U.S. Army NHRA Carolina Nationals Final Qualifying Report
Concord, NC – Tony Schumacher and the U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) will begin his quest for an 
eighth career NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series championship from the No. 2 qualifying position Sunday at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte, N.C.
Schumacher’s solid qualifying performance this weekend was a reflection of how the Army is the strength of our Nation, and the Soldiers are the strength of our Army. The Army-NHRA partnership provides Americans a platform to experience the power, speed, teamwork and technology that drives that strength.
Meanwhile, defending Top Fuel champion Antron Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR just missed qualifying for Sunday’s elimination rounds by eight-thousandths of a second and will not have a chance to defend his title again until next weekend at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis.
“The U.S. Army car is absolutely great, an absolutely fitting reminder that only the strongest wear our colors. U.S. Army Soldiers possess a mental, emotional and physical strength like no other, and this U.S. Army Racing team reflects those strengths,” said Schumacher, who had the fastest Top Fuel run of the day with a time of 3.795 seconds at 283.25 mph but failed to better his 3.766-second, 318.84-mph effort from late Friday night. “We’ve got lane choice tomorrow, we’ve got a good, solid car. The conditions are going to be different. I’m happy to go into race day with the conditions the way they’re expected to be and the position we’re sitting in. You know what? It’s the Countdown and we’re good at this.
We do a great job at this. I think we know what this is all about. The advantage we would have is that we’ve been in this position so many times. We know how to get through it. I feel terrible for Antron. Watching that happen right in front of you, you’ve got to settle back down after it happens and go out and do your job. They’ve got a deficit, and one of our jobs tomorrow is to go out and create deficits for every one of us. We need to go out and go fast. It doesn’t matter who we’re racing against. As long as we get down the racetrack, we’ll be in good shape.”
Brown, who finished just seven points ahead of the runner-up Schumacher for the 2012 Top Fuel world championship, had a run of 3.847 seconds at 317.72 mph Friday night that would have placed him 15th in the final qualifying order. But it was just the 14th-best run of the day Friday and only the top-12 times carry over into Saturday qualifying. Brown’s final-round run of 3.893 seconds at 309.77 mph today was just short of No. 16 qualifier Terry McMillen’s run of 3.885 seconds at 320.36 mph.
“You never imagine this kind of thing happening,” said Brown, who began this year’s countdown with the sixth seed, 70 points behind leader Shaun Langdon. “We just went out there and we were trying to run hard. Things just didn’t go our way. That’s how racing can be. You can do all the right things and they still can come up wrong. Some days, you do all the wrong things and they come up right. All of our guys have had their heads down working to the best of their ability and this weekend just wasn’t our weekend. We’ll go back and regroup and just keep our heads in the game. There are five races left in this Countdown. It’s never over. We won three races last year (during the six-event Countdown) but had other things that went wrong, too. It’s still anybody’s championship to win. We’ve just got to stay focused, stay with the same mindset we’ve had, and attack it. The thing about it is, trust me, we’re going to give it everything we’ve got. We will be good.”
Third- and fourth-round qualifying runs will be broadcast by ESPN News at 11:30 p.m. EDT, and again by ESPN2 at 3:30 a.m. Sunday. Elimination rounds begin at noon Sunday with ESPN2 carrying the action at 8:30 p.m.
