Hagan for the lead at the last event.
Heading into this weekend’s penultimate event, no Funny Car driver has won a championship trailing the leader by more than 69 points with two races left; Cruz Pedregon trailed by 69 points in 2008 when he rallied to win the championship in the last two events.
The most points a driver can earn at either of the last two events is 150 and that would include a 20-point bonus for setting an NHRA national elapsed time record.
“We’re in a position that if we are going to win the championship we have to win the next two races and John would have to do terrible at the next two, and with Nitro Funny Cars anything and everything is possible. Things like that happen.
“If we win the next two races and qualify better than John and John doesn’t win more than two rounds over the last two races then we could pass him. It’s doable, but there is a very slim chance because he would have to stumble significantly.
“We’re in a unique position because we really don’t care about the points, we really just want a trophy. We just want to win a race or two.”
He also knows that it will take more than winning this weekend’s title in the NHRA Toyota Nationals for him to earn his first NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series championship.
Capps, who has won three titles this season for Don Schumacher Racing, is sixth in the standings and trails points leader John Force by 160 points with two events remaining in the season. A perfect weekend can produce 150 points including 20 for an NHRA national record.
Capps knows he and crew chief Rahn Tobler along with the NAPA team face a daunting task. Heading into the penultimate event, no Funny Car driver has won a championship trailing the leader by more than 69 points; Cruz Pedregon trailed by 69 points in 2008 when he rallied to win the championship in the last two events.
“Our goal is to finish strong,” Capps said of Las Vegas and two weeks later at the finale at Pomona, Calif. “Until they tell us we’re mathematically out of it we’re going to go out and try to win it.
“It’s a longshot for us right now but at the same time I know the goal of Tobler and the team is to go and win the race and gain back some of the mojo we had. Probably test on Monday and then try to win Pomona. We want to win both races and see what happens. Stranger things have happened.”
The California native and resident of Carlsbad, Calif., isn’t involved in a nail-biting drama like he was a year ago with DSR teammate Jack Beckman, who eventually won the championship by two points over Capps. It was the fourth time Capps finished second in the final standings.
“After we left (Reading, Pa.) last year we went to Vegas, won that race and it put us right back in position for a chance to win the championship,” said Capps, who owns 41 NHRA titles. “All we can do is keep moving ahead.
“We’ve shown we can bounce back and be competitive. I’ve been looking forward to getting back to Las Vegas.”
Las Vegas has been a good track for Capps, who has won there five times in seven championship round appearances. None were bigger than a year ago when he beat Beckman in the final round.
“Last year was a gut-check for the team to be able to fight back into the running for the championship. We went to Vegas knowing we had to win; it was a do-or-die situation. That was the only way we could get back into the championship race.
“I believe our NAPA team is going to go out and step over some boundaries that we might not have tried if we were first or second in the Countdown.
Capps had been focusing on gaining ground on Matt Hagan, one of his Don Schumacher Racing teammates who had led the points standings since June 2. While Capps has to move around Hagan and four other drivers, the points leader after the last event at Maple Grove Raceway near Reading, Pa., is 15-time champion John Force. Force took the points lead from Hagan during qualifying and moved ahead by 65 points after winning the title.
At Reading, Capps beat Hagan in the second round of eliminations before losing to Force in the semifinals.
“We’re going to finish up the best we can,” Capps said. “We have to make these last two races our time of the year. I know we have the talent to win and we’re going to the last two races with a full head of steam.”
– When Antron Brown arrives at Las Vegas this week for the NHRA Toyota Nationals, he will face a vastly different scenario then he did toward the end of the last season.
A year ago, Brown arrived at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway ranked first in the Top Fuel standings with a 104-point lead over Don Schumacher Racing teammate Spencer Massey. Although Brown lost in the first round last fall, he was able to hold onto the points lead and left the final race of the season two weeks later as the 2012 NHRA Top Fuel world champion.
But when racing begins Friday afternoon at Las Vegas, Brown will be ranked fifth in points and a nearly insurmountable 129 points behind leader Shawn Langdon of Al-Anabi Racing.
Brown and his Matco Tools “Tools for the Cause” team, however, will not rule out a chance to defend their championship until it is mathematically impossible to do so.
“We’re going to keep giving it our all. That’s all we can do,” said Brown, who has won three titles this season. “We’ll keep taking it one round at a time. We’re still in the fight for the championship and we just have to focus on getting those win lights.”
The team led by crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald have recovered from a summer slump and won the NHRA Mello Yello Series title four weeks ago near St. Louis and advanced to the championship round at the following race on Oct. 6 at Maple Grove Raceway near Reading, Pa. But unfortunately for Brown, he lost to Langdon in the final round at Maple Grove and lost ground in his championship pursuit.
The Matco Tools team is the only one of seven teams at DSR that has won a title through the first four of six events in the NHRA Countdown to the Championship playoff.
“In the last two races we won seven out of eight rounds,” Brown said. “We want to finish the year out strong just like that. If we do that in the next two races it puts us right there contending for the championship at the end. We just have to keep on pushing.”
Two-week break has Massey recharged for Las Vegas event, Battery Extender dragster still in championship contention
The break allowed Massey to return to his home state of Texas for an extended period for the first time since the beginning of the season. Whether it was doing routine maintenance on his motorhome that he travels in to nearly every Mello Yello event or working on a friend’s dragster, his Battery Extender team was never far from his mind.
“This is really the most time off I’ve had all season,” Massey said. “It just makes me that much hungrier to get back to NHRA drag racing, back in my Battery Extender dragster. I just want to go out in these next two races and try to win them. We’re really pumped and motivated to get back out to Vegas and go after a win.
“The guys have been working hard back in Brownsburg (Ind.) to prepare us for these final two races and they also got some time off to get relaxed and ready to go after it in these final two races.”
Massey has two wins at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and currently sits third in the NHRA Top Fuel standings, four rounds of racing behind leader Shawn Langdon and just three points behind No. 2 ranked Doug Kalitta.
One event remains after this weekend’s penultimate Mello Yello series event at Las Vegas.
“We’re still racing for the championship,” he said. “We’re just over four rounds out of the lead and there are eight rounds left. We need a little bit of luck on our side and for some things to go our way. But if we can’t get the championship we’d still like to end the season with a couple more Wally’s (trophies).
“I’m excited. I feel good about our chances. Vegas is usually a good track for us. We have a couple of wins there, a runner-up at this race last year. That’s all we need to do is just go rounds and turn on win lights and everything will play out the way it’s going to. We just need to do our part.”
