Hagan, Mopar match world records, Pritchett puts Papa John’s No. 1 as DSR dominates nitro to open NHRA season at Winternationals
POMONA, CA – Don Schumacher Racing is starting the 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series at Pomona, 
Calif., just like it ended the past season.
By dominating and continuing as the best group of teams in professional drag racing, with the best drivers and crew chiefs.
DSR’s Leah Pritchett in the Papa John’s Pizza Top Fuel dragster and teammate Matt Hagan in the Mopar Express Lane 2017 Dodge Charger R/T swept the nitro poles Saturday at the NHRA Winternationals at the Fairplex heading to Sunday’s championship eliminations.
And Hagan with crew chief Dickie Venables and assistant Michael Knudsen got the pole on the last run of the night with an astonishing elapsed time of 3.822 seconds at 335.57 mph that matches the NHRA world records the team set last year.
It is the second time in the past five Mello Yello events – dating to the event in Reading, Pa. last October – that Pritchett and Hagan started race day in the No. 1 qualifying position.
“We got a new guy strapping me in the car so I’ve been getting in with the first pair of Funny Cars to make sure we had time for me to get comfortable,” he said of not anticipating a lengthy delay for track clean-up. “I probably sat in there a good hour and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, let’s go!’ My legs were falling asleep and everything else. I was trying not to fall asleep in there.
“It was worth the wait obviously. We went out there and just laid down a great number. That just speaks tons for Dickie Venables. He rolled it out of the box here and we’ve been pretty much low about every session.”
“I’m just super pumped that Dickie’s got a lot of confidence rolling into the first race. Tomorrow is race day and anything can happen. Even having a great racecar, you’ve still got to stay very humble. Anything can happen on race day.”
Hagan, a two-time Funny Car world champion, also tied his national records for elapsed time (3.822 seconds) and speed (335.57 mph) with crew chief Dickie Venables and assistant Michael Knudsen.
For Pritchett, starting her first full season with DSR after joining the juggernaut midway through last year and driving in 15 of 24 events, it was quite a homecoming. The 28-year-old grew up in nearby Redlands, Calif., and graduated from Cal State San Bernardino.
“This is what I consider one of the most prestigious races in the world,” she said. “This is not just my home track where I first went down a drag strip in a Jr. Dragster 20 years ago, but there’s a world of difference in what we just laid down out there. When (crew chief Todd Okuhara) tells me ‘hang on,’ I’m like, “I’m giving this everything I’ve got, if it starts to sashay, so what, if it goes two feet past the finish line, so what. We’ve got brakes, we’ve got parachutes. We are going to get every ounce out of this run.
“We have 15 cars so the No. 1 one spot is tenfold as important as it is in any full (16-car) field because tomorrow we start with a bye run.
DSR earned three of the top-five seeds with three-time world champion Antron Brown (Matco Tools/U.S. Army) at No. 3 and eight-time champ Tony Schumacher (U.S. Army) at No. 5.
