U.S. Army NHRA Racing 30th Annual NHRA Northwest Nationals Final Qualifying Report
The U.S. Army driver duo of Antron Brown and Tony “The Sarge Schumacher closed NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing 
Series qualifying Saturday with their best runs of the weekend and nailed down the first and sixth spots for Sunday’s elimination rounds of the 30th annual NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington.
Schumacher and his U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) got down the track in 3.783 seconds at 324.12 mph on his final run of the day. It was the fourth-best run of the session after Schumacher’s tire-smoking run in today’s earlier qualifying round. The four-time Northwest Nationals winner will try to tie Joe Amato’s record of five career titles at the track starting with his first-round matchup Sunday against No. 11 qualifier Troy Coughlin Jr.
“If you try to run 77 (3.77 seconds) and you run 78, you weren’t that far off,” said a philosophical Schumacher after his final qualifying run. “Some of the other cars were trying to run 73s and that’s what we need to be doing. It’s just not running as fast as we want it to run at this point in time. What we’re putting in isn’t coming out, so we’ve got to get that squared away – and we always do. We’ve got to get to where we put it in, know the number that it’s going to run and it does that. Right now, something isn’t doing it exactly. We’re going down the racetrack OK, but we’re sixth, we’re middle of the pack. We want to win this race. I’ve won it quite a few times. We’ll try to make it five tomorrow. I’m not in a super comfy spot. We want to be just a little bit ahead of where we are now. That’s where you bring confidence. But we’ll be fine.”
Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR had the fastest run in each qualifying session today, laying down an effort of 3.796 seconds at 323.74 mph that was one-thousandth of a second better than Shawn Langdon’s run in the earlier session, then a head-turning run of 3.735 seconds at 329.10 mph that knocked Doug Kalitta off the top spot overall by nine-thousandths of a second. Brown will face No. 16 qualifier Ron Smith in Sunday’s opening round of eliminations.
“Everybody shares everything out here but, right now, this is our turn,” said Brown, who will by vying for his third career Northwest Nationals victory Sunday. “We always love coming out here to Seattle. These fans are incredible. The heat yesterday to what we got today, to run those types of runs on tracks with those temps, my hats off to our two crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald, Brad (Mason, assistant crew chief) and all the Matco Tools/U.S. Army boys, they were versatile this weekend. Like an Army Soldier, we adapt to every situation. Everyone’s going rounds right now, so this sets us up good for tomorrow. This is one day done, qualifying is done, we got some good qualifying points. Now we’ve got to think about racing. Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day but we’re looking forward to that challenge and we really love being up here in Seattle.”
FS1’s delayed coverage of today’s qualifying sessions is set for 2 a.m. EDT Sunday. Elimination rounds are set for 2 p.m. Sunday with live television coverage on the FOX network beginning at 4 p.m.
