Former Auto Club Road to the Future winner Brandon Bernstein is in position to collect his first No. 1 of 2010 after Friday’s first qualifying session at the 29th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals.

The other provisional No. 1 qualifiers at the 17th of 23 events in the NHRA Full Throttle Series season – and final race in the Countdown to 10 regular season – were Ashley Force Hood (Funny Car), Allen Johnson (Pro Stock) and Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle).

This weekend, there is going to be no shortage of drama at the 29th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway.

That’s because this event is the finish line for drivers trying to make the Countdown to 1 playoffs. The playoffs begin at the U.S. Nationals Sept. 1-6 in Indianapolis.

Dave Grubnic still remembers the sting of waiting out several days of rain delays at Reading in 2007, only to learn -- via phone call from Graham Light, NHRA’s sneior vice-president of racing operations -- that he had been bumped from the Countdown field. As Grubnic awaits the 2010 results at Brainerd, this year’s cutoff event, he looked back to that time but put his effort to hold off hard-charging Terry McMillen all in perspective.
 

In recognition of Snap-on’s 90th Anniversary, the Snap-on Funny Car, driven by Cruz Pedregon, will feature a special wrap commemorating Snap-on’s 90 years. The 90th Anniversary Snap-on Funny Car will hit the track August 12-15 at the NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, Minn.

This coming Saturday, August 14th, is the 10th Annual Uptown Whittier Car Show held in Whittier, Ca. Between the hours of 9AM to 7PM (extended from its original 4PM end time) the sleepy, historic, uptown district will be transformed into a hot rodding haven. Hundreds of (mostly) pre 1975 cars, trucks, hot rods and street rods will be shown off, as well as, 2 stages of entertainment, a BBQ Cook-off, raffles and more.

The American Drag Racing League (ADRL) and President Kenny Nowling announced on Thursday that “The Rock Racing Battery” will serve as both the “Official Battery of the ADRL” and the “Official Mobile Power Source” of the ADRL’s “Battle for the Belts” doorslammer drag racing series.

Thanks to its lightweight and unsurpassed reliability, The Rock Battery is a top choice for several ADRL drivers, including current Extreme Pro Stock points leader John Montecalvo.

Mopar® will help celebrate the 30th anniversary of one of the premier Mopar enthusiast events on the annual car show calendar when the Mopar Nationals roll into National Trail Raceway near Columbus, Ohio on Aug. 13–15. Mopar will bring its Mopar Direct Connection Trailer and display vehicles to the event and will name a fourth winner in its popular Mopar “Top Eliminator” enthusiast program.

The 2010 event will host a number of new and exciting display vehicles at the Mopar Direct Connection Trailer, including the new Mopar ’10 Challenger, the first-ever special edition Mopar version of a Chrysler group vehicle. The Mopar ’10 was revealed last month at the Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals event in Golden, Colo.

Make no mistake: Jeff Arend and his Kalitta Motorsports/DHL Toyota Solara Funny Car team are serious about performing well in this weekend’s Lucas Oil Nationals Nationals and barging their way into the NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship.
 
Crew Chiefs Jon Oberhofer and Nicky Boninfante and the crew were at O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, working until 2:30 in the morning, this past Tuesday. They were back at the racetrack at 7:30 a.m., “pulling out all the stops,” as Arend put it. By 2 p.m. they had made three test runs and planned to make another three before suppertime.
 
Arend, who is 11th in the standings, just 33 points behind 10th-place Tony Pedregon, has one last opportunity to make the “playoff” for the first time.

With his focus on racing blurred last week by the death of his grandfather, Matt Smith was relieved to be looking ahead to Friday when he will be competing in the Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minn., the final Countdown to 10 regular-season event.

“It has been kind of a tough thing to deal with,” Matt said of the passing of Burke Smith last Thursday.  “We haven’t thought much about racing lately, but it is good to be focusing on it again.”

While Smith says it looks like he’s locked into the No. 4 Pro Stock Motorcycle berth for NHRA’s Countdown to 1 playoffs, a winning performance aboard his Al-Anabi Racing V-Twin at Brainerd could elevate him to third place – and be a perfect tribute to his grandfather. 

Old-school drag racers will remember days gone by where expending the effort to become a champion in drag racing was more for bragging rights than how much cash one stood to win if they were lucky enough to be the last man standing.

Perhaps no track manager in the country understands the thought process of the old-school racers like Chris Baxter of Milan Dragway, in Milan, Michigan.  

As the closest dragstrip to the Detroit area and the Big Three’s engineering- and racer-heavy landscape, ‘Milan’, as the locals call it, has, over the last few years, put together a nationally-recognized, once a month Friday night Heads-Up program with major sponsorship and national-level exposure for their racers.