Milestone Win, Another Final for Army Duo Schumacher Scores 800th Career Round Win, Brown Reaches 10th Final of 2017
Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher recorded a milestone elimination round win and fellow U.S. Army driver Antron 
Brown reached his fifth consecutive final round and 10th of the season during Sunday’s NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Nationals at Brainerd (Minn.) International Raceway.
Schumacher, the record eight-time Top Fuel world champion who is the winningest all-time driver in his class with 83 event titles, beat Troy Coughlin Jr., in the first round today to up his record number of elimination round wins to 800 before dropping his second-round matchup against Clay Millican.
“The Sarge” and his U.S. Army Dragster team for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) debuted an all-new racecar this weekend and it showed speed and consistency all weekend. He qualified fourth thanks to the team’s best run since mid-May on Friday evening. He then got down the track in 3.711 seconds at 324.67 mph to beat a tire-smoking Coughlin for the milestone round win that started the day. Schumacher laid down a similar run of 3.718 seconds at 327.66 mph against No. 5 qualifier Millican, but it was no match for his opponent’s stellar run of 3.658 seconds at 330.47 mph.
“That was quite the run Clay and his boys put together,” said Schumacher, a three-time Brainerd event titlist. “They’ve been running well. We were actually targeting a 67 (3.67 seconds) but had a little something go wrong with the clutch that we haven’t figured out yet. It would’ve won that race and put us in the semis. But, so far so good with our new car after its first six runs ever. It’s a championship-caliber car, in my opinion, and that’s our goal every year. This new U.S. Army car is fast, it’s consistent, and I think we’re headed to the right race with the right car at the right time. We’re all getting confident. We’ll test both days at Indy this week and, by the end of the test, we’ll be ready to defend our title at Indy in two weeks. We just needed to get the car moving on that last run. All I made up on the tree he made up in 60 feet, so we can’t let that happen. But it’s all good. We’ll get it figured out. One important thing we did was to once again stay ahead of the people who are chasing us in the championship. But it also looks like the first three are running for the championship and we want to be in there mixing it up with them. We got our 800th round win to start the day today and that was very special. You’ve just got to give thanks to the people you’ve worked with since the beginning of time. My first round win was a single when we lost Blaine Johnson. A lot of great moments since then. What makes those 800 round wins so special is all the losses that have gone with it and understanding the difference. Eight hundred times we’ve figured out how to beat the great team lined up next to us. So, for the Army guys, we’re very proud of them and look forward to going after 801 next.”
Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster team for DSR continued their streak of final-round appearances – now at five – but came up short in today’s final against the red-hot fellow DSR driver Leah Pritchett and her team, the No. 1 qualifier who Friday night eclipsed her own Top Fuel national elapsed time record with a run of 3.640 seconds at 331.53 mph.
Brown started the day with a stellar run of his own, getting down the track in 3.695 seconds at 331.77 mph in beating Shawn Langdon. He then took out Brittany Force on a holeshot in the second round. His reaction time of .050 of a second enabled his run of 3.681 seconds at 332.43 seconds to get him across the finish line just ahead of Force, who had a run of 3.675 seconds at 332.75 mph but a reaction time of .060 seconds. In the Top Fuel semifinal, Brown matched up against Steve Torrence, his closest pursuer in the standings. It was another strong run for Brown – 3.706 seconds at 331.61 mph, while Torrence dropped a cylinder at halftrack and crossed the line in 3.726 seconds at 323.19 mph. It upped Brown’s won-loss record against Torrence to 23-4.
That set up the showdown against his fellow DSR driver Pritchett, who wrapped up her day with a run of 3.682 seconds at 328.06 mph. Brown had a good jump at the start but then hazed his tires shortly thereafter and got to the line in 4.001 seconds at 246.35 mph. It was Pritchett’s seventh win in 17 meetings with Brown but her first in a final round. It was her fourth event title of the season.
“Hats off to my team, and credit goes to Todd Okahara (Pritchett’s crew chief) and all of the Papa John’s team,” Brown said. “That .68 was impressive there. We were pressing for that, too. My team got the car back together. We nuked our clutch in the semifinals and broke a few levers and we put a brand new hat in it. We were racing it hard, but we were just a little aggressive there in the final. We are going to get it right for Indy. To make it to five consecutive finals, we’re super stoked. We’ve been versatile and adapting to all these different situations. Thanks for all the support from our Matco Distributors and everyone from the U.S. Army and Toyota. We just need to keep pushing and doing what we’re doing and stay in the hunt.”
