U.S. Army NHRA Racing Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals Final Qualifying Report

The celebrations for the Fourth of July spanned all across the country Saturday and that included Norwalk, Ohio where U.S. Army teammates Tony “The Sarge” Schumacher and Antron Brown lit up the sky with monster runs during the final qualifying session of the ninth annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals at Summit Motorsports Park. Schumacher posted the second fastest run of qualifying just moments have Brown closed out his qualifying runs by jumping from sixth and into the top-three in advance of Sunday’s eliminations.

The eight-time and defending Top Fuel world champion ran a lap of 3.802 seconds at 325.92 mph in Saturday’s first qualifying session behind the wheel of the U.S. Army Dragster for Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) and really had to step up with improved conditions for Saturday night’s fourth and final qualifying run. After watching Brown and Doug Kalitta overtake Spencer Massey for the top spot with runs in the 3.73 range (Kalitta – 3.731 and Brown – 3.739), Schumacher made his best pass of the weekend at 3.732 seconds and narrowly missed earning his 80th career number one qualifier award. With four strong runs in their database, the focus for crew chief Mike Green, assistant crew chief Neal Strausbaugh and the rest of the Army Racing team is to continue improving the car with each pass and ideally advance deep on Sunday.

“We’ve got an incredible U.S. Army machine,” said Schumacher, who enters Sunday tied in the championship standings with Brown. “I was talking to Mike (Green) today about this still being a new car. And we have made quite a few runs with it already and the thing reacts to every change we make in a positive way. It’s such confident feeling knowing that you can try things and see the results immediately. I’m excited for tomorrow. We had a really good Fourth of July here today in Norwalk. We got to celebration with some tremendous Soldiers and appreciate what today for what it is really about. The goal now is to finish the mission at hand and continue celebrating tomorrow night.”

Brown solidified his position as a prime candidate to repeat his 2014 victory at Norwalk with two impressive qualifying runs driving the Matco Tools/U.S. Army Dragster for DSR. Brown entered Saturday sixth in the qualifying order and remained there following his run of 3.773 seconds in Saturday first session and followed it up with the run of 3.739 seconds to jump inside the top three.

“We were trying to go for No. 1 in that second session and we’ll take it at No. 3,” admitted Brown, who has three Top Fuel wins this season, after clocking his third quickest pass of the 2015 NHRA Mello Yell season. “We’ve just been plugging away and getting better and better. That was our game plan entering the weekend here at Norwalk. We’re in a great spot for race day. We ended up in the top three and we’ll get a good choice to go in the first round. We know it gets tricky on race day going from night sessions to sun on the track, but we battled that last year too. We went down the track every session and that’s always a positive. I feel good. I’m very confident.”

Eliminations are set to begin Sunday at 11 a.m. ET. Schumacher faces Cory McClenathan in the opening round and Brown will race Terry McMillian. ESPN will provide 3 hours of live coverage of the event beginning at 1 p.m.