U.S. Army NHRA Racing 13th Annual NHRA Las Vegas Nationals Final Qualifying Report
Las Vegas, NV – The qualifying field is set for the 13th annual NHRA Las Vegas Nationals, and U.S. Army Top Fuel drivers Tony “The 
Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown are driving like they’re on a mission – in hot pursuit of the 2013 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel world championship.
It’ll take a total team effort to get there as each member of the U.S. Army Racing team plays a vital role in the success of the car on the track, just like every Soldier, no matter which of the more than 150 career options he or she chooses in the Army, is vital to the success of the mission.
Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) were bumped from second to third in the qualifying order thanks to Steve Torrence’s run of 3.783 seconds at 327.35 mph in Saturday’s fourth and final qualifying session of the weekend. Still, the U.S. Army Dragster proved to be a model of consistency with runs of 3.831 seconds at 323.66 mph to open the day, and a stout run of 3.797 seconds at 324.67 mph to close the day.
“We’ve got a great car and it’s going to be a bad-ass day tomorrow, it’s as simple as that,” said Schumacher, who first-round matchup in eliminations Sunday is against No. 14 qualifier Khalid alBalooshi. “The Army 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. That makes tomorrow our next chance to exert our leadership capabilities and put ourselves in position to continue fighting for this championship. We’ll do everything in our power to pick off tomorrow’s rounds one-by-one. Balooshi’s going to do everything he can to beat us. It’s going to be a hard race against a good car and they’ve got good data. Their other car (Langson) is running fantastic. But I need to get to the other guys. I need to put my own teammates out. I need to get to Langdon and move up into that two-three spot in the points and move on to Pomona and take care of business.”
Schumacher and Brown are chasing alBalooshi’s Al-Anabi Racing teammate Shawn Langdon, the Top Fuel points leader who was fastest in all four qualifying sessions this weekend. The accompanying bonus points lifted Langdon to a 142-point leader over Brown in the standings and a 150-point lead over Schumacher to begin Sunday eliminations.
Brown, the defending Top Fuel champion in the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR, improved upon his Friday qualifying run with a pass of 3.813 seconds at 321.88 mph to open the day, then finished with an even better run of 3.808 seconds at 321.96 mph. He ended up sixth in the qualifying order and matches up against No. 11 qualifier Bob Vandergriff in Sunday’s first round of eliminations.
“It’s very, very, very consistent,” Brown said. “We were pushing really hard that last run but it got a little soft. The track’s definitely got some teeth out there in the middle. We just need to loosen the car up a little bit there. (Crew chiefs) Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald) are looking at it. We’ve got to hit it a little harder, but the one thing we know is we can race. We can race with what we’ve got. We ran second-quick of the session earlier today and we were fourth-quick that last session, so we’re really close to everybody. We’re capable of running 70s (3.7 seconds) here. The thing about our deal is we always creep up on it better on race day than anything else. We’ve progressively gotten faster as the weekend went on. Every run was better. So we’re just going to keep on tiptoeing on it like that, keep on making it better and better and better. We’re competing, we’re in the top half of the field, we’ll have lane choice the first run tomorrow, which will make a difference. And then we’ll just take it one round at a time from there and see where we end up. I like the route we’re going.”
ESPN2’s delayed broadcasts of today’s qualifying rounds are set for 2:30 a.m. EDT and 3 p.m. Sunday. Elimination rounds Sunday begin at 2 p.m. with ESPN2’s delayed three-hour broadcast set for an 8 p.m. start.
