U.S. Army NHRA Racing Circle K NHRA Winternationals Final Qualifying Report
The U.S. Army duo of Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown emerged from Saturday’s rain-shortened 
final day of qualifying in the Nos. 6 and 11 positions, respectively, and will face off in Sunday’s opening round of eliminations of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season-opening Circle K NHRA Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California.
Neither Schumacher nor Brown bettered Friday’s best runs in today’s lone Top Fuel qualifying session before passing rain showers forced the cancellation of the fourth and final round of qualifying.
After clocking the second-fastest Top Fuel lap of the day Friday, Schumacher and the U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) got down the track during Saturday’s lone qualifying run in 3.786 seconds at 308.07 mph. Four competitors, including Shawn Langdon with a remarkable run of 3.700 seconds at 328.30 mph that bettered the previous Top Fuel national elapsed time record, beat Schumacher’s Friday run, knocking the eight-time and defending Top Fuel world champion down to sixth in the order.
“We ran our first run today with a bunch of test stuff in it because, to be quite honest, the last thing we expected to see was rain in Southern California,” said Schumacher, who is a six-time event titlist at Pomona. “If you could race using hindsight, you’d race drastically differently. If we would’ve known it was going to rain, we would’ve been a little more straightforward about it. I never in a million years would’ve believed that it was going to rain today. The Army car is a very good car. We’ve worked on quite a few new things this weekend and we got down the track all three times. I can’t tell you the last time in the history of racing that I remember when we weren’t working on at least a couple of things. You’re always doing that, so I find myself saying that quite often. We’re constantly developing something. If we stayed at a standstill, we’re going to get beat. As far as the forecasts say, we’re looking at a beautiful and much warmer day Sunday, so that’s hopefully going to yield the kind of results this U.S. Army team has grown accustomed to here at Pomona. We’re ready to go.”
Brown, who coincidentally holds the national Top Fuel elapsed time record of 3.701 seconds set in October 2012 at Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, Pennsylvania, got down the track in 3.874 seconds at 295.72 mph today but fell from 10th to 11th in the order in his Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR. In order to officially wrest the national record away from Brown, Langdon must back up his 3.700 run with another run Sunday within 1 percent of that time.
“It’s very important to have a good start to the season,” said Brown, who has three career Pomona event titles in six trips to the finals. “You know, the race season is long but you just want to have success at the start of the season because it helps you build momentum and get going early. The thing about Pomona is, it hasn’t been that nice to us at the first race of the season. With that being said, we always qualify well here and we’ve gone to the semifinals here but just haven’t been able to get the job done. Tomorrow is a whole new day. We’ll see what it holds for us. We’ve been trying different things and we haven’t had things happen the way we want them to happen, but that is just how Top Fuel is. The way we beat that resistance is with some persistence. We’re going to keep on pushing.”
ESPN2’s delayed qualifying broadcast is set for 10 EST tonight. Elimination rounds begin at 2 p.m. Sunday with ESPN2’s three hours of delayed coverage set for 7:30 p.m.
