U.S. Army NHRA Racing 30th Annual NHRA Northwest Nationals Friday Qualifying Report
The U.S. Army driver duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown are third and fourth on the 
provisional ladder after the opening two rounds of qualifying Friday for this weekend’s NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series 30th annual NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways in Kent, Washington.
Schumacher and his U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) made a pair of quality runs down the track, first in extreme heat and later in slightly better but now ideal conditions. He opened the day with a run of 3.862 seconds at 317.12 seconds that was fourth-best for the session, then closed with the second-best run of the evening session in 3.802 seconds at 322.96 mph.
“There’s more out there – a lot more,” said Schumacher, who’s looking for his record-tying fifth Northwest Nationals victory here this weekend. “This place has always been good to us and I think we have a good racecar to race with. We just ran third-low ET and we were pretty soft. We were stuck into the racetrack and we were definitely on the safe side and, all things considered, we were third-low ET.
We have a good karma here and we know how to go out here and we win this race. We have a good U.S. Army car. We’ve won this race sometimes even when we weren’t running well, and that’s been a good thing. We’re working on getting it together before we head to Brainerd and Indy. We have some big races coming up, not to mention the Countdown. When you come off of four first-round losses in seven races, you’ve got to get going before the end of the regular season. We’ve got three races to go before the Countdown starts. We’ve got to get it together and now is the time.”
Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR struggled just a bit in today’s opening session, laying down a run of 3.984 seconds at 267.27 mph, but came back strong to close the day with a run of 3.813 seconds at 317.42 mph that was third-best of the evening session.
“The track was really good,” said Brown, who last week reached his sixth final round in the last eight events and eighth in 15 events this season. “It ate us up a little bit but, all in all, it was a great day. We ended up in the top-five in qualifying, where we’re always wanting to be at. We were able to regroup as the track got a lot better after that Q1, so we just came back, the boys made the adjustments, and now we’ve just got to work on having some great sessions in Q3 and Q4 because it’s wide open tomorrow. We can definitely move up tomorrow. A 79 (3.79 seconds) is No. 1, and that’s not out of the question for us to get down the track and get that good.”
The final two qualifying sessions Saturday are set for 5 and 7:30 p.m. EDT with FS1’s delayed coverage set for 2 a.m. Sunday. Elimination rounds are set for 2 p.m. Sunday with live television coverage on the FOX network beginning at 4 p.m.
