NHRA Division 7 Top Alcohol Dragster owners Jerry and Betty Brazil will return to the drag strip after a four year hiatus during the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Division 7 event contested at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. The Eureka, Calif. based team has selected 21-year old Kenny Buzdas to drive their Blown Alcohol Dragster.

Buzdas, a former NHRA Division 7 Jr. Dragster champion and recent driver of Jim Ray’s potent Blown Alcohol Top Eliminator West Dragster from Yuba City recently completed his NHRA 2A licensing procedures in a test session driving Ray’s rail to a best elapsed time of 6.12 seconds at 229 miles per hour. For the rookie TAD pilot, the opportunity to drive for the Brazil family is a dream come true.

Hundreds of racers were on hand to do battle for this past weekend’s Fram Autolite NHRA Nationals and the action continued today at Infineon Raceway for the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series and the previously postponed NHRA Phoenix Nationals.

In today’s Lucas Oil Series action, racers in Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, and Super Gas completed their eliminations from back in February.  Tony Mandella, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., held off Super Stock ace Dan Fletcher with a hole shot win for his second trophy in as many days.  Mandella knocked out reigning Super Stock National Champion Jimmy DeFrank in Sunday’s Fran Autolite Nationals.

In Super Gas it was Justin Lamb of Henderson, Nev., going seven rounds for the win with a near perfect run against Jim Hughes of Phoenix, in the final.  Lamb ran a 9.901 second lap on a 9.90 index with a 0.008 second reaction time.  Other winners today were Kyle Rizzoli, San Luis Obispo, Calif., who won over Toby Lang in the Stock class and Greg Boutte of Stockton, Calif., beating Steve Casner in the final of Super Comp.

Allen Johnson has been treating the famed Western Swing as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming Countdown to 1, NHRA’s championship playoffs.

The way he figures, if his Team Mopar crew can put a lot of points on the board during the grueling three-week stretch of races near the end of NHRA’s 17-race regular season, it’ll give his team a small glimpse of what chasing the Pro Stock championship crown will be like come September.

As the team gears up for the third race in as many weeks, the 31st annual Mopar Mile-High NHRA Nationals near Denver, July 23-25, Johnson is hoping for a better outcome at scenic Bandimere Speedway. So far on the Western Swing, Johnson has two quarterfinal exits and earned a No. 1 qualifying position at Sonoma.

 Throughout the 2010 Top Fuel season, Larry Dixon has been dominant. This weekend at the Fram-Autolite NHRA Nationals, things were no different.

Dixon qualified on the pole and then won the event in convincing fashion at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif.
In the finals, Dixon beat rival Tony Schumacher, clocking a 3.879-second pass at 317.12 mph. Schumacher came across in 4.006 seconds at 300.73 mph.

“I’m trying to beat whomever I’m lined up against,” said Dixon, who has beat Schumacher six of the nine times they have raced this season. “You’re racing a car (in Schumacher) that has won six championships in a row, and you better bring your ‘A’ game when you race them. They didn’t win that many races and championships by being lucky, they’ve been good. You go up there and race them and do  the best job you can and hope that it is enough.”

With the win, Dixon remains in the season points lead with 1,444 points. Schumacher is now second at 1,233 followed by his Don Schumacher Racing teammate Cory McClenathan at 1,227.

After crunching the numbers from Sunday, it appears Dixon also has clinched the No. 1 seed for the Countdown to 1 playoffs. The 17-race regular season of the Countdown to the Championship runs through the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals Aug. 12-15 in Brainerd, Minn.

Pro Stock's Jeg Coughlin might not have laid the foundation for winning the FRAM-Autolite Nationals in qualifying or in running low elapsed time and top speed in the first round, when all 16 qualifiers strive to shine their brightest.
 
His inspiration came from a heart-to-heart talk he had with his father, Jeg Coughlin Sr., in their mini-vacation at Lake Tahoe after the Seattle race.
 
“We both came up with how we would run the car. We put a good, solid game plan,” he said.
 
It paid off, for he used his 100th career final round to defeat Jason Line for the $25,000 victory, his third this year in four final rounds.
 
Coughlin drove the Victor Cagnazzi-owned JEGS.com Chevy Cobalt to a 6.590-second elapsed time at 209.52 mph on the Infineon Raceway quarter-mile. Line challenged in his Summit Racing Pontiac GXP with a 6.602-second effort at 209.39 mph.
 
Coughlin said his approach this weekend “was slightly more aggressive than we've been in past races. We'd usually become a little soft and by Q4, we're a gang of hell and ready to go on race day. We've had some queer luck, so this weekend, we just wanted to be a little more aggressive. That's probably the thing I'm most proud about.

There's no question, Michael Phillips gets lost in all the hype of the big-name Pro Stock Motorcycle riders like Hector Arana, Andrew Hines and Matt Smith.

Well, Phillips is proving he deserves to be in the spotlight as well.

Phillips knocked off some of the top riders in the class Sunday, the last being Andrew Hines in the final round to capture the title at the Fram-Autolite NHRA Nationals at Sonoma, Calif.

Phillips clocked a 6.886-second time to beat Hines, who came in at 6.909 seconds.

On the road to his victory, Phillips also beat Karen Stoffer, Matt Smith and Eddie Krawiec. During his win over Krawiec, Phillips set a new national speed record for Pro Stock Motorcycles at 197.65 mph.

“That old bike I have is actually one of the best bikes in the wind tunnel, and it works out there on the race track,” Phillips said. “I wasn’t worried about the record, I was just trying to get the win.”

NHRA Funny Car driver Ron Capps, desperately seeking a victory for the first time in nearly a year after setting the class standard last season, said Sunday after winning the FRAM-Autolite Nationals, “I feel like I can conquer the world!”
 
Triumphant for the first time since last July at Denver, the NAPA Dodge Charge Funny Car driver said, “It's all confidence. And confidence is built on success.”
 
Capps had his own success Sunday at Infineon Raceway, defeating Don Schumacher Racing teammate Jack Beckman for the $50,000 payout and clinching a spot in the Countdown.
 
But the success to which he was alluding was not his own but that of Don Schumacher Racing teammate Matt Hagan and that came from the arrival of respected crew chief John Medlen from the legendary John Force Racing organization.
 
“We've been testing a lot of things all season long. And, obviously when John went over to Matt Hagan's car we saw what happened over there. Matt won two races, set the national record. And I've always wanted to work with John.”
 
He said having Medlen as his crew chief, in addition to all his mentoring by Ed “The Ace” McCulloch, “has been such a pleasure.”

When Todd Paton was invited to be a part of this year’s MOPAR Nitro Jam Nationals at the Grand Bend Motorplex, the Ontario native was pleased to participate at his home track and the place where he made his first ever pass in a Top Fuel Dragster.

Little did Paton know that by the end of the weekend he would be walking away from “The Bend” with his first Ironman in several years and his first ever victory in drag racing’s quickest and fastest class during Sunday’s MOPAR Nitro Jam Nationals finale at the Grand Bend Motorplex.

“After all these years who knew this old dog could still hunt. Actually I was getting ready to Photoshop my head in one of those Tim Boychuk winners circle pictures, but now I have one of my own,” Paton said with a laugh, referencing the success driver Boychuk has had in his car over the past two years. “I had so many people that have seen us when we were running the alcohol cars so to finally put together a good performance and a few solid runs in front of these fans is a great feeling.”

Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, IL, was the scene on the weekend of July 15-18, 2010 for the Super Bowl of Street Legal Drag Racing – an awesome display of hundreds of doorslammers of all domestic makes and models in the NMRA and NMCA’s racing classes.

In the Turbonetics Pro Outlaw 10.5 class, Mike Murillo turned in a stout 6.79 at nearly 216 MPH to lead the field into the eliminations sessions. There, it would come down to Conrad Scarry and Murillo in the final round in a repeat of the last event at Milan Dragway. When the tree came down, Murillo blasted off to an awesome 6.84 to Scarry’s 7.17 for the win, ending Scarry’s unbeaten streak. Murillo hammered the tree with a .006 reaction time to win over Joe Dunne and clinch the Super Bowl victory for the NMRA!

Scorpion Pro Street drew fifteen competitors to the famous Route ‘66 Raceway. After an intense three rounds of qualifying, Chris Rini topped the field with a 6.18 at 232 mph, followed by Joe Dunne who ran a 6.24, and coming in third on the list was John Sullivan with a 6.31. It was Billy Glidden and Joe Dunne who had the cars to beat this hot weekend, and both met up in the finals in a classic Chevy versus Ford match up.  When the tree fell, a holeshot from Dunne and some tire slip from Glidden resulted in the Pat Musi-tuned Chevy getting the event win for the second year in a row. In the NMRA versus NMRA runoff, Dunne faced the NMRA’s Turbonetics Pro Outlaw winner, Mike Murillo