U.S. Army NHRA Qualifying 52nd Annual Auto Club NHRA Finals Final Qualifying Report
The U.S. Army duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown will start Sunday’s final day of eliminations 
from the seventh and fourth spots, respectively, after qualifying Saturday for this weekend’s 52nd annual Auto Club NHRA Finals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California.
Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) laid down another pair of consistent runs in today’s third and fourth qualifying sessions of the weekend. He opened with a run of 3.723 seconds at 329.34 mph in the heat of the day, and closed with a run of 3.739 seconds at 326.95 mph in cool, twilight conditions. From his seventh spot on the qualifying ladder, he’ll face No. No. 10 qualifier Clay Millican in Sunday’s first round of eliminations.
“We’ve got a good U.S. Army car for our last race day of the year,” said Schumacher, the eight-time Top Fuel world champion who is tied with “Big Daddy” Don Garlits for the most career event titles at Pomona with six. “We need to go faster, but we have a good car. It’s going to be a cowboy-up day. We’ve got a lot of ground we can make up in the standings without having to score a monster amount of points. We’re going to show up at our best and try to finish the season with a win. We have a good car and we want to make it a great car. There are a lot of good cars out there and a lot of them are making great runs. We’ve got to go out there and make our offseason a little nicer. We’ve had three of our Countdown races where we went out and smoked our tires at the tree. We’ve got to get past that. Tomorrow, we’re going to celebrate with Antron on his Top Fuel championship. We’re going to celebrate with (Ron) Capps on his Funny Car championship. Everyone on this Army crew and who is part of this Army Racing effort loves racing and loves Army Racing. Tomorrow, we’re going to go out and do what we do and try to take home a piece of hardware ourselves.”
Brown, who clinched his second consecutive and third career Top Fuel world championship two weekends ago at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, slipped from Friday night’s No. 1 provisional qualifying spot to fourth in the final order despite a stellar run of 3.714 seconds of 324.98 mph that closed the evening session. He opened the day with a tire-smoking run of 4.687 seconds at 156.53 mph. He’ll face No. 13 qualifier Morgan Lucas in Sunday’s first round of eliminations.
“At the end of the day, this is all for the love of this sport,” Brown said. “When you come out to an NHRA Mello Yello event, these teams aren’t out here to make a lot of money or for the attention, they’re here for their love of the sport. The whole field is just so tight right now and what you’re seeing here this weekend is what you’re going to be seeing all of next year. Now, we came in here with a little bit of an edge this weekend. We wanted to win Las Vegas so we came here with our hearts set on ending this season on the best not possible, to give us something to be proud of for the whole offseason in addition to the championship.
FS1’s delayed broadcast of today’s qualifying highlights is set for 11:30 a.m. EST Sunday. Elimination rounds are set for 2 p.m. Sunday with live TV on FS1 beginning at 4 p.m.
