Mile-High Almost Yields Another Army Win
Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster team for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) continued their
most consistent run through the NHRA Mello Yellow Drag Racing Series schedule in recent memory by marching all the way to the Top Fuel final Sunday at the 36th annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals at Bandimere Speedway in the Denver suburb of Morrison, Colorado. The eight-time and defending world champion fell just one-thousandth of a second shy of winning back-to-back event titles for the 50th time in his illustrious career after his emotional win two weekends ago on the outskirts of Chicago.
Sunday’s near victory was just the third final-round appearance for Schumacher at quirky Bandimere, situated 5,680 feet above sea level at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, since the eight-time and reigning Top Fuel world champion scored his second career event title here in 2008. He was also runner-up here in 2011 and reached the semifinals in 2013, but never got past the second round in four other trips here since 2008.
He matched up against Texan Steve Torrence in today’s final round looking for his fourth event title of the season, his third at Bandimere and the 81st of his career, holding an 11-5 head-to-head advantage over Torrence entering today’s matchup. He lost to the Texan in their only previous final-round meeting and was looking to return the favor today.
Schumacher got off the starting line cleanly with a reaction time of .047 of a second to Torrence’s .061 of a second, and The Sarge held the early advantage but lost a cylinder 300 feet down the 1,000-foot drag strip and got nipped at the finish line by a mere 6 inches. Schumacher crossed the line in 3.940 seconds at 305.08 mph while Torrence was clocked at 3.925 seconds at 319.37 mph. It was Torrence’s fifth career event title but his first since he won at Bristol (Tenn.) Dragway in June 2013.
“That was a great, great race,” said Schumacher, who opened up an 85-point lead in the Top Fuel standings over U.S. Army and DSR teammate Antron Brown, who dropped a close first-round matchup today. “We’ve got a great racecar and it continues to be a great racecar, and that’s how you win a championship. You know, we come here with all the uncertainties of running at this place just once each year and we continued this very strong season we’ve had so far. It’s just like how our great Nation is able to face the uncertainties it does because of the certainty of our U.S. Army, which is there to deter and defeat any threat. Against Torrence, I felt like I just nailed the tree (reaction time), just nailed it, but the car just died at the end. It put a hole out pretty early, about 300 feet. But this weekend is still all positive. It was a great three races in a row, we won two and just got beat on the last one. Got lucky in the first round a bit because that could’ve turned out a lot worse. Let me backtrack – we qualified well to put us in the position to win a first-round race the way we did. We made our own luck the first round and we haven’t had that often enough, lately. We leave here with an 85-point lead and we have a car that’s running great. It’s not like we’re up by 85 and trying to hold on. We have a great racecar that’s capable of winning each and every race. We’ll keep our heads down and try to keep up the consistency we’ve shown all year long through the rest of the regular season, and then it’s down to business. Winning these races doesn’t win you a championship. Winning the last six races does. But, safe to say, we’re happy to be where we’re at.”
Schumacher is now 80-57 in 137 career final-round appearance. Today’s was his sixth of the year and he is now 3-3 in 2015 finals. It was his eighth career final at Bandimere, where he now has six runner-up finishes to go with his two career event titles.
Schumacher’s day started with an eventful opening-round win over No. 15 qualifier Steve Chrisman. He got a good jump at the start and stayed in front all the way down the track before encountering problems at the finish line thanks to a burned piston. He crossed the line in 4.150 seconds at 227.69 mph to move onto the second round, where he won a close race against Clay Millican. Schumacher was clocked at 3.933 at 304.87 mph to Millican’s 3.963 seconds at 308.57 mph.
In the semifinals, Schumacher matched up against No. 3 qualifier Brittany Force but did not have lane choice by virtue of Force’s second-round run that was just one-thousandth of a second faster. No matter to Schumacher, who won another close race in the semifinal with a run of 3.896 seconds at 315.56 mph to Force’s 3.916 seconds at 315.71 mph.
Brown, the driver of the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR who had issues during three of the four qualifying rounds Friday and Saturday but still ended up in the top half of the elimination brackets, found himself on the short end of a close race with last year’s Mile-High Nationals winner J.R. Todd in today’s first round. Brown reached the finish line in 3.991 seconds at 302.89 mph but was just beaten by Todd’s 3.968 seconds at 305.56 mph. It was just the fourth first-round exit for Brown in 14 events this season, but the 2012 Top Fuel world champion maintained his second-place spot in the standings, 121 points ahead of third-place Larry Dixon, who lost in the second round today.
“Denver definitely didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to,” said Brown, who scored 2009 and 2012 event titles at Bandimere and has been runner-up here four times. “The good thing is we learned a lot that we can take from here for when we come back here next year. We’ll come back with a little bit better of a game plan. Right now we’ve got our heads focused on going to Sonoma. We’ve got two more on this Western Swing. We’re going back to sea level where we know what we know. What we’ll take from here is that this wounded us a little bit and all of our guys are hungry and determined and we can’t get back to the next race, which is getting us back to what we know. That’s the plus about it right now and we’ll attack that first qualifying round because that’s what can start off your weekend going the right way. We like winning and we definitely have to do it one round at a time. My crew chiefs Mark (Oswald) and Brian (Corradi) and all these Matco Tools/U.S. Army boys are ready to go right now. This race definitely put a bad taste in our mouths and we’re ready to go on to the next.”
