U.S. Army NHRA Racing 57th Annual Circle K NHRA Winternationals Friday Qualifying Report

Friday’s abbreviated opening day of qualifying ended with the U.S. Army duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown third and fifth in the provisional Top Fuel order for this weekend’s 57th annual Circle K NHRA Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California.

“The Sarge,” whose U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) is sporting an all-new paint scheme paying tribute to 29 areas of expertise in the U.S. Army and their respective insignias, had a solid first run of the season, stopping the clocks in 3.729 seconds at 325.06 mph.

He and the rest of the Top Fuel field then were sent back to the pits for the night with the onset of rain showers while awaiting today’s second scheduled qualifying session in the staging lanes.

“I think we did a heck of a job, honestly,” said Schumacher, who’s chasing his fourth career event title at the Pomona season opener. “We’re coming off a big fire in testing last weekend at Phoenix, two electronics problems where we had to change every piece of electronics on the car, came out looking at bad weather and went right on down the racetrack. That was dedication by this U.S. Army team to figure out what needed to be fixed, to make changes, to evaluate the situation and adapt to the situation. And now we were ready to go out there ready to set a world record because we would’ve been foolish to just try and get down the racetrack in those ideal conditions. Mike (Green, crew chief), were all excited to go make that run and then we saw rain. So it’s time to cowboy up, regroup, and come out fighting again.”

Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR opened defense of his back-to-back Top Fuel world titles by also getting down the track cleanly in 3.732 seconds at 323.27 mph.

“We got one run in and we had a really good, safe run,” Brown said. “The good thing about it is we got down the racetrack and got something we can really work off of. We really wanted to get the second run in because we had a tune-up in it where we could go down the racetrack hard. Hopefully we can get two runs in tomorrow and we can just pick up where we left off tonight. The main thing is we’re in the top half of the field, where we want to be at, and tomorrow, if we get a couple of runs in, hopefully we’ll improve upon that.”

FS1’s qualifying coverage is set for a delayed broadcast at 7 EST tonight and live at 1 p.m. Saturday. Qualifying concludes Saturday with sessions at 4 and 7 p.m. Elimination rounds are set for 2 p.m. Sunday with live TV on the FOX network beginning at 4 p.m.