zMax Bound, DSR ready for the Championship Chase!
CONCORD, NC – After the third event of the NHRA Mello Yello Series, Antron Brown was first in points after winning the Top Fuel title 
at Gainesville, Fla. Four races later, the reigning Top Fuel world champion won at Atlanta and was second in points.
The native of New Jersey and resident of Pittsboro, Ind., hopes a return to southern cookin’ helps kick-start his Toyota dragster tuned by crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald this weekend at the Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte.
The team, which won six titles last season, has been mired in a run that has led to first-round exits in 10 of 18 regular-season events including at the U.S. Nationals on Labor Day after a daring run the night before earned the team its second No. 1 qualifying position of the season.
“Now it’s time for the Countdown. This is where it all counts for the championship, and we’re sitting right in the middle of the field. We have our work cut out for us, but there isn’t anything that we can’t handle. We’re going to head in there with our heads up and bring our ‘A’ game.
“We have to head into the Countdown with the attitude that we have nothing to lose, and we don’t. We’re going to go out there and give it all we’ve got and have fun. We’re looking forward to getting to Charlotte.”
The No. 1 qualifying spot at Indy was the Toyota team’s first since starting on the pole at the fourth race of the season and marked its only top-five start since a No. 2 position near Atlanta at the season’s seventh race of the year.
“We’re definitely heading in the right direction,” said Brown, who won the fall race at zMAX in 2011 and was runner-up in 2008.
“We’re not going backward, we’re going forward. It’s a good thing. We’re right there where we need to be. We know what it takes to go out there to do what we need to do. We just have to go there, qualify well again and take it another step up.”
A few feet after Beckman crossed the finish line on Sept. 1 to win the Traxxas Nitro Shootout and $100,000, an engine explosion shredded the rear half of his Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car body. Although his ears were ringing until the next morning, he didn’t sustain any injuries.
The same couldn’t be said of his race car.
“The first four seconds were fantastic. The next 10, not so good,” Beckman said of beating Cruz Pedregon for the title with a holeshot that allowed his 4.086-second run to beat Pedregon’s quicker 4.066.
Beckman admits this hasn’t been the season he or his team expected after winning three events and the world championship last November.
Getting the Traxxas trophy and check for winning the specialty event within the U.S. Nationals was a season highlight, but Beckman and his team enter the six-event Countdown this weekend at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte as the only one of 10 qualified drivers who has not won an event title through this year’s first 18 races.
“We still haven’t won a Wally yet this year,” he said of the prestigious NHRA winner’s trophy. “We won (the Shootout) but still have not won a Wally. We want it bad. We have six more chances and I think we have a good chance at getting a couple or three of them.
“We certainly expected that we would have won at least one race by now, probably two or three,” Beckman said. “It’s not for lack of trying or hard work. I believe we are starting to peak at the right time.”
Over the past 10 events, Beckman has advanced to his only two championship rounds of the season and twice advanced to the semifinals. The team’s two No. 1 qualifying positions came in the past three events.
NHRA’s 18-event regular season ended after the U.S. Nationals and points for Countdown drivers were reset at 10-point increments with Beckman’s Don Schumacher Racing teammate Matt Hagan earning a 20-point bonus for finishing at the top of the standings.
Before the points were reset, Beckman trailed Hagan by 187 points but starts the Countdown ranked fifth and 60 points out of first.
“Let’s face it, when they reset the points we are all bunched up pretty good at the top so I’m confident.
“I like our progress lately. I think we’ve positioned ourselves pretty well for a strong run in the Countdown.”
Hagan focuses on remaining No. 1 with Rocky Boots Dodge after first race of NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship
– Matt Hagan spent most of NHRA’s regular season, the first 18 of 24 races, first in the Mello Yello Series points standings. And the plan is to keep it that way during the final six.
Hagan’s Rocky Boots/Magneti Marelli Offered by Mopar Funny Car has had possession of the Funny Car points lead for the past 10 NHRA events, dating back to the June race in Englishtown, N.J., Hagan’s second win this season.
The Rocky Boots team ended the regular season with a 114-point lead over Don Schumacher Racing teammate Ron Capps. The points were reset following the NHRA U.S. Nationals event two weeks ago and Hagan will take only a 30-point lead Capps into the Carlyle Tools NHRA Carolina Nationals presented at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte.
Hagan won the Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway in April, collecting his first win since the final event of the 2011 NHRA season.
“I feel like we have a car that can win this championship, and I feel like as long as we continue to be as consistent as we have been all year long, there is no reason we shouldn’t win it,” said Hagan, 2011 NHRA Funny Car world champion. “It’s the Countdown to the Championship, and sure that puts pressure on you, but you can’t allow that to happen.
“You have to do what you’ve done all year long to get you to the position where we’re sitting No. 1. I absolutely feel like we have the opportunity to go out and win another championship. Dickie Venables is probably one of the smartest guys I’ve worked with. Everybody that I’ve worked with has been top brass, but this guy is above and beyond.”
Hagan and crew chief Venables have plans for everything to remain the same.
“I think the best plan is to continue to do what we’ve done,” Hagan said. “I don’t think we need to change anything. We’ve led in points almost all year long. There is a reason our car has been No. 1 for the majority of the year and it’s because it’s been consistent. There is a lot of luck involved with a lot of this racing stuff but you really make a lot of your own luck.
“We’ve had a car that’s gone up and down the track 20 times without smoking the tires and doing anything crazy, and that’s hard to do when you pour nitro in the tank. And that really boils down to the guy turning the knobs and making the decisions and obviously driving it well. But I think what we need to do is just stay focused and stay driven to keep doing what we’ve done all year long, and that is to try to turn four win lights.”
The Rocky Boots team has quite a history at zMAX Dragway. Hagan clocked the first sub-four second Funny Car pass there in 2011. Then in 2012, his 10,000-horsepower Dodge Charger R/T exploded and went viral online, earning more than 500,000 views on YouTube.
“Well, Charlotte for me has been bittersweet,” Hagan recalled. “We’ve won Charlotte in the spring, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to win it in the fall. I think that we have some great notes to go off of coming into Charlotte. But that was spring, and this is fall. It’s totally different conditions. I know that Dickie’s pretty confident with it, but I feel like we have to stay humble rolling into Charlotte knowing that these guys all got their game face on. They all know what’s on the line. We do as well, but you can’t let that get you rattled either. You have to keep doing what you’ve been doing and move forward.
“But I’m excited about it. Four events in a row, man, I mean, I would run these things every day of my life, if I could. It’s really one of those things where, you know, just four in a row, stay focused, get lots of rest, and stay motivated to win.”
The driver of the Carlyle Tools Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car will start the six-race Countdown playoff at zMAX Dragway ranked second in points to Don Schumacher Racing teammate Matt Hagan, who will hold a 30-point when qualifying begins Friday evening.
Capps, who owns three titles this year, is the defending champion of the September event at the track near Charlotte and is focused on winning his first NHRA Funny Car championship after finishing second four times including last year when he lost the elusive title by two points to Jack Beckman, another DSR teammate.
But Capps has another reason to hunt for the winner’s circle now that the second of two annual events at the track is sponsored by one of his sponsors.
Nothing would be better for Capps than to hoist the winning trophy of the Carlyle Tools Carolina Nationals presented by NAPA.
“Carlyle has been so good to us and we love our relationship,” Capps said. “It will be neat to have many of our NAPA corporate executives come over from Atlanta headquarters for the race.
“That always makes racing a lot more fun, especially after we win.”
Capps with crew chief Rahn Tobler and assistant John Collins started the season strong with a runner-up finish at the season-opener then followed that by winning the Mello Yello Series event near Phoenix.
But the on-track results slowed through the summer while Tobler experimented with the car in preparation for the Countdown but performance improved greatly beginning in early August when the Carlyle Tools team won the title at Sonoma Raceway near Capps’ hometown of San Luis Obispo, Calif.
At the next event, rain washed out two qualifying sessions and a mistake made to setting the clutch timer caused Capps to not qualify near Seattle. But the Carlyle Tools/NAPA team rallied two weeks later at Brainerd, Minn., and won its third title of the season.
After the U.S. Nationals near Indianapolis on Labor Day ended the 18-race Mello Yello regular season, Capps earned the No. 2 spot to start the Countdown, in which the standings were reset for the 10 Countdown qualifiers. The points were reset at 10-point increments with the regular season champion, Hagan, getting a 20-point bonus.
What had been a 114-point deficit to Hagan dwindled to 30 points.
“The Countdown is heightened awareness,” Capps said. “I had a blast going right down to the wire in November. Some drivers excel at the pressure and some don’t. There’s nothing like going right down to the last race of the year at Pomona.
“I’m glad we can kick off the Countdown at Charlotte where we are the defending champions. We found out last year the importance of every single point in the Countdown is heightened. It will be fun.
“The Charlotte win last year was a gut check for everyone on our team and it will be the same for our Carlyle Tools team this weekend.”
