U.S. Army NHRA Racing 47th Annual NHRA Summernationals Friday Qualifying Report
The U.S. Army Top Fuel driver duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown kicked off the weekend 
celebration of the Army’s 241st birthday Friday with two rounds of qualifying for this weekend’s 47th annual NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.
Schumacher, the eight-time Top Fuel world champion and driver of the U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR), fell victim to track conditions that saw just three Top Fuel competitors make it down the track cleanly in today’s opening qualifying session, then smoked his tires at the start of his second-round run. He suspected a part failure was the issue on the latter qualifying attempt. He sits 14th on the provisional timesheet with his opening run of the day, clocked at 8.064 seconds at 77.39 mph with qualifying rounds three and four set for Saturday.
“Well, we’ve obviously had better days,” said Schumacher, who won this event in 2010. “It’s just tough to give up chances to make two beautiful runs like that. We’ll go right down the track tomorrow and everything will be all fine, but the qualifying will be all jumbled and you’ll end up not in the spot you want to be in on Sunday. You can win from any spot, of course, but we’ve had just a year of little things biting us and today was just another day of the same thing. We thought we were past that. We need to get down the track before Sunday just so we’re comfortable going in. We’ve just got to get these bugs to go away. It’s just frustrating. But this is the Army team and we will get past this and we will be in championship form. You can count on that.”
Brown and the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR also opened the day with a tire-smoking run but closed the day with a flourish, getting down track in 3.742 seconds at 317.94 mph on a stellar run that was surpassed only by Steve Torrence’s provisional pole-winning run of 3.735 seconds at 325.06 mph.
“Our main focus was just getting our bearings right with the track,” said Brown, a native of nearby Chesterfield, New Jersey who won this event last year from the No. 1 qualifying position, and also is coming off last week’s second victory of the season at New England Dragway in Epping, New Hampshire. “The track was a little tricky that first run after the Funny Cars made a little bit of a mess out there at the end of their session. When only three (Dragsters) make it down the track, you know not everybody is missing it that bad. We just came back and regrouped and went out there and wanted to give it our best shot in that night session. The track was definitely better that session because the sun went down and it got cooler and tighter. So that was the run we were expecting. We were expecting maybe a 73 (3.73 seconds) or a 72, but we just didn’t make it all the way down there. Tomorrow, our goal will be to be better. We’re happy that we’re in the top half of the field. We’re in a good qualifying position. Tomorrow, we’ll have two more chances at it if the weather happens to cooperate. We’ll try to go out there and be Army Strong just like our Soldiers and we’ll try and put our best foot forward.”
Top Fuel qualifying concludes Saturday with sessions at 2:30 and 5 p.m. EDT with FS1’s delayed two-hour qualifying show set for 1 a.m. and 9 a.m. Sunday. Schumacher and Brown will participate in a special cake-cutting ceremony celebrating the Army’s 241st birthday prior to Saturday’s qualifying activity. Elimination rounds begin at 11 a.m. Sunday with FS1 providing three hours of delayed coverage beginning at 4:30 p.m.
