No Cowboy Hat in Victory Lane This Time For the US Army Team
Ennis, TX – At a track where Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher has scored event titles no less than six times in his illustrious career, and 
where defending NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel world champion Antron Brown is the defending event titlist, neither U.S. Army driver was able to put a significant dent in his championship hopes for 2013 during Sunday’s elimination rounds at the AAA Texas NHRA Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis.
In a display of engineering and teamwork that is reflective of the Army’s leading-edge technology and the powerful, realistic training of its Army Strong Soldiers, both Schumacher and Brown disposed of their higher-seeded opponents in the first round today. But, as conditions grew significantly warmer and more challenging for the powerful Top Fuel Dragsters, neither Schumacher nor Brown had the luxury of lane choice in their second-round matchups and both went on to defeat by the slimmest of margins to their opponents in the preferred left lane. All four second-round Top Fuel winners came from the left lane.
Schumacher, the driver of the U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) who qualified 13th this weekend in pursuit of his eighth career Top Fuel championship this season, beat Steve Torrence in his opening-round matchup today. He then came up just short in the second round to Morgan Lucas, the top qualifier and event titlist in last weekend’s first of six Countdown events at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte, N.C. Schumacher laid down a second-round run of 3.889 seconds at 301.01 mph to Lucas’ 3.845 seconds at 312.13 mph. Schumacher’s opening-round win today was the 660th career round win.
“We’re closer than we were before we got here,” said Schumacher, who remained fifth in the Countdown points battle but fell 88 points behind new leaders Doug Kalitta and Shawn Langdon, today’s Top Fuel finalists who emerged tied for the championship lead. “We started to spin a little down there. If we get it moving a little quicker earlier, and that’s what we’ve been trying, you get going quicker and you don’t spin. You’ve got to get that acceleration early. I think we’re going to stay and test tomorrow, if they’ll let us. Basically, we’ve got to be flawless and miraculous the rest of the year.
But it’s been done so many times and we’re so used to that, we’ve just got to make sure we go into those last four with the right car, and it’s not quite there, yet. Keep in mind that the Army we so proudly represent is the Nation’s preeminent leadership experience, where the Nation’s future leaders are developed and empowered with the confidence to take decisive action when needed and the flexibility to excel in constantly evolving situations. We’ll get this right. As for the here-and-now of it, the rainout (of the opening two rounds of qualifying) Friday really hurt us. With a brand new tune-up, we really needed all four (qualifying) runs. You can’t just go with two like we had. If they let us test, if there are enough cars, we’ll stay because that’s what we do. We’ll go fast and we’ll fly home tomorrow.”
Brown, who took a huge hit in the point standings when he failed to qualify at Charlotte last weekend, qualified 14th here this weekend and started the day on a positive note by beating Brandon Bernstein in the opening round. That matched him up against DSR teammate Spencer Massey, the points leader entering the weekend. Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR got down the 1,000-foot dragstrip in 3.857 seconds at 307.37 mph while Massey, in the preferred left lane, was clocked in 3.832 seconds at 317.79 mph.
“You’ve got to build upon the positives we were able to achieve here this weekend,” said Brown, who improved one position to eighth in the Countdown standings and sits 150 points behind leaders Langdon and Kalitta. “We gave our teammate a great race that second round. The thing about it is, we got in the show not where we wanted to be because we only had two rounds of qualifying. But then we got past Brandon Bernstein in the first round, which was a tough matchup. And then we gave our teammate a run for the money. We were hoping to run an 81 (3.81 seconds).
We were on an 81 or 82 pass before we dropped that hole (cylinder). He had the better car this weekend, he qualified better and he got us. We’ve just got to move to the next race and just build upon this. At the next race in the deal, we’ll just have to qualify better, not see our teammates in the second round, and just go rounds. There’s a lot of racing left – a lot of racing left. We’ll just have to stay poised and stay after it, build and get better every race. We’re going to St. Louis next weekend. The weather out there looks like it’s going to be really good. We won that race last year, so we’re going to go out there and try to run hard.”
Kalitta, who eliminated Massey in the semifinals today, went on to beat Langdon in the Top Fuel final to end a three-year event title drought for Kalitta Motorsports.
