U.S. Army Duo Looks Forward to a Little Change of Scenery at Mile-High Nationals

MORRISON, CO – A little change of scenery may be just what the doctor ordered for the U.S. Army Top Fuel driver duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown, who head to the outskirts of Denver with their fellow NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competitors to kick off this year’s Western Swing, beginning with this weekend’s 38th annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals at Bandimere Speedway.

Both Schumacher and Brown and their respective Top Fuel Dragster teams for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) have enjoyed moments of greatness this season, but a pair of hotter competitors in the form of Steve Torrence and Leah Pritchett have earned their way into the coveted top two positions in the standings as the tour enters the grueling stretch of back-to-back-to-back event weekends at Bandimere, Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, and Pacific Raceways on the outskirts of Seattle.

Schumacher and his U.S. Army Dragster team for DSR have been mired in the No. 4 spot in the standings of late after having gotten off to their strongest start in recent years. The momentum from four event finals and two semifinal appearances over the season’s first seven events – which included The Sarge’s 83rd career event title at the prestigious Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida in March – has given way to the current six-event stretch in which the Army team, in most uncharacteristic fashion, has dropped three opening-round matchups and three second-round matchups.

That makes scenic Bandimere Speedway, nestled into the eastern face of the Rocky Mountains at almost 6,000 feet above sea level, a welcome site for Schumacher and the U.S. Army team. It is a place where The Sarge scored his 81st career event title a year ago this weekend after winning a thrilling Top Fuel final against Brown. It’s also where he reached the Top Fuel final the year before, where he qualified No. 1 in 2015, and has scored three career event titles in all, including a 2008 win that kicked off a sweep of that year’s Western Swing en route to his sixth of eight career Top Fuel championships.

Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster team for DSR, third in the latest Top Fuel standings, look to equal Schumacher’s three career event titles at Bandimere. Brown scored his first Mile-High Nationals win in 2009 to kick off his own sweep of the Western Swing that year. His second came during his first of three Top Fuel championship seasons in 2012.

Through 13 of 24 Mello Yello Series events this season, Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army team have reached six Top Fuel finals, emerging victorious over Schumacher at Las Vegas and over Torrence at Heartland Park Topeka in Kansas. They’ll look to get back to their winning ways this weekend.

Qualifying for the 38th annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals begins Friday afternoon with FS1 providing live coverage at 8 p.m. EDT, then delayed coverage of Saturday’s sessions at 12:30 a.m. Sunday. The FOX network will carry Sunday’s elimination rounds live beginning at 3 p.m.

TONY “THE SARGE” SCHUMACHER, driver of the U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing
What’s on your mind as you prepare to kick off the Western Swing in Denver this weekend?

“It was good to have a weekend off after Chicago. It gives everyone a chance to recharge a little bit and get ready for this Western Swing. We’ve had a chance to regroup a bit and now we head out West, where we won last year and had a lot of success over the years. Denver is a place I can just be thankful for the absolute lack of bad memories I have there. It’s zero. Even though we lost in the first round there a few years ago, we were No. 1 qualifier for the first time that year and that sort of kicked off the momentum that carried us through the championship. Two years ago, we came back and qualified second and lost a close race to Steve Torrence in the final. And last year was just amazing in how it all finally came together for the win. We don’t have a race anywhere else on the circuit like Denver, and we can go there and pull off a victory like that – it was just a fantastic day. There are no bad memories about Denver, from the Harley rides, to the fly fishing to the beautiful golf courses, and John Bandimere’s built us a beautiful racetrack, tucked into a mountain. You just can’t get enough of it and I really enjoy it. It’s a difficult race because you have to make horsepower in a set of circumstances that doesn’t really apply well to a Top Fuel Dragster. But, at the end of the day on Sunday, there’s a winner and you just have to be the guy who not necessarily sets a world record, but goes faster than everybody else. We’ve been fortunate enough to do that. We love going to Bandimere, we love going to Denver, and I just can’t wait to get back there again.”

What are the effects on the U.S. Army Dragster when it comes to racing at altitude in Denver as opposed to racing in a place at relative sea level like Gainesville, Florida?

“When you’re at sea level, like Gainesville, there’s more air. You walk outside and you can just flat breathe. You don’t get tired as easily. It’s the same thing with the car. In Denver, you’re starving the engine for fuel, and you can’t add as much fuel. What it takes to go fast is, the more nitromethane you can stuff into the motor, the faster you can go. The more air you have, the more nitro you can put to it. The blowers we have, which are basically like an air compressor sitting on top of the engine, they can only work so hard. They can only spin so fast. We’re not spinning them slower because we’re in a place like Gainesville, we’re trying to make more power and go faster. What happens in Denver is, you get up high in the mountains and your car’s having a hard time breathing. You’re having hard time breathing and so is your car, so your car’s just going to run slower. All the cars are equal as far as that goes. We’re all starving for air, and the air’s the same in both the right lane and the left lane. It takes a good crew chief and a good driver to figure it out. The right combination for the right moments.”

ANTRON BROWN, driver of the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing

It’s time for the annual West Coast Swing. What would it take to sweep these next three events, which is something you did 2009?

“It’s tough. The conditions and the changes that these crew chiefs have to make in three weeks is what makes it so difficult. (Co-crew chiefs) Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald) are the best of the best and we’ve done it before and we’d love to do it again. It’s getting tougher every year to win one race, let alone three in a row. We’ve been to six finals this year and came away with two wins. The competition is just incredible. Just wait until the Countdown playoff starts after the U.S. Nationals on Labor Day. No doubt we’re having a good season, but there’s a lot more racing left to do and we just want to continue to get better every weekend. We have to keep pushing, keep getting faster and remain consistent. That’s what it’ll take.”

The conditions in Denver are unlike anywhere else the NHRA visits. How does that affect your preparation?

“We change almost everything on the car before we go to Denver because Denver is just a way different setup with how we run the car. We put stuff that we’ve been running off to the side, then we’ll swap it back after Denver. You go to Denver like you’re playing craps. You just roll those dice and hope they come out right so you stumble onto a good combination that’s going to work. That had been our Achilles heel for a stretch before we made it to the finals last year because Denver had been eating us up a little bit. We’ve won there twice and been runner-up five times. We just have to get back to that combination and be competitive. Denver’s just a challenging track.”