Like many others, I was looking forward to a weekend of great racing in Houston at ADRL’s season opener after a cold and dreary winter.  However, Mother Nature had other plans for us.  I was planning to spend the weekend with Pro Extreme Motorcycle World Champ Scott Gray but since our weekend was cut short and I want to do his story justice, I’ve arranged to hang with their team in Valdosta.  Instead I will just write about some

Top Fuel driver Tony Schumacher spent part of Wednesday morning sitting in a race car, talking to drivers and touring the garage area.

But the smell of nitromethane wasn’t in the air. Instead, there was the smell of high-octane Sunoco racing gasoline as Schumacher wandered around the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage during testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Schumacher spoke with team owner/driver Tony Stewart and even crawled in Stewart’s No. 14 Chevrolet.

“Those machines are pretty awesome,” Schumacher said. “I told Tony, ‘I’m lighter. I could go around that track, too.’ The only problem I have is the ADD. I get around the second turn, and I start looking at the squirrels and stuff.”

Rhonda Hartman-Smith will compete this weekend at the inaugural NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Concord, NC.

Hartman Motorsports, teamed up with Hartley Racing, is excited about being a part of the first ever Four-Wide National event.

“We have been working on different sponsorship opportunities to get us back out on the track this season and with this race being so close to home it seemed like the perfect opportunity to entertain some of them and showcase our abilities, ” said Hartman-Smith.  “The Hartley’s are a great family-oriented team so it was a perfect fit for us to combine our efforts.   We are working towards having a multi-car team in future years and we would like to see Joe and Allen being a part of that.”

NHRA announced today that it will “unleash” ticket sales in a few weeks for its newest major attraction, NHRA Unleashed, a celebration of pure American horsepower, coming to an NHRA facility near you this summer.

 The first of four inaugural NHRA Unleashed events will be held June 11-13 at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Ga. Tickets for this historic event will go on sale April 3rd.  Disrupt/ive Studios, the producers of the hit TV show “PINKS ™”, will produce a television series celebrating every aspect of these exciting events, highlighting the passion and lifestyle of NHRA competitors and fans.

They were celebrating in the Team Aruba pit Friday night. By Saturday, the party was still going strong despite the rains that washed out the ADRL Universal Technical Institute Dragpalooza at Houston Raceway Park.

Friday's celebration was in recognition of the March 18, 1986 independence of the island country from the Netherlands. Saturday's was in recognition
of Trevor Eman's best ever qualifying effort in his Extreme Pro Stock '06 Ford Escort. He concluded qualifying as the fifth quickest with a 4.09 elapsed time at 177.30 miles per hour.

"We were making better and faster runs every time we made it to the starting line," said Eman, who is in his sophomore year of driving Extreme Pro Stock.

When you have a car performing in this manner, it only adds to the natural celebrations such as Aruban Flag Day.

Michael Martin walked across the stage on Friday evening during pre-race at the ADRL Dragpalooza in Houston, Tx, the longtime drag racer turned Pro Mod tuner joining eleven of his friends and fellow racers, honored for their role in advancing the Pro Modified division.

Twenty years ago, Martin was playing on another big stage as one of the pioneering drivers of the new Pro Modified class. Martin not only qualified for the inaugural Pro Modified at the 1990 IHRA Winternationals but reached the semi-finals.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long ago but it has,” said Martin, who was No. 17 on Attitude’s CompetitionPlus.com All-Time Drivers List. “The fondest memory that I have of that day is that we were running good.”

If actions speak louder than words, then the scoreboard sends an earsplitting message for defending ADRL Extreme 10.5 champion Spiro Pappas.
 
Pappas’ turbocharged Pontiac GTO whispered its way down the Houston Raceway Park eighth-mile to the quickest elapsed time, 3.883 seconds, in the history of organized 10.5 tire racing. He missed backing up the potential record by .001, but it didn’t matter.
 
The run was intended to send a message and for him the high horsepower statement came across loud and clear, despite the fact crew chief Don Bailey had the car backed down on the 3.88 pass.

Anyone with a case of cabin fever will want to “cruise” on over to Thunder Valley to register for a vacation giveaway at the first Fas Mart Street Fights Series event of the year March 27.

Bristol Dragway will give a cruise for two to one lucky winner. And there will be no losers, as everyone else will see the region’s fastest street-legal machines shake off the winter blues and burn up the strip in the season opener presented by One 12 Downtown.

Competition for Bristol Dragway’s new announcer also will heat up as the four finalists announce the day’s action. After the event, Dragway officials will determine who will become the new Street Fights announcer. The crowd reaction’s to the four candidates will help determine the winner.

It’s been said by several experienced drag racers, driving a three-speed, 4,000 horse power, short wheel based Top Alcohol Funny Car is one of the most difficult cars to handle. For 24-year old Cassie Simonton, the new team driver of Spiro Kontos’ Barrie, Ont. based Kon Rodz Racing two-car TAFC team; it’s now her day job.

After months of planning, on-hands training and several shake-down runs behind the wheel of the Kon Rodz / Bullydog.com TAFC last season, Simonton recently earned her NHRA TAFC competition license after recording a solid 5.85 second elapsed time at over 200 miles per hour during a test session held in Valdosta, Ga.

Matt Hagan is coming on strong in his first non-rookie season driving the DieHard Dodge Charger Funny Car for Don Schumacher Racing. He's already set a national top-speed record, was low qualifier once, and matched a track-record elapsed time in the first three races of the 2010 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. He's ready to improve on his and the team's performance, but he's not high on racing four-wide in this weekend's Inaugural NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Concord, N.C.

"It's one thing to race the guy beside you, but when you have to race three others, you don't know what's going on two lanes over," said the 27-year-old Angus Cattle farmer from Christiansburg, Va. "Now, you're going to have to put yourself in a situation where you have to make it go to the end no matter what, because you can't see what's going on in the other lanes, versus just racing the guy beside you.