U.S. Army NHRA Racing 58th Annual NHRA Winternationals at Pomona Final Qualifying Report
The U.S. Army driver trio of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher, Antron Brown and Leah Pritchett locked down the 
eighth, sixth and fourth positions on the elimination ladder, respectively, after the final two rounds of qualifying Saturday for this weekend’s NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season-opening 58th annual NHRA Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California.
Schumacher and his U.S. Army Dragster team for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) did not improve on his late-Friday run of 3.732 seconds at 331.20 mph, opening the day with an effort of 3.767 seconds at 316.85 mph before shaking the tires at halftrack during today’s final qualifying effort and coasting across the finish line in 8.131 seconds at 82.42 mph. From his No. 8 qualifying position, he matches up on this weekend’s 14-car ladder against No. 7 qualifier Terry McMillen, who ran side-by-side with Schumacher in today’s final qualifying session and suffered a massive engine failure.
“That was a crazy run,” said Schumacher, the eight-time Top Fuel world champion who’s vying for a record sixth career Pomona event title this weekend. “I don’t know what blew apart on McMillen’s car, but I was happy I was under a canopy. I saw parts flying by on the left side. I had already smoked the tires and it was all over for me. I’m just watching parts come off that car. A long time ago, we were just in those open cockpits and parts were laying in our lap after incidents like that. I was thankful for what my dad and Mike Green and all the guys at DSR did for our cars with that canopy and other technology they developed for our safety. Mike Neff (crew chief) and Phil Shuler (assistant crew chief) are doing a great job. We didn’t qualify as well as we wanted to but, you know what, the car is excellent. I trust in them and I look forward to the race tomorrow and get this run for the championship started.”
Brown and his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR also could not improve on his early Friday run of 3.717 seconds at 332.51 mph that put him No. 2 in the qualifying order after the first day. He did lay down a solid run of 3.723 seconds at 329.99 mph in today’s opening run, however, before experiencing a quirky engine malfunction that left him with a run of 4.291 secondsa t 182.80 mph to close the day. He ended up sixth on the elimination ladder and will face No. 9 Mike Salinas in Sunday’s opening round.
“We’re looking good, all things considered,” Brown said. “We’re just excited to go out there tomorrow, go with our race-day setup. We had a little misfortune on that last run but we had some dividends where we picked up on the front half of the run. It was a good mid-60 (3.6-second) run if it would’ve gone all the way down the track. The car shut down and stopped itself from hurting itself, which is a good thing. But it was a deal that we never break and it would’ve been a good run that definitely would’ve moved us up to No. 2, for sure. We’ll just keep moving forward, picking on it and getting better and better with it. Tomorrow will be a bit warmer, mid-70s, so we should have a nice, smooth run to start the day, and we’ll take it from there and hit it hard.”
Pritchett, the newest addition to the Army team in her DSR/Mopar/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR, improved considerably on her best Friday qualifying effort of 3.783 seconds at 328.62 mph when she opened Saturday with a stout run of 3.687 seconds at 330.23 mph that vaulted her to the No. 2 position. She closed the day with a run of 3.810 seconds at 300.93 mph, but her racecar suffered a damaging engine failure in the process.
“It’s a pretty interesting start to the season,” said Pritchett, who won this event from the No. 1 qualifying position a year ago, her first of two consecutive victories from the No. 1 position to start the 2017 season. We set our goals pretty high – we have a lot to back up from last year. Ultimately, what happened today happened today and not tomorrow. What we concurred post-Q4 was simple math that had to do with turns of individual valves that relate to CC fuel flow in the heads that relate to jetting, all within the first three-hundredths of a second. There’s one setting that went outside the comfort zone from a fuel standpoint that caused us to drop a hole at the step and caused a lot of extra work on a Saturday night for this team. But the shining light of it is we feel we now understand, due to math, why it did what it did on that run, and why the 3.68 we ran in the first run today wasn’t the 3.66 or 3.65 we were trying to run. It all relates back to STEM, even in the smallest increments of time. Now, everything we experienced all throughout qualifying makes sense and, again, it happened today and not tomorrow.”
Elimination rounds are set for 2 p.m. EST Sunday with FS1’s three hours of live television coverage beginning at 5 p.m. In addition, FS1’s new, one-hour NHRA Race Day show debuts Sunday at 1 p.m.
