Robert Hight earned the provisional No. 1 qualifying position in Funny Car after the first two of four rounds of qualifying were run on Friday at the 23rd annual NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways.

The other provisional No. 1 qualifiers at the 14th of 23 races in the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series season were Doug Kalitta (Top Fuel) and Jason Line (Pro Stock).

Maple Grove Raceway has appointed longtime employee Anthony Winchester as track manager and Kevin Lamphere has been promoted to assistant track manager, vice president/general manager Lex Dudas announced today.
 
The change goes into effect July 23.

Sitting behind the wheel of a Funny Car or dragster that reaches speeds of nearly 330 mph tests the nerve and ability of the best drivers in the world.

NHRA Funny Car legend John Force is the master in those tense situations, as evidenced by his record 14 world titles, without a 15th on the horizon.

Success, however, doesn’t make a driver’s heart beat any slower or his mind race any slower. Each time a driver goes to the starting line he or she is taking a risk, a calculated risk, but never the less a risk they might not walk away at the end of the run.

Not one to waste time, Billy Glidden is taking the opportunity to improve his program following a crash during qualifying for last weekend’s ADRL event at Heartland Park Topeka.

It marked only the second time in his career that the 2008 ADRL Extreme 10.5 champ found the wall with significant force.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate, but the first time was (about 1997) in my very first car that me and a couple of buddies built in a garage in Seymour,” he recalled. “It wasn’t built to do what we were doing with it. I had slapper bars on it—I wasn’t using them in the conventional method—but it pulled one in two and when the car got down on the rear tire it cut it and then it was pretty much the same thing, it went from the left lane over to the right and it pretty well slapped the whole right side of the car.”

From Nitro Harleys to Top Fuel Dragsters to Prostalgia Nitro Funny Cars, fans of nitro won’t be disappointed when the Nitro Jam tour brings its strongest lineup of nitro vehicles ever to the shores of Grand Bend, Ontario for the 11th annual MOPAR Nitro Jam Nationals at the Grand Bend Motorplex July 16-18.

Over two dozen race machines in four different classes will make up the nitro ranks at the annual event, in addition to other volatile classes including Alcohol Funny Cars, Pro Modifieds and more. In exhibition action race fans will also enjoy one of the greatest spectacles in all of motorsports as the Shockwave jet semi takes on the Super Shockwave in a battle of 60,000 horsepower machines.

Racing kicked off Thursday for hundreds of kids and the 2010 NHRA Jr. Drag Racing League Western Conference Finals at Bandimere Speedway.  The facility, just outside of Denver, plays hosts to kids ages 8 to 17 years old and their families for the annual event presented by Lucas Oil and JR Race Car.  Competitors in nine categories race in half-scale dragsters at speeds up to 70 mph on the eighth-mile track in search of both team and individual honors and a share of nearly $100,000 in savings bonds.

Brian Thiel is set to make his 2010 Nitro Funny Car debut this weekend at the NHRA Northwest Nationals in Seattle, WA, July 9-11.  The CASE IH sponsored entry is owned and piloted by Brian Thiel, with proven crew chief Johnny West calling the shots on the newly assembled nitro machine.

It has been 19 years since Top Fuel ace Joe Amato became the first driver to master the NHRA's so-called Western Swing of three tracks -- at Denver, Seattle, and Sonoma, Calif. -- in successive weekends. The task features wildly different atmospheric conditions and puts the burden on the tuners -- and hauler drivers.
 
The order of the summertime grind has varied throughout the years, and this year, for the first time, it starts in Seattle. But it doesn't seem to matter. No one has swept the Western Swing more than once.
 
"That is such a difficult thing to do, to do it once," Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher said.

Don't mess with Tony Schumacher.
 
No, it's not that he's tough and has the U.S. Army emblazoned on his Top Fuel dragster. That's intimidating, all right. It's not that he has four victories this season. That's impressive, too, as only Larry Dixon and Cory McClenathan have won the class so far as the series heads to Pacific Raceways near Seattle.
 
Don't mess with Tony Schumacher's method of doing things. It seems to be working well for him.