Final qualifying has been postponed at National Trail Raceway. Rain began falling during Super Stock qualifying earlier today and has been off and on all day. The decision was made to set the fields in Stock, Super Stock and all the super classes.

Racing will begin at 8:30 AM Sunday morning with Super Street eliminations. The alcohol classes, Top Dragster, Top Sportsman and Comp will have one more round of qualifying at 10:30 in the morning with eliminations to follow. 

Advertisement

J. R. Todd knew his quick lap on Friday night at Infineon Raceway might be

Bob Pelligrini

challenged
during Saturday's two rounds of qualifying. Truth be told he was
confident those challenges would fall short. Confident enough to use
his two Saturday runs to find out what not to do on Sunday.

“We were working on our race day setup,” said Todd. “Trying some things
to see what would work and what wouldn't work. Not going down the track
today we know what will not work. I think first round (tomorrow) we'll
see conditions that will be better than what we saw today.”

Todd is really pleased that his BACA Racing, MACH 1 sponsored mount has
run so well and believes the NHRA mandated testing banned has helped.

Eddie Krawiec led three of the four qualifying rounds for the FRAM Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway
on his Vance & Hines Screaming Eagle Harley-Davidson V-Rod as
weather conditions went from good to better to best. Krawiec's final
round run, a 6.915 second, 192.99 mph effort, was barely enough to top
Matt Smith's 6.919, 192.58 dash on a Suzuki.

This is the first pole for Krawiec this year. He was had three national event wins.

Andrew Hines, Krawiec's teammate, led the third round of qualifying with a 6.967, 185.33 mph.

Brian Gahm has previous experience  racing a mountain motor Pro Stocker at Virginia Motorsports Park in Dinwiddie, Va. At the ADRL U.S. Drags II, all of that experience went out the window.

Faced with a track heated to a boiling point and abbreviated
qualifying, Gahm did what he knew to win his third ADRL Minuteman
trophy of the season. He beat second-generation Pro Stock driver Cary
Goforth in the finals.

And, it was a close one … eighteen inches to be exact.

“The race track was different than what I had faced in the past … the
temperature was up there about 140 degrees,” said Gahm in a post-race
interview. “The team at VMP and the ADRL did one helluva job on the
race track.”

On the strength of a track record 6.571-second elapsed time recorded on his third attempt on Saturday,
Greg Anderson qualified his Summit Racing Pro Stock Pontiac in the No.
1 position for Sunday’s final eliminations of the FRAM Autolite
Nationals in Sonoma, CA. This is Anderson’s fourth No. 1 qualifying
performance of the season.

“To be honest, this is the bright part of my season so far,” said
Anderson. “The Summit Racing team has been doing great, Jason’s been
doing a tremendous job, and we’ve had some really good cars, while, to
be honest, I’ve just been struggling. I needed a boost, something good
to happen to get my confidence back and give me a better attitude, and
today was it.

“I didn’t plan on this happening, because, quite frankly, we’d been
getting outrun lately by Mike Edwards and Allen Johnson. But our KB
Racing crew obviously executed a little better than they did today, and
that shows that we can go out tomorrow, get both Summit cars in the
final and win this race. That’s always our goal, but right now, it
feels more realistic than it has all year. That’s the thought I’m going
to go to bed with tonight. This will probably be the happiest Saturday
night I’ve had all year.”

After
struggling some early this year, Bubba Stanton (far lane) and his
“Widow Maker” team rebounded with a winning performance July 25, in the
Pro Extreme final against Todd Tutterow in the ADRL NATIONALGUARD.com
U.S. Drags II at Virginia Motorsports Park.

Virginia is
for lovers of National Guard ADRL racing. At least that’s what it
looked like July 25, as a record-setting crowd witnessed Bubba Stanton,
Jim Halsey, Chuck Ulsch, Lance Hines and Brian Gahm each collect a new
Minuteman trophy from the ADRL NATIONALGUARD.com U.S. Drags II at
Virginia Motorsports Park (VMP).

The 600-acre facility south of Richmond issued a news release Saturday
evening, stating attendance “overwhelmed everyone involved with the
event.” The release further said that since opening in 1994, VMP has
hosted 14 other major-league drag racing events, “but the National
Guard ADRL this weekend far surpassed crowds in the past,” according to
track general manager Bryan Pierce. In fact, Pierce pointed out for the
first time in VMP’s 15-year history, track and state officials agreed
to close the entrance gates in order to reroute excessive traffic that
was creating a more-than-four-mile traffic jam extending to the nearest
Interstate.

Quain Stott was not overly concerned about what the oildown delays and the adverse conditions he faced were doing to his Pro Extreme combination on Friday during the ADRL U.S. Drags II at Virginia Motorsports Park in Dinwiddie, Virginia.

The provisional No. 1 qualifier had a more pressing situation.

The extensive delays were cutting into his end of the day beer time.

Matt Hagan, a contender for the 2009 Automobile Club of Southern California Road to the Future Award
as an NHRA rookie-of-the-year frontrunner, hung on as the Funny Car
class low qualifier through the final two rounds of qualifying today at
the FRAM-Autolite NHRA Nationals.

Driving the shelor.com Dodge for Don Schumacher Racing, Hagan collected
his first career No. 1 and faces No. 16 qualifier Cruz Pedregon in the
opening stanza of Sunday's eliminations. This is an important round, as
Hagan stands 10th in the points, while Pedregon is in 11th. Only the
top 10 in the rankings vie for the championship in the final six events
of the season in the Countdown to 1 playoffs.

Following his two Friday passes of 4.213/287.78 and 4.068/307.51,
earning him the pole, today's attempts produced a 4.236/293.47 and a
4.195/294.75 (third quickest of the round).

David Reher didn’t even try to suppress his smile Friday evening during the ADRL U.S. Drags II in Dinwiddie, Va.

Mark Walter/Dragstory.com

The former Pro Stock engine building icon, who has reinvented himself
in Pro Modified, was overjoyed with three of his clients atop the
sixteen-car Pro Nitrous field. The Al Anabi Awesome Motorsports team
put two of their three cars in the final four with Khalid Al Balooshi
scoring a runner-up finish in one of the great final rounds of the
event.

Mike Castellana, Shannon Jenkins and Balooshi ran within .02
from first to third, and .03 from the next closest competitor on Friday evening.

Chuck Ulsch stuck to his guns throughout the weekend and the decision netted Gil Mobley’s Extreme
10.5 driver his first win of the season during the ADRL U.S. Drags II at Virginia Motorsports Park. Friday, after coming
hundredths of a second away from being the first driver in the class to
record a three second run in competition, the hired gun and his team
opted to focus on winning a race and contending for a championship over
the chance to be a part of drag racing history.

“This was mission accomplished,” Ulsch said following his win over Gary
White, the super quick Inline Six racer who remains a contender for the
same three second milestone.

“We would have liked to have had that three-second run but we qualified
No. 1 and won the race. That was 516 points. That’s the most you can
get. I like that.”