Record-setting Kansas weekend ends with second straight title for Hagan, Mopar; Brown gets to Top Fuel final at Heartland Park

TOPEKA, KS – For the second consecutive Sunday, Don Schumacher Racing teammates Matt Hagan and Jack Beckman met in the final round for an NHRA Funny Car national event title.

Another repeat is DSR’s reigning and two-time Top Fuel world champion Antron Brown facing Doug Kalitta late on Sunday.

And the results Sunday in the NHRA Kansas Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka mirrored those of seven days earlier at Atlanta Dragway.

Hagan and the Mopar Express Lane/Rocky Boots Dodge Charger R/T led by crew chief Dickie Venables and assistant Michael Knudsen swept the weekend on the superfast track by edging Beckman and the Infinite Hero team sponsor by Terry Chandler after taking the NHRA national records for time and speed on Friday night.

Beckman lost traction early but Hagan’s tires also began smoking but it was farther down the track. Hagan won with a turtle-like 5.724 seconds (179.04 mph) to Beckman’s 6.560 (146.75 mph).

“It was wild. Obviously, glory goes to God,” Hagan said. “We set world records for E.T. and speed and to come out here and win goes to hard my guys have been working.

“My butt was puckered pretty good on that last run. It was one of those deals where it was ‘oh no, oh no, oh no.’ I don’t know how many times I hit the fuel pedal. Sometimes you’re just thinking ‘don’t blow up’.

“To see the win lights come on all day. I’m just tickled about the job Dickie Venables and all our Mopar/Rocky guys are doing. When you have a fast racecar like we did it’s hard to pull it back when the sun comes out. I didn’t expect to have to pedal the racecar like I had to. It caught me off guard.”

The semifinals, however, might have been the turning point for Hagan.

A lengthy delay from a semifinals crash near the starting line by Tim Wilkerson, who was not injured, resulted in a lot of oil being deposited on the track. Venables made a major decision to switch lanes with Courtney Force because his car was quicker in the previous round that earned lane choice in the semis.

Moments before the cars were instructed to be started, Venables opted to move from the preferred left lane where Wilkerson car spilled the oil to the right lane, after consulting with DSR traction specialist Dave Fletcher.

Hagan blitzed the right lane while Force smoked the tires soon after leaving the line.

Ironically, the performance in the final round of nitro categories were polar opposite to what had been the quickest weekend of racing in NHRA history.

Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army team led by crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald were on the cusp of stopping an 11-round winning streak by Kalitta. But both teams struggled to make it to the finish line; Kalitta’s winning time of 5.452 (238.85 mph) held off a hard-charging Brown’s 5.687 (298.60 mph) who was racing in the 100th final round of his career.

“It’s not what we wanted, for sure,” said the two-time and reigning world champion, who has moved up to second in the Mello Yello standings.

“I was just trying to give it all we’ve got. I just didn’t keep my car straight enough in the groove to really get back on it sooner. We came up on him at the big end. They got a little bit further down the track so we came up a little bit short. To lose out there by two-tenths (of a second), it breaks you down.”

He would have liked for his 100th final round to end in the winner’s circle.

“That’s definitely a huge compliment but that’s just a testament to our team. We always go into race day with a lot of confidence, it doesn’t make a difference where we qualify. We just compete.”

It was a milestone weekend at ultra-fast Heartland Park, where national records were set by Hagan for time (3.862 seconds) and speed (335.57 mph) in Funny Car and Brittany Force (3.676) in Top Fuel.

Although Beckman lost the elapsed time record of 3.879, his best time of the weekend was 3.866 shattered his previous best of 3.879.

Tommy Johnson also recorded a time of 3.899 at a career-best speed of 327.51 mph in the Make-A-Wish Dodge led by crew chief John Collins with assistant crew chief Rip Reynolds and sponsored by Terry Chandler, who also funds Beckman’s Infinite Hero Funny Car.

The Kansas Nationals is the second straight when that DSR qualified its seven full-time drivers in the top half of their respective 16-car fields.

The Mello Yello series takes next weekend off before four events in four weekends with stops in Epping, N.H.; Englishtown, N.J; Bristol, Tenn.; and Norwalk Ohio.