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SUNDAY NOTEBOOK

TORRENCE ‘FLINTSTONES’ HIS WAY TO TOP FUEL VICTORY - Steve Torrence said Sunday at Englishtown, N.J., he wanted to take advantage of the fact Top Fuel points leader Doug Kalitta and No. 2 Antron Brown had dropped out in the quarterfinals of the NHRA Summernationals.

But the day’s decidedly hotter temperatures and breezy conditions left him uncertain what Old Bridge Township Raceway Park’s 1,000-foot course would throw at him and his Capco Contractors/Rio Ammunition Dragster. After all, he had advanced a couple of rounds despite tire-smoking and throttle-feathering. “Crazy day – two rounds on pedaling,” he said after his victories over JR Todd and Brittany Force.

And that pitted him against fellow Texas resident Tony Schumacher. As much as Torrence wanted to vault back to the points lead he had after winning the season-opening Winternationals, he knew Schumacher wanted as intensely to earn his first victory of the year and first since last summer at Chicago.

Sure enough, he once again had to pedal his way down the course where he won in 2012. And his 4.037-second elapsed time at 281.71 mph – substandard compared to his recent performances – was more than enough. Schumacher, battling traction problems and what appeared to be other mechanical issues, countered with a 4.234, 268.28 in the U.S. Army Dragster.

“This was a tough race today,” Torrence said, citing “smokin’ tires, a pedalfest, down there at the end my car shuts off before the finish line, I could tell it had holes out, it wasn’t wantin’ to go anywhere, the belt knocks off and I’m trying to stick my foot out and Flintstone it to get to the end. But somehow we squeaked ahead of Schumacher.”

Making his second consecutive final-round appearance in a six-day span, Torrence earned his seventh career victory and second of the year in four finals. (He was runner-up at Houston and Epping, N.H.) He remains third in the standings, although he has trimmed his deficit from 127 points behind Kalitta to 65 and moved to within 16 points of Brown.

“We’ve been so fortunate and blessed. We have a race car that has been impeccable so far. The only faults have been me – last weekend we could have won that race and didn’t. We’re going to count our blessings and keep going, because the Good Lord has equipped us with way too many tools to go out here and do what we’re doing. We’re just going to keep giving Him the glory and trying to go some rounds.”

He’ll have a chance again another five days, as Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competition continues with the Thunder Valley Nationals at Tennessee’s Bristol Dragway.

But at Englishtown, Torrence was perhaps more elated for his car chief, Bobby Lagana, a popular Raceway Park near-fixture from nearby Scarsdale, N.Y. He also was thrilled for Dom Lagana, Bobby’s brother, who raced their family dragster this weekend but returned as a crew-hand once he dropped out of eliminations in the quarterfinals.    

“Those guys have a lot of history here. This is home for them. So to leave here with a Wally . . . [Lagana brothers] Bobby and Dom have won at their home racetrack. Dom did a great job this weekend in his race car, then they rolled over and helped us after they got beat. Torrence Racing is family . . . and Bobby and Dom are family to me. So I’m proud to have contributed to this win and get it for them.”   

For Torrence, point-counting is not part of his routine yet. “It’s too early to start counting points and worrying about all that. But you do want to try to distance yourself as much as possible [from the field behind in the standings] and catch up to the guys ahead of you. Those last six [races] are what really count. You need to be in good position.

“I’ve got the best race car I’ve had since 2005, when I was in an alcohol car,” he said, referring to his Top Alcohol Dragster national championship that year. “My confidence today and last weekend and every race we go to is getting better and better [and I’m getting] more comfortable in the car. When you have a car like that, you go out and drive it and do well.”

His brain trust – which includes crew chief Richard Hogan, consultant Alan Johnson, and Lagana – gathered in the team lounge before the final round to strategize how they would approach racing in the right lane. Schumacher had lane choice and picked the left.

“The right lane has not been good all day,” Torrence said. “We got stuck over there, and we saw Schumacher go .84 [a winning 3.843-second E.T. in his semifinal victory over Shawn Langdon]. We knew that lane’s not going to hold an .84, but we need to go A to Band not beat ourselves. We pulled a bunch of time out of it, slowed the flows way down. It didn’t like it – you could see it put holes out – but it was still going. It wasn’t spinning the tires.”

It worked.

Torrence said he could hear Schumacher when they launched and “I could tell he was right with me. I heard him slap it [the throttle] and I knew he had to pedal it. I never could see him coming back around. Luck has just been on our side the last couple of races. I don’t want to use all of it up, but every race you win you’ve got to have a little bit of luck on your side. If you get out here and win one of these things without that, it’s too difficult. The parity in this class is unbelievable right now.

“Those Schumacher cars, other than Antron’s, have not been performing as well as they have in the past,” Torrence  said. “We’ve got to try to keep ‘em whupped down, because when they get their steam going, they’re tough contenders and heard to deal with. We just need to keep beatin’ on ‘em.”

As he joined Ron Capps (Funny Car), Greg Anderson (Pro Stock), and Angelle Sampey (Pro Stock Motorcycle) in the winners circle, Torrence told the cheering crowd, “It’s a good day. It’s a good race. We’ve won here before. I like coming here. These fans are awesome.”

Despite the runner-up finish – or, more correctly, because of it – Schumacher leaped from ninth place in the standings to fifth.

Said Schumacher, “When you’re in the finals and you’re running against a team that’s won and running well, you’ve got to try to go fast. Talking to Torrence at the end, they knew they weren’t going to get down the track very well in that lane. They wanted to just get down there, and they ended up throwing the belt off there at the end and all we needed to do was just slide it through. With A.J. (Alan Johnson) tuning that car, a good car like that, you don’t want to get there and leave anything on the table. Still, we’ve got a good car. We’ve got a car that’s coming around.

“We’re very good at Bristol. Ironically, we did well this weekend at a track that we’ve never done well at, historically. This is not supposed to be our place. Bristol is. We’ll move on and we’ll get that win,” he said. “Does it hurt to get so close and not win the event? Well, I’ve not gotten it before. You have to earn it. There are facts and there are rules, and the rules state that you’ve got to get to the finish line first, and we didn’t do that. We play by the rules and that’s the way it goes.” Susan Wade

CAPPS CONTINUES FUNNY CAR DOMINATION WITH SECOND-STRAIGHT WIN IN ENGLISHTOWN - Ron Capps has accomplished a lot in his storied career. He has won a lot of races, he has been fastest of the weekend several times, and he has even set a record or two in his time behind the wheel.

But through a career that spans more than two decades, Capps doesn’t recall ever having a car this competitive and this much fun to drive. And that has him pretty excited about just what the season ahead holds for the NAPA Auto Parts team.

“Rahn Tobler’s given me such a fun car to race. I almost felt embarrassed driving this car today because it’s so good. You just don’t want to mess up when it’s that good; it’s yours to lose,” Capps said. “Other guys are struggling to get down the track, and our car’s going .95 and .96. It wasn’t that we didn’t struggle; we did. We just worked so good together today. A lot of communication.”

Capps raced to his third win of the season and second straight Sunday at the NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, besting his friend and teammate Jack Beckman in the final. After an emotional day filled with big-time victories, Capps completed the weekend sweep when Beckman’s Funny Car hazed the tires at the hit of the throttle, allowing Capps to drive the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R/T to victory with a 3.954 at 316.90 mph pass in the final.

The win vaulted Capps from third to first in the NHRA Funny Car championship standings, as he now holds a 27-point lead over Beckman after 10 of 24 events.

“With the competition, you can’t imagine it’s going to go as planned, that easy,” Capps said. “We had some big matchups and it was neat to see Rahn Tobler step it up again. It was a big day, a big race. This is one of the biggest. Back in the day, this one was one of the big three and we still consider it a historic track. So it was a big win for us.”

Capps collected wins over John Hale, John Force and Del Worsham on his way to the final, and faced his fair share of obstacles in each.

In round one, Capps lost a cylinder in his win over Hale, while his second round matchup with Force saw the 16-time champion try and get in the head of his opponent by switching lanes multiple times before the race. But it was his semifinal victory over Worsham that left Capps feeling a little emotional as he advanced to this fourth final of the season.

“We had an emotional one against Del with Scott Kalitta’s car. I told them down there that there probably wasn’t a person on the grounds that wasn’t pulling for them. Even me, a little bit,” Capps said. “I think it would be a lot of healing to see that car back in the winner’s circle for Connie (Kalitta) and all of the Kalitta family. It was neat to win, but it was a tough win.”

One week after becoming the first Funny Car pilot to complete all eight runs of a weekend in the 3-second range, Capps came one run shy of repeating that feat in Englishtown. Capps claimed the top qualifier award Friday night and ran a total of seven sub-4-second runs over the three days, with only his cylinder dropping 4.057 pass in round one standing in the way of yet another perfect weekend. Capps’ other Sunday passes were 3.996, 3.960 and 3.954.

“You dream about being a race car driver when you grow up, which is a big enough thing to dream about, but to be one and have a race car like this is something you really dream about. I’m just trying to ride the wave and enjoy it,” Capps said. “It won’t go forever, but at least we’re having fun right now.”

While Capps was certainly excited to see his name atop the Funny Car standings, he was adamant that there is still a long season ahead, and he refuses to think about the possibilities with more than half of the season remaining. Especially considering that he was sixth in the standings just two races ago.

“I don’t even want to hear championship talk right now,” Capps said. “It is so far off and the competition is so tough, we are just taking it a little bit at a time.” Larry Crum

ANDERSON COLLECTS FIFTH WIN OF THE YEAR IN ANOTHER ALL-KB RACING FINAL - Don’t think, even for a moment, that Greg Anderson isn’t fully aware of the amazing run he and teammate Jason Line are on right now.

Amid an undefeated streak in 2016, with a perfect 10 wins in 10 races this season, it would be easy to see how the KB Racing duo could easily take for granted this amazing start and not fully appreciate the magnitude of their dominance, especially in the moment.

But Anderson knows exactly what this team has accomplished on the NHRA circuit, and he also knows it won’t last forever. So he is taking in every second while he can and soaking in the moment.

“It’s unreal. It has absolutely been a dream season,” said Anderson, moments after collecting his fifth win of 2016 Sunday in Englishtown. “I keep wanting to pinch myself and ask, is this really happening? But somehow it is. When I pick up the paper the next day, it actually happened. And that is pretty cool.”

Anderson won his second consecutive race and the 83rd of his career on the momentum of five-straight finals Sunday at the NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, defeating his teammate in the final in the seventh all-KB Racing final of 2016.

In a rather anticlimactic race, Line jumped the gun and went red by -.024 as Anderson cruised to his fifth win of the year behind the wheel of his Summit Racing Equipment Chevrolet Camaro with a 6.610 at 210.93 mph.

“Everyone says when both Summit cars make the final, it is a win for the team and it doesn’t matter who wins. Well it does to me. And it does to him,” Anderson said. “That shows you how much it means to the driver to win. He pressed as hard as he could to win and he went over the line. It happens, but if you don’t do that every once in awhile, that just means you aren’t trying hard enough. It could just as easily happen to me.

“I try just as hard in the final and I came up with the best light I have had all day. We want to beat each other bad. We want to beat everybody. We don’t kick it into neutral and say it’s good enough.”

While Anderson continued to add to his class-leading win total with the 83rd victory of his career, Anderson was most excited to see that win come in Englishtown at the track he calls the absolute best on the circuit - at least for him.

“When you come up to the northeast, those are our kind of conditions,” Anderson said. “This place right here, it is, without a doubt, my favorite race track. It has been since day one. It is a great feeling coming in here knowing you are going to run fast. You are going to have a great chance to win. We parlayed that all the way to victory circle this weekend.

“It was another dream weekend and another time where Englishtown tells me how much it loves me.”

In addition to his fifth round win over point leader Line, Anderson added wins over Charlie Westcott, Drew Skillman and Kenny Delco to reach his seventh final of the year, running smooth each and every lap with passes of 6.600, 6.617 and 6.601. Line had wins over Jeg Coughlin and Vincent Nobile to reach his ninth final of the year.

While many point to a decisive performance advantage for the Summit cars as the reason for their dominance, Anderson is quick to point out the incredible job crew chief Rob Downing has done amid varying weather conditions each and every race weekend.

“It is becoming evident lately, as everybody is gaining, as we go through the Friday night qualifying sessions and the track cools down, it tightens back up and everyone has been able to run very close to us,” Anderson said. “And once you come out and race on Sunday and run behind the fuel cars and run on a 130-degree race track like we did today, Rob Downing is just doing a better job than the other crew guys.

“It’s not just a performance advantage. Rob is doing a better job of managing that race car when the track changes. And it takes all of that to win. It changes every run. Whether you are the third pair in line or the first pair, it is a major difference. You have to know that and you have to make the right adjustments. He has done that. He is 10-for-10 right now and he hasn’t made a mistake yet. He is the man right now.”

With the win, Anderson closed the gap to just 68 points behind Line, but the pair extended their lead over the rest of the field to more than 340 points over the next highest competitor. Still, Anderson can see the gap narrowing, and knows it is only a matter of time before other teams break through.

“You have got to continue to get better. If we don’t continue to get better, we will get passed by,” Anderson said. “These other guys have done a great job and they are gaining every week, but fortunately we are digging in and we are trying to move forward too.

“There is still a lot to be learned with the fuel injection and the landscape is going to change as we move forward. We are just proud of the job we have done so far.” Larry Crum

SAMPEY BACK IN THE WINNER’S CIRCLE FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2007 - It has been a long time coming for Angelle Sampey.

While that may seem like an odd statement to attach to a driver with three career championships, 42 national event victories and a slew of firsts in her storied career, on Sunday that statement couldn’t have rang any more true.

You see, for Sampey, who retired from racing in 2010 to start a family, Sunday’s win in Englishtown was much more than just her 42nd Wally; it is the first trophy that she will be able to show her five-year-old daughter. And that, Sampey says, is worth so much more than the 41 that came before.

“I know this is 42 wins, but my God it feels like my first,” an emotional Sampey said following her victory Sunday in Englishtown. “I don’t feel like I had any wins before today. The career before is nonexistent to me. Even the championships. I am starting all over again. I had something to prove, and it took a while, but (my daughter) is 100 percent of the reason I came back.

“I started thinking, why come back? I have all the wins I need. I have three championships, there is no reason to come back. And then I looked down at her and I realized that she doesn’t know Angelle the racer, she only knows mommy.

“She’s seen all of the trophies, but to her it means nothing. And now that she is going to see it on TV, that is why I am so emotional. When you have a little five-year-old calling you mommy and looking up to you, I feel totally responsible to show her what she can do with her life. And I didn’t want to come back and show I couldn’t do it. I needed this win so badly.”

Sampey collected her first win since 2007 on her George Bryce-tuned bike driving for Star Racing, besting the best Pro Stock Motorcycle has to offer along the way. Sampey had wins over both of the Harley-Davidson drivers, besting Andrew Hines in round two and Eddie Krawiec in the semifinals, before defeating Jerry Savoie in the final of the NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.

Sampey had a near-perfect .002 light in the final and rode that advantage to a 6.876-second pass at 194.41 mph to earn her first Wally in nearly a decade. Savoie had a 6.928 at 177.21 in the runner-up effort.

“I’ve been under the weather all day, and didn’t know if I could do this physically,” Sampey said. “I looked like a mental patient when I won, at the finish line. I told my crew chief to check everything on the bike because I was jumping all around and punching it. I had to calm myself down just to get my helmet off.”

While a win after so many years away was more than enough for Sampey, the fact that she had to go through both of the Harley-Davidson drivers to get there meant that much more to her.

“I appreciate those Harley boys so much. They are so badass on the race track,” Sampey said. “All I have to say is they make me a better racer. They race so clean, they don’t mess with you on the starting line. And to beat them means the world to me. And I told them both that.”

While still surprising, Sampey’s win wasn’t without merit. She qualified number one just one month ago in Atlanta and has been competitive throughout the year. On Sunday, she was able to put all of the pieces together and collect the win.

And to think it almost didn’t happen. Moments after the win, Sampey admitted she didn’t even want to even make the trip to New Jersey following a family vacation this past week and a bit of disappointment following a continued lack of success on the track.

“I said I didn’t want to come to this race. It’s not because of the track or the fans, I just got home from a long vacation. I was tired, I wasn’t feeling well, and my baby girl was crying for me not to come and I started thinking again, why am I doing this,” Sampey said. “I have done everything I can to win. My team has done everything they can and we are not winning. I was getting to the point of feeling discouraged and I told my husband, I don’t even really want to go. I am regretting saying that now.”

Now Sampey is back in the winner’s circle, hoisting a trophy exactly 20 years since earning her first win in career start number 199. But this time, daughter Ava is going to be able to join in the festivities.

“Now I can show her that, even if you are not winning every weekend, you just keep trying and you are going to get it,” Sampey said. “Being her role model, I don’t even have words for it. I looked at her in the camera and said, ‘see, I told you mommy was going to do it.’ That is a moment I will never forget.” Larry Crum      

FIRST-ROUND UPSETS SPICE ELIMINATIONS, CAPPS ROLL BUT STREAK HALTS, HAGAN FINDING HIS GROOVE, SURFER KEEPS RIDING WAVE, CRAMPTON’S STRUGGLES LINGER, ‘I CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE WITH . . . TAKING A BREAK TO THE BIG APPLE’

BIG DEAL FOR DIEHL, DELCO, GAYDOSH – The first round of Top Fuel had one upset victory – which hardly could be considered an upset, with eight-time series champion Tony Schumacher defeating higher-qualified but traction-troubled Terry McMillen. But the first pairing of Funny Car eliminations provided a truly surprising result, and two Pro Stock underdogs struck a blow for the low-budgeted racers.

No. 14-qualified Jeff Diehl, a/k/a “The Surfer Dude,” earned his first head-to-head elimination round victory, as he and Robert Hight both pushed their cars through tire smoke. After his 5.188-second, 230.61-mph clocking beat No. 3 starter Hight’s 6.394, 144.94, Diehl said, “It’s a big deal. We’ve tried not to win like that [with a “gimme”]. But if Robert Hight is going to leave it on the table, I want it.”

Tim Wilkerson’s first-round victory over Chad Head falls into the category of Schumacher’s. Same for Jack Beckman’s winning pass against Alexis De Joria and John’s Force’s first-round family feud with youngest daughter and points leader Courtney Force. Wilkerson won two of the first five races, Beckman is a champion, and Force has 16 Funny Car crowns along with more victories than any drag racer in history.

Beckman, stuck on the right side without lane choice, said, “We thought lane choice was a big deal, and we didn’t have it.” But he found out that running in the right lane didn’t hurt him any more than it hurt Schumacher in Top Fuel and Wilkerson immediately ahead of him.

(De Joria said, “Man, it was a close race. My Patrón Toyota Camry was a handful but . . . we made a solid run. There was a lot of tire smoking going on in front of me. We made a very good pass – fourth quickest of the session – but it just wasn’t our day today.”)  

John Force said after winning, “Hate knocking out my points leader, but she knows the game.”

A pair of upsets for regional racers Kenny Delco and John Gaydosh in Pro Stock’s first round guaranteed that an underdog will advance to the semifinal. Delco, a true privateer from East Setauket, N.Y., posted a winning 6.785-second elapsed time, thanks to Jim Yates tuning magic and Frank Iaconio power. Then he said, “I think we’re getting there. We’re trying hard.” Delco beat Shane Gray.

Baltimore racer Gaydosh thanked Gray and the Gray Motorsports team for their help after his 6.718-second run held off Bo Butner (who had gotten out of the groove immediately). It was his first-ever elimination-round victory. “We’ve been struggling and we finally got it,” Gaydosh said.

The unhappy news, perhaps, is that Delco and Gaydosh had to face each other in the quarterfinals.   

CAPPS STILL GOING STRONG BUT STREAK ENDS – Ron Capps won easily when Round 1 opponent John Hale had early problems, but he broke his streak of 12 three-second passes.

At last weekend's event at Epping, N.H., the NAPA Dodge Charger driver became the first Funny Car driver to complete all eight runs in a race in the three-second range. And Sunday’s opening-round pass was his 27 in a row down the track under full power.

“The consistency I always talk about, that's proof in the pudding right there,” Capps said. “That will turn on a crew chief more than anything, having the consistency and going down the track run after run."

Capps, who broke into the pro ranks in 1995 in a Top Fuel dragster, already this weekend scored back-to-back No. 1 qualifying honors for the first time in his 469-race career. Capps started qualifying with a track-record elapsed time of 3.870 seconds that held up for his third top-qualifying position of the season and 20th of his career.

He’s the second-ranked driver on the NHRA Funny Car list of all-time victories with 47.  

But he said he can't remember having such a fast and consistent Funny Car like the one he has enjoyed driving this past week.

"It feels good. You've got to be careful when you get a little too confident. It's been great, and I love the horse I get to ride right now,” he said. “[Crew chief Rahn] Tobler has done a great job. He's so focused, and he's having such a good time.

"The first lap we made on Friday was an eye-opener, not just for everybody else, but for me as a driver, 'cause it set me back in the trunk again,” Capps said. “We tried to get ready for race day today and it did slow down a bit, but it was hot. It's funny, because they were disgusted in my pit area with those two runs [Saturday] because they weren't the quickest of each session. And I love that right now."

Capps was seeking his third 2016 victory event and the fifth time to win back-to-back event titles.

"It's fun, but I've been around long enough doing this that you don't try to expect anything. We'll just keep going a little bit at a time.”

HAGAN FINDING HIS RHYTHM – Matt Hagan is starting to find his groove. He began the year testing a brand-new car with, in his words, “a bunch of different parts we were trying out.” And, he said, “We just couldn’t get it to work. I came to Pomona with one run on the car and didn’t really know anything about it. It’s got a new steering box on it, new levers, new everything.”

And things got worse from there – for a while.

The Mopar Express Lane / Rocky Boots Dodge driver found himself in 10th place in the standings after losing in the opening round at three of the first four events and posting a 1-4 record in elimination rounds.

Through it all, the two-time NHRA Funny Car champion Hagan encouraged crew chief Dickie Venables and remained positive. Now he has a legitimate reason to smile. Together Hagan, Venables, assistant crew chief Michael Knudsen, and the crew earned back-to-back Wally trophies at Atlanta and Topeka. At Heartland Park Topeka, Hagan set NHRA national records May 20 for elapsed time (3.862 seconds) and speed (335.57 mph). He qualified No. 1 in two of the past three events and was the No. 2 starter last weekend at New England Dragway.

So Hagan came to Englishtown with confidence. Moreover, he had won two of the last three NHRA Summernationals.

"I just love racing at Englishtown and not just because we've won there twice,” he said. “There is so much history there, and it means a lot to me to be a little part of that."

His confidence – and confidence in his team – grew this past Friday night, when he set the Englishtown track speed record at 326.71 mph. He ended up exiting Sunday in the second round as Jack Beckman moved into the semifinals. Still, Hagan has solidarity with his crew chief.

“Dickie’s a smart guy. I wouldn’t trade him for anything,” Hagan said. And he said that at the first race of the year, at Pomona, Calif.

He said Venables would be his choice if boss Don Schumacher said, ‘You’ve got your pick of any crew chief out here.” Said Hagan, “I’m not saying that because he’s with me now. I truly mean it and believe it in my heart that he’s that guy. He’s so methodical. There are some guys out here who run some big numbers and they do really good, but you also see them struggle. They go through cycles where they can’t get rounds. I think Dickie’s going to put a car under you that you can win rounds with. When you win rounds you win races and then you win championships.

“I like his mentality, his approach. He likes to innovate, but he’s not that guy who gets on a directions and says, ‘We’ve got to do this, and were stuck now because I’m going to look bad if I go another way.’ He’s wholesome and humble enough to say, ‘This isn’t working. We’re going to go this other direction.’ A lot of crew chiefs, their egos get in the way and they go down a path and they can’t get back from it because they don’t want to look bad or they don’t want to look like they don’t know what they’re doing. He’s just not that guy. He likes to try things. He wants to be an innovator. But he’s a guy who wants to race on Sunday. He’s a really smart racer on Sunday.”

Hagan is smart, too, for he knows he has to make the most of his opportunities.

“You look at it as ‘This could be my last ride.’ I don’t own my own team. Tomorrow Don [Schumacher] could come to me and say, ‘I’m done. I’m going to go fishin’. Good luck with your life.’ I hope that doesn’t happen. But you crawl in that car every day taking every lap and being grateful for what you’ve got,” he said.

“If you don’t put your helmet on and get up on the tire and try to kick somebody’s a--, then you’re not doing your job,” Hagan said. “I think some people take it for granted, and you can’t do that. You have to come out here with the mentality that ‘I have to win every race, because this could be my last one.’ ”  

DIEHL, DELCO KEEP ROLLING – Maybe Tim Wilkerson regrets his lane-swap choice. Just before his second-round race against Jeff Diehl, the Levi, Ray, & Shoup Mustang driver decided he wanted to take the right lane (after seeing Jack Beckman use it to eliminate Matt Hagan). But he lost to Diehl by 14-thousandths of a second, even as Diehl coasted across the finish line.

“These guys have beat up on me for so long. It’s time for me to start swinging at them,” Diehl said. “I love Timmy. He’s helped me out a lot to get to where I am right now, but I have to beat these guys. That’s what it’s all about.”

He was swinging but he missed in the semifinals against Jack Beckman.

Rob Wendland and his Amalie Oil Dragster team helped prepare Diehl’s car for his quarterfinal and semifinal runs.

Delco benefitted from Gaydosh’s red-light foul in the quarterfinals and earned the right to face Greg Anderson in the semifinals. Anderson won that match-up, but that semifinal race was not without a glitch. Some sort of debris interfered with the timing sensor in Delco’s lane, and the clock became stuck at 1.512 seconds before the run ended. But Anderson, whose scoreboard lit up at 6.601 seconds and 211.39 mph, clearly crossed the finish line first, by more than a car length.   

CRAMPTON STRUGGLES STILL – It’s back to the drawing board for popular Top Fuel driver Richie Crampton, crew chief Aaron Brooks, and the Lucas Oil Dragster crew. He had lost his first-round match-ups at five of the first nine races. And he added a sixth early exit at Englishtown, ironically the site of his first Top Fuel victory two years ago.

Crampton smoked the tires and had other mechanical trouble and shut his engine off early, assuring the victory for JR Todd. The Kalitta Motorsports driver was grateful for the round-win after enduring his own set of struggles.

"JR had a nice run, for sure, but even a mediocre run would have been enough," Crampton said. "It's been seven races now that we've ended up frustrated on race day. I know we've all rebounded from stuff like this before, but until you get on the good side of things it's very tough on everyone.

"There's no quit in this group and we'll keep our heads up. There's not much you can do but work hard. We have looked at and worked on every single component of the car. About the only thing we haven't changed is the chassis, but this one was brand new at the start of the year,” he said.

"Sometimes the best thing to do is put the last race behind you as quickly as possible and move forward," Crampton said. "It's funny, because if we had gone out there just now and run a 3.82, the result would have been the same, but we'd likely feel a bit better about ourselves.”

ELVIS HAS LEFT ELIMINATIONS – Valvoline/Nova Services Pro Stock driver Shane Gray’s Camaro was a hunka-hunka– well . . . It behaved like a real mess Sunday when he lined up against Kenny Delco in the first round of eliminations. "We were shaking, rattling, and rolling up there at the launch," Gray said. "My car did its best impersonation of Elvis. It did everything but go straight.

"At this point, we're not entirely sure what went wrong, whether we over-cooked the tune-up or if there was a mechanical issue. Up until today, the car has run very well and we certainly didn't expect that to happen,” Gray said. “But it did, so we'll do our homework and get ready for the next one."

He said he’s taking a break, taking the family to New York City for some sightseeing through Wednesday, and forgetting about what might have been at Englishtown. "We're going to stay in Manhattan until Thursday morning," Gray said. "I've got the whole family here, and as the boys get older that's becoming harder and harder to do. It'll be nice to not think about racing for a few days and just enjoy my family. I'd imagine by Thursday we'll be ready to race."

The tour heads down South to Bristol, Tenn., this coming weekend for the third of four races in as many weekends.

SAMPEY SEEKS FIRST VICTORY SINCE 2007 – Star Racing’s Angelle Sampey spoiled Eddie Krawiec’s hometown visit in the Pro Stock Motorcycle semifinals, beating the Old Bridge native and Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson racer by seven-thousandth of a second. That set up an all-Louisiana final round between herself and Jerry Savoie, who had beaten Chip Ellis in the other semifinal. Three-time series champion Sampey’s most recent victory came at Houston in April 2007.

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK - KALITTA POISED TO START ANOTHER STREAK, TORRENCE TOPS AGAIN, QUARTERFINALS OR BUST FOR TODD, NOVELLI DRAWS LUCKY NO. 13 SPOT, MIKE SMITH SNAKE-BITTEN, SMAX SMITH BUYS DIEHLS’ HEADERS RIGHT OFF THE CAR, ALLEN JOHNSON OVERCOMES OBSTACLES, KRAWIEC SATYS NO. 1 IN MOTOCYCLE CLASS, SAMPEY HUNGRY, ARANA SHAKING FRUSTRATIONS, ELLIS FASTEST IN BIKES
 

TOP FUEL
 

KALITTA WANTS TO START ANOTHER STREAK – Top Fuel points leader Doug Kalitta saw his streak of three victories and 14 elimination-round wins end at Epping just five days ago. So the Mac Tools Dragster driver plans to start another one here, beginning with first-round opponent xxxx xxxxxx. Kalitta has advanced to four final rounds and to the semifinals or beyond in seven of the previous nine races. Six times he has qualified no worse than second. He’s fourth all-time in Top Fuel victories with 41 and final-round appearances with 85.

Antron Brown has cut Kalitta’s points lead in half, so Kalitta is extra-motivated to record a fourth victory this weekend. He has won twice at Englishtown but not in a decade, although he came close two years ago when Richie Crampton earned his first Top Fuel trophy.

“The Top Fuel field is very tough with so many cars capable of winning each week. My Mac Tools ride is one of the most consistent, and we have a good handle on what we want to do. We just have to buckle down and get everything out of the track we can.”

TORRENCE TOPS AGAIN – For the fifth time in 10 races this season, Steve Torrence will start the Capco Contractors/Rio Ammunition dragster from the No. 1 qualifying position Sunday.

He kept the spot he earned provisionally in two Friday sessions, a 3.735-second elapsed time on the 1,000-foot course at 325.06 mph.

This is his 10th top-qualifying position, and he took advantage of warmer track conditions that made it nearly impossible for anyone else to challenge his E.T. Doug Kalitta, the points leader, countered with a 3.808-second pass, but it was not enough to deny Torrence. Even Torrence could muster no better than a 3.839-second clocking Saturday.

Torrence is scheduled to face No. 16 qualifier Smax Smith in the first round of runoffs Sunday.

“It feels good,” Torrence said after he extended to 18 the number of consecutive events in which he has qualified in the top half of the field. “The car has been running well all year, and that’s big boost of confidence for myself and the guys.  We just need to keep it together through tomorrow and maybe we can get out of here with the trophy.”

His best previous start here was fourth, but he won the Summernationals from the No. 5 starting position in 2012, beating Brandon Bernstein in the final.

Torrence is third in the standings, behind only Kalitta and reigning series champion Antron Brown.

“What we’ve done before doesn’t really matter,” Torrence said, “whether it’s a win or a first round loss.  It’s all part of the learning experience.  We’ve been working for the last four years to put all the pieces in place and now that we have, we expect to do well at every race.  That’s the big difference between then and now.  Before, we hoped to do well.  Now, we expect it.”             

TODD TRYING TO SHAKE EARLY-EXIT STRING – JR Todd has been a little streaky this season, starting with just one opening-round loss in the first five races, then three Round 1 exits in the past four races. His qualifying experience this weekend was more of the same. His ledger reads: 6.193 seconds, 97.03 mph in Q1; 10.273, 84.04 in Q2; 4.073, 226.01 in Q3; 3.818, 278.29. However, he did get two bonus points for being second-quickest in the fourth and final qualifying session.

He’ll start eighth Sunday and have lane choice over No. 9-qualified Richie Crampton, who’d like to repeat his 2014 victory here.    

Said Todd, "The SealMaster machine was definitely on a tear on that last pass, and it just didn't make it to the line. However, that last run was an improvement and something we can build on tomorrow.

“My SealMaster team has definitely turned the corner, and we can contend for the win,” he said. “Once we start getting these first rounds to go our way, I am confident we will be around for the later stages of every event.”

He’s seventh in points.

Crampton is equally frustrated this season.

"Having been a crewman for some 10 years before taking the seat in this race car, I know how frustrating it can be to work as hard as humanly possible but not get the results you were expecting," the Lucas Oil Dragster driver said. "It can really demoralize you if you let it, but this group, I'll tell you, there is no give-up in these guys at all. They want to get this thing straightened out more than anyone.

"The thing that keeps us going is our past successes. We didn't win five races last year and finish third in the world by mistake. We earned everything we got, and although we haven't had the same success to date this year, we know it's coming. We just need to keep the mood up and carry on," he said.

"At some point we'll find a tune-up the car likes and we'll get the consistency we need," Crampton said. "Bit by bit, we're closing in on it. I'm proud of the guys and the work they're putting in day after day. I suffer right there with them, and I know Aaron [crew chief Brooks] is doing everything he can to get us going again. Drag racing is a sport full of peaks and valleys and right now we're in a valley, but we will get ourselves out of this."

FUNNY CAR

MIKE SMITH SNAKE-BITTEN – For years, Rhea Goodrich has looked at his wall and seen the the framed opening-day poster from Raceway Park in July 1965. The co-owner of the New Englander Funny Car that Mike Smith drives grew up 25 miles from Old Bridge Township, N.J. So that’s one reason he and co-owner Paul Weiss, who lives in Middletown, Conn., and their all-volunteer crew have tried so hard at this race and last week’s event at Epping, N.H.

But racing on Sunday right now just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Smith.

Even with pro fields that hardly have been full at every race, Smith has had little luck. The Epping Funny Car slate had 17 cars (one extra), and so did this week’s at Englishtown. And Smith unfortunately got the booby prize – the No. 17 position – for the second time in just seven days.

Weiss and Goodrich took last season off after 40 years of racing, got a trailer and more parts and updated their entire program. Epping was the team’s first race in a year and a half.

Said Weiss, “We went with the philosophy that we’re going to go to Epping to test the car and then come here to qualify. It didn’t seem that way, but we actually had two good runs up there at Epping. We learned a lot. We put a new, bigger blower on the car, and we were trying to adjust the fuel system to it. And we mis-guessed that. We have to have a starting point somewhere. We were lean, and we burned the No. 5 piston – twice. We tested out the new requirements they have, the oil-pan pressure switch. We tested it twice [he said, chagrined] – and it worked. That’s the good news. We didn’t have any rods out of the thing. It shut the car off. The first time I shut the car off, I banged the blower. That’s when we had the big flash fire on Friday [at New England Dragway]. We made a little correction on the air line so that doesn’t happen again. Then we went out Saturday on the first session, put a hole in No. 5, but the car ran strong. It was a 5.41, shut off. Had we continued on with the run, it would have been a mid-teen, which would have gotten us in the show.

“We thrashed to try to make it for the next round [last Saturday],” Weiss said, “and we ended up five minutes short. We were hooking up the car, ready to pull it to the line, and they said, ‘That’s it. The Funny Cars are running.’ ”   

Then this weekend, Smith’s best time was a 6.398-second effort at 101.78 mph, considerably slower than John Hale’s 4.492-second bump time.

Such tough luck is not unexpected for Weiss and Goodrich. They know their scant budget brings such heartaches.

Weiss said that for years, “we didn’t own a trailer. We were always borrowing a trailer. Talk about being a low-budget team. Now we own this Renegade trailer, and [acquiring] that was a big thing.”

He said, “What happened initially, when I put the team together back in 2011, is Mike Smith had an idea of how he wanted to tune the car. The car was totally different than his father’s [Paul Smith’s]. He wanted to prove that he could do something like this. So he put his tune-up into the car. The first couple of years it ran pretty good. At that point, we started to put in bigger pumps, bigger this, and bigger that. And you kind of lose the tune-up. I had older parts at that time, and I was very familiar with the parts.

“We came to Englishtown in 2011, in our first national event. We had never been down the track. In our last qualifying session, we ran a 4.25, then qualified. John Force wasn’t in yet, and he bumped us out,” he said.

Weiss said the team usually attends three races: Epping, Englishtown, and Reading. This year the team is adding Charlotte to its schedule.

“We’re hoping to attract a bigger sponsor and a couple of little sponsors,” he said.

 

PRO STOCK
 

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES – Allen Johnson overcame a freakish situation from Friday and what he called “a little boo-boo” Saturday to put his Marathon Petroleum/J&J Racing Dodge Dart in the No. 5 starting position.

He started his car for the first qualifying session Friday, but NHRA officials shut him off because they had to do some more prep work on the track. The team pushed Johnson back, but when he tried to re-fire the engine, he couldn’t because of a mechanical problem. He and his crew regrouped and came back in Friday’s night session and ran a 6.565-second pass at 212.06 mph.
 
“Friday was a testament to our team and the experience we have,” Johnson said. “We had really bad luck that first session, and my team came back and adjusted for the second run. And we made a really good run for the conditions.”
 
In Saturday qualifying, Johnson posted a 6.650, 207.59 and a 6.665, 208.26 in hot track conditions. That seems to be where the car performs best.

“We had a good setup for a hot track and the heat on that last run,” he said. “We made one little boo boo in the last session today that probably cost us a couple of hundredths [of a second in elapsed time]. I think we could’ve gone a .64, so we’ve got a little more in it for them tomorrow.”

He has lane choice against No. 12 Alex Laughlin.

“Weather conditions seem to be the same for tomorrow,” Johnson said, “and if we set it up correctly, we’ll be in the running to win this race.”
 

PRO STOCK MOTORCYCLE
 

KRAWIEC STAYS NO. 1  - Eddie Krawiec retained the lead he earned Friday with a 6.783-second elapsed time at 195.53 mph for his 30th top-qualifying effort. It comes at his hometown track, where he was the dragstrip manager from 1999 through 2007.

He said, “It’s really good not to hear ‘provisional’ in front of that ‘No. 1 qualifier.’ This is a pretty stout field. Today was a little different, but fortunately, we had race-day conditions. Our goal today was not to go out and run low E.T. but to learn.”

Krawiec said he and his Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson team gathered some valuable data Saturday, including proof that an adjustment they had planned to make would have been a poor move.

Krawiec, who’ll start his quest for a second hometown victory and 34th overall against Brian Pretzel, said his first Wally is one that the late Dave Schultz’s wife gave him. “That’s what gave me the incentive to come out here and win my own,” he said. “That changed my career.”

SAMPEY HUNGRY – All her No. 1 qualifying position and semifinal finish at Atlanta did for Angelle Sampey was make her want to win her 42nd victory. She’ll start her 199th Pro Stock Motorcycle event from the No. 5 berth against No. 12 qualifier Michael Ray.

“I just looked at it, and I’ve got a tough side of the ladder,” Sampey said. “I feel good going into tomorrow, though. I don’t think it’s going to be easy, by any means, but this class never is anymore. We’ve got more in it. I’M proud of us. I think we’re doing a good job, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Sampey won here three consecutive times, from 1998-2000, to follow only John Myers and Dave Schultz as the most successful bike racers in the history of this event. One more victory would pull her within one of tying Andrew Hines, who passed her (at 43) for the most victories in class history.   
 
“In the past, this track has been kind of tricky but we’ve won there quite a few times,” Sampey said. “With the momentum we have after Atlanta, I know our first win of the season is right there. It’s just one of those things. The stars need to align and we all need to be perfect. The first win is right there, and I want it so bad.”

The Star Racing headliner said she hardly can believe where her career has taken her.

“I can’t believe I’ve been racing this long” she said. “When I first started racing with George [team owner Bryce], he asked how long I wanted to race for and I said five years, but those five years came and went so fast. I didn’t think I would still be racing after 22 years. And even though I took a few years off, it’s insane what I’ve accomplished. Because of what I’ve accomplished in my career, I’ve been able to travel the world. I don’t have to race – I’m here because I want to race and I want to be my daughter Ava’s role model. I know our win is coming soon, and we still have fun no matter what. But winning will be the icing on the cake.”

ARANA IN MIDDLE OF FIELD BUT SHAKING FRUSTRATION – Lucas Oil Buell team owner Hector Arana Sr. is third in the Pro Stock Motorcycle standings, but he’s a mid-packer on the race-day grid at Englishtown.

He said he knows he could be doing better this season, but he also knows some late-arriving – then unreliable – parts have made his motorcycle a bit erratic.

As he prepared to meet No. 8 Steve Johnson, No. 9 Arana said, "The main thing holding me and Hector (Jr., his son and teammate) back this year has been the crankshafts. We didn't even get our first order filled until two weeks before the season started [in March] in Gainesville, so we were robbing parts from our back-up motors just to get ready for the first race. Then we finally got the new ones, and some of them weren't good, so it's been very frustrating for us. We know we should be better.”

As for the fickle parts, he said, "They would show us something positive and you'd think, 'OK, now we're getting somewhere,’ and then they'd fail the next run. The good news is the supplier has been working really hard for us to figure out how to correct the problem.”

But he came here, he said, “ready to race with good parts that won't let us down. This weekend will show us a lot."

He should be encouraged. Son Hector Arana Jr. was the No. 3 qualifier (with lane choice over No. 14 Jim Underdahl in Sunday’s Round 1).

Arana Sr. has enjoyed a little more success at the track than his son. He ran his career-best top speed of 199.35 mph here last June. He also has been runner-up twice (in 2012 and 2013) and was top qualifier here in 2009. Arana Jr. notched his career-best elapsed time (6.772 seconds) at this facility in 2014.

He said an ideal weekend would include making it through a race with no parts failures.

"We've been going over the bikes from end to end and really pushing the envelope, trying to find a little more speed,” Arana said. “I don't like qualifying mid-pack, and that's where we've been the past [three] races. We haven't been out to test, but I've been wearing the dyno out.”

Now he’s hoping to wear his opponents out.   

ELLIS FASTEST IN BIKES – Chip Ellis used a 198.38-mph pass on Junior Pippin’s PiranaZ Buell Friday to score the fastest speed of the meet so far. As the No. 6 qualifier, he’ll meet No. 11 Scotty Pollacheck when eliminations begin Sunday. Ellis’ best pass came in the first overall qualifying session, although he said the first day didn’t produce exactly what he wanted: “We missed a little on the clutch tune-up.”    

DNQs – Both Matt Smith and his wife, Angie Smith, were among those who missed the Pro Stock Motorcycle race-day field. They had plenty of company: Shawn Gann, Joe DeSantis, Melissa Surber, Tommy Micelli (from nearby Manalapan, N.J.), and Lance Bonham. Suzuki rider Brian Pretzel secured the 16th and final spot at 6.983 seconds (at 191.65 mph).

FRIDAY NOTEBOOK - GRITTY PRITCHETT CHARGES ON, SMALL-TOWN MILLICAN WANTS LARGE CROWD . . . WITH HIM IN WINNERS CIRCLE, BROWN’S DRAG-RACING ROOTS HERE, ARMY TEAM MAKING PROGRESS, REED ROCKS THE BOAT, LAGANA LINES UP AGAINST FORMER DRIVER OF HIS CAR, PEDREGON SEEKS TO REGAIN HIS RHYTHM, COURTNEY FORCE BEGINS PIVOTAL WEEKEND, BECKMAN TEAM SCRAMBLES, WORSHAM ON A MISSION HERE, KB/SUMMIT TEAMS WANT MORE SPOILS, SAVVY SAVOIE AHEAD OF HIS OWN CURVE, KRAWIEC COMES HOME AS MATURED BUSINESSMAN, YOUNG BIKE RACER GAINING CONFIDENCE, ANGIE SMITH GETS GLIMMER OF ENCOURAGMENT
 

TOP FUEL
 

GRITTY PRITCHETT RACING WITH DSR – Leah Pritchett has mined every bit of marketing prowess and pure pluck she can muster since her former Top Fuel team disbanded suddenly in April. Racing with the Lagana family and being at the center of a deal between her primary sponsors and Don Schumacher Racing, she has managed to stay in the top 10 and on track for a berth in the Countdown to the Championship.

Despite all the business wrangling that occupies more of her time than she had imagined for this season, Pritchett has kept he driving skills sharp. Under the Lagana family banner at Epping last weekend, she qualified 10th and defeated Clay Millican to make the quarterfinal round. There she clocked an outstanding .019-second reaction time but lost a close race to Tony Schumacher, one of her new stablemates.

"We had a phenomenal weekend," Pritchett said of her Lagana team. "We got down the track all four times in qualifying, then beat Clay Millican in the first round. We both smoked the tires, but I pedaled it and got it to hook up first. We only had 45 minutes to get the car ready for the next run against my new DSR teammate, Tony Schumacher. We were hustling and the last ones to get up to the line. I nailed it on the starting line and was ahead for most of the run. He caught me near the finish line."

She is competing this weekend in her second race for DSR with backing from FireAde and owner Ron Thames. He agreed to sponsor her for fur races, including the Atlanta event in May and this weekend’s Summernationals. She also will compete for DSR with FireAde for at least two more Mello Yello events: the June 17-19 Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol, Tenn., and the U.S. Nationals during Labor Day Weekend at Indianapolis.

Pritchett, who just turned 28 two weeks ago, is one of the Top Fuel class’ rare twentysomethings. But the former Jr. Dragster racer added her victory in February at Phoenix to go with several Pro Modified victories and an NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series championship. She just celebrated her 20th year in the sport.

Her dragster represents the fourth Top Fuel entry and eighth overall team in the DSR organization, which had less than two weeks to prepare for her Atlanta race. Pritchett said, “It was amazing how hard everyone at DSR worked to make the Atlanta race happen. Then Don and Ron added Englishtown, and our FireAde crew hasn't stopped working to get us ready for Englishtown.”

Heading that crew are Mike Guger and Joe Barlam, her crew chiefs at the start the season. Working with them this weekend out of the team's two new 18-wheel transporter rigs – the newest 53-foot technical trailers in DSR's 20-truck fleet – are two special friends. Michael and Marla (Weidenaar) O’Guin have come from the sidelines to work on Pritchett’s car.

“Duty calls!” Marla O’Guin wrote in a Facebook post as she and her husband left their Goodlettsville, Tenn., home to fly to Englishtown. “The O’Guins briefly are coming out of retirement to work on Leah Pritchett’s car in E-town!” (Just for the record, she isn’t longing to return to the grinding 24-race Mello Yello Drag Racing Series tour. She posted the NHRA’s newly released 2017 schedule and commented, “Soooo not jealous of this. Yikes.”) Michel O’Guin worked on Antron Brown’s championship Matco Tools/Toyota Dragster, and Marla O’Guin worked on Terry McMillen’s Top Fuel dragster before moving to the Funny Car ranks with Alexis De Joria then Jack Beckman.     

Pritchett is thankful for their help and for everyone who has helped her in this fight for driving survival. "Mike and Joe have been great," she said. "We've been using some of our old crew, and all the DSR crew chiefs have been a huge help."

A year ago here, Pritchett qualified fourth and lost in the opening round to Dave Connolly. She set her career-best elapsed time at Englishtown last June at 3.736 seconds.

YOU CAN GO HOME AGAN - Antron Brown was at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park even before he was born – “I was in my mama’s stomach at the racetrack. [Then] I was pushed around that racetrack in a stroller. That’s how long I’ve been going here. That’s all I ever knew. I embraced it because it was fun . . . it was a rush, being part of the team, working with my dad and uncle, seeing my grandpop and how he orchestrated them and got them to do what they do. Then they turned around and did the same thing for me. I was opened up to so many things, working on tractors and trucks to race cars to anything – if it had wheels and it rolled and started and ran, it was nothing we couldn’t work on,” Brown said.

“We always fixed everything ourselves. We were definitely do-it-yourselfers, and this sport catered to that,” he said. “That’s what this sport is about. It’s about people who come out here and work hard and they’re looking for that edge. They’re not scared to put that work in.

“It’s always nice to go back home where you were born and raised. To go back to Englishtown, where the NHRA racing roots were instilled in me, it’s just special,” Brown said. “It’s always good to go back and see all of your friends, all your peers, and people at the racetrack who remember me as a kid when I was always walking around with holes in my jeans at the knees, being all greasy from head to toe. That’s what I used to do with my dad and uncle. I learned so much growing up as a kid at that racetrack. It’s incredible just to go back and remember all of those good times I had growing up. I was that little kid living the American Dream.”

The former Pro Stock Motorcycle racer earned his first Top Fuel victory at Englishtown last June, and it happened also to be his 50th overall triumph.

“Not just to win there, but to get my 50th career win at my hometown, there’s something to be said for that. Especially it being my first Top Fuel win there. To be able to get that win with my incredible team in front of my family, friends and my hometown, that was just really, really special. I will remember that race win forever,” Brown said.

ROCKIN’ THE BOAT - Shawn Reed is driving Todd Paton’s dragster with Hughes Oilfield Transport livery this weekend. The two became acquainted nearly eight years ago, as Paton represents Racepak, the data-acquisition system, and Reed is Racepak customer for the drag boat he races. And talk turned to the notion of Reed someday driving the dragster.

“I’ve known Todd for 6-7-8 years. I race boats normally. I run Racepak in my boat. I’ve talked to Todd about it, and last year it just happened finally,” Reed, of Lake Tapps, Wash., south of Seattle, said.

Reed earned his Top Fuel license at the PRO Winter Warm-up at Jupiter, Fla., last January.

“This is really fast. Drag boats is where I started, and I love drag boats,” he said. “I’ll never get rid of my boat. I own, tune, and drive my boat. Here, I’m just a sparkplug. I just get in it and steer it.”

He drove it just fine and steered the car straight Friday for an early No. 7 placing at 5.064 seconds, 145.61 mph.   

CROWDS CAN BE FUN – Top Fuel driver Clay Millican is from “a wide spot in the road” in West Tennessee. His hometown of Drummonds and his current residence, Munford, don’t qualify for metropolis status. One of his all-time favorite races here at Englishtown probably had more fans in the bleachers than live in Drummond and Munford combined.    

“When I think Englishtown, I think big crowds, low E.T.s, and fast speeds,” the Great Clips / Parts Plus Dragster driver for Stringer Performance said before qualifying began Friday. “One of my biggest racing memories from the track was when I raced Shirley Muldowney here on a Wednesday night, and the place was packed! I’m talking packed on a Wednesday. That’s when you know a track produces some great racing, because the fans come no matter what to catch the action. It’s a fast and fun place to race, and I can’t wait to get going this weekend.”

The Stringer Performance team saw a plenty big crowd before they settled down to business at Englishtown. They journeyed up to New York City, which proved to be a lot more chaotic and bustling than their usual surroundings in McLeansboro, Ill., (population 3,000). They tried New York-style pizza and visited some of the tourist attractions, including Times Square.

Those sites are no big deal, though, to two of their crew members. Clutch /tire specialist John Gilbert, is from Burlington Township, N.J. The other “Jersey Boy” is main clutch man (and supercharger/ignition/manifold specialist) Anthony Fragola. He’s from Closter (Bergen County) in the northern part of the Garden State.

What Millican would like most at this race is to have the biggest crowd around his dragster – in the winners circle, celebrating his first NHRA victory in 229 races. Millican is the most successful IHRA racer with six consecutive Top Fuel championships.

ARMY TEAM ‘METICULOUS, ENGINEERED’ IN PROGRESS – Tony Schumacher had a rare red light just four days ago in his Top Fuel semifinal match-up against DSR and U.S. Army teammate Antron Brown at Epping, N.H. Schumacher still is seeking his first victory of the season in this 10th of 24 events.   

As the tour prepped for the second race of a four-in-a-row stretch, he said, “Honestly, I think what’s on my mind is that I had the best car every round last weekend at New Hampshire and that we have been getting incrementally better each of the last three events. We’ve got a great car. We’ve always had a great car. But we’re finally starting to get to where we’re accustomed to being, when we feel like we’re just not going to be beaten. It’s one of those things about being a machine once you get to feeling like that. You’re going to make mistakes, like last week when we red-lighted. When that happened, I told myself I need to work even harder. I felt that round that I had to step it up. If you look last year, I had a .006 light and beat Antron. That’s always the feeling when we race each other, when we get up there next to them, that we’ve got to be at our very best.

“The Army car has gotten better over the last three races, a little better each time. Mike [crew chief Green] and Neal [assistant crew chief Strausbaugh] just need the time it takes to get us where we want to be, because they’re developing and because the changes they make along the way are small and very deliberate. But once we get there, we tend to stay there seemingly forever, and that’s what the other teams are afraid of. We’re meticulous and engineered and very particular in the moves we make to improve.”

Schumacher’s sponsor, the U.S. Army, will celebrate its 241st birthday here Saturday, with an impressive presence immediately before qualifying resumes with the third overall session. Spicing up the traditional cake-cutting festivities at the starting line will be the U.S. Army Drill Team and Continental Color Guard from the 3d U.S. Army Infantry Regiment (Old Guard). Then Sunday, as part of the opening ceremonies, the U.S. Army Gold Knights precision parachute demonstration team will perform.

Said Schumacher, “We’ve been racing for the U.S. Army for a long time, now, and it’s been a hugely successful program with a lot of incredible moments together over the years. But each time we celebrate the Army’s birthday, it’s extra special and it is a great reminder of what we all do this for. The Army is bigger than all of us. It’s been around longer than the United States of America, if you stop and think about it. They scored our country its first and still its ultimate victory. That’s certainly reason to celebrate, and we’re proud to have been part of the U.S. Army family for as long as we have. Our Army – and by that I mean soldiers, families, and Army civilians – epitomizes what is best about America.”

PAST DRIVER, CURRENT DRIVER – Dom Lagana didn’t make a run with his Nitro Ninja Dragster in the opening qualifying session Friday. But when he lined up in the evening session, he found himself in the lane opposite Leah Pritchett. She drove his Nitro Ninja car at the previous race, at Epping, N.H. – as recently as eliminations four days before. But she is driving for Don Schumacher Racing this weekend with FireAde sponsorship.  
   

FUNNY CAR

RECORD PERFORMANCES – Crediting NAPA Dodge crew chief Rahn Tobler and saying, “It’s an extension of last weekend” [at Epping, N.H., where he won], Ron Capps led the first Funny Car session with a track-record 3.870-second elapsed time on the 1,000-foot course. Robert Hight drove his AAA Chevy Camaro to the track speed record at 323.74 mph.

RETURNING TO SCENE OF PRIME - Cruz Pedregon is a three-time Funny Car winner (1995, 2000, 2014), has been runner-up twice (1999, 2011), and has qualified No. 1 five times (1992, 1998, 2005, 2011, 2014) at Englishtown, N.J. So maybe the Snap-on Toyota Camry owner-driver will find his mojo again here and start to turn around his 3-9 start in eliminations this year. Pedregon has absorbed seven first-round defeats in nine races this year. But he clocked his career-best and second-best elapsed times in the past two events (3.923 seconds, at Topeka, and 3.94, at Epping, N.H.).  

“It’s been a bit of struggle, but things are starting to come together,” Pedregon said. “The motor’s not hurting itself, and we’re starting to run that speed we need down the second half of the track.”

Car chief Chris Kullberg said, “Englishtown has been a winner for us before, and we’re ready for it to be again.”

LOOKING OVER HER SHOULDER – Points leader Courtney Force said she’s “thrilled to keep our rhythm going by heading straight into the second race of a four-race swing.” She said she left Epping “having learned some things about our car in the heat early.” With a second-round finish, she’s also relieved to keep her lead in the standings, although Jack Beckman is 15 points behind her in second place and Ron Capps is third, just 22 points off her pace.

Last year here, she qualified sixth and lost in the opening round to Tony Pedregon. But she said she plans to have better results this time.

“Although we haven't had the best luck at this track in the past, I feel that we have a better car now more than ever to be able to go rounds here,” Force said. “This year I think we will be coming in with a pretty consistent running race car.

“Mentally and physically, our team is ready for the race this weekend compared to last year. We had a good car here last year and had a good shot at going rounds but struggled with the car spinning down track. Our attitude as a team is amazing and we are all motivated to perform better than we had in the past here and hope to give the fans a great show,” she said. “This is an important weekend for our team, as we are trying to hold onto that points lead, and we are going to need to fight hard this weekend if we want to keep it because our competitors are closing our gap.”

FORCE EAGER TO MAKE MORE E-TOWN HISTORY – John Force’s history at this facility goes back to the late 1970s, long before he ever became the class’ and the NHRA’s runaway victories leader. Force began match racing here, then reached the final round of the SummerNationals the first time he competed in this storied race in 1979. Funny Car legend Raymond Beadle beat him that day, but for nearly four decades, Force built a legacy of success with four Summernationals victories 10 final-round appearance.

“I have a lot of history at Englishtown. I used to match race there with Vinnie Napp [when owner Napp wove his innovative magic], and I won a lot there in the ‘90s,” Force said. “I love going to [this] track and seeing all the fans and all the history. I have a great hot rod right now, and we are running with the competition. I set career best numbers [last week] in Epping. I have been on the road for almost two months, and that is what I love about my job.”

The 16-time champion hasn’t won a race yet this year but does have a runner-up showing at Phoenix and just this Monday extended his streak of semifinal appearances to four events. Ron Capps edged him at the finish line four days ago at New England Dragway at Epping, N.H.

Capps, who is a distant second in Funny Car victories, is but one of a number of racers who have had rivalries with Force through the years. Chuck Etchells, Jerry Toliver, Al Hofmann, Capps, and Matt Hagan share that distinction . . . but John Force always looks back fondly on his early days at Englishtown – and even on the new guard making their own memories.    

“Capps is a tough competitor but he is also a friend. He is a good straight-up, hard-nosed racer. I really respect him. I go after him with all I’ve got. He is that good and I have to keep working to keep up with him. He makes me better,” Force said.

Force has won four times at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park but not since 1999. His last final-round appearance here was 2004, when he lost to Gary Densham. Matt Hagan has eliminated Force in the first round in each of past two seasons.

HEROES IN THE BACKGROUND – The heroes this week for Jack Beckman’s Infinite Hero Dodge are Don Schumacher Racing fabrication shop manager Joe Fitzpatrick and technicians Dan Murphy, Travis Orr, and Austin Carter . . . and DSR Vice-President Mike Lewis. They’re the ones who invested more than 20 hours to haul Beckman’s beaten-up chassis from Epping, N.H., back to Brownsburg, Ind., then repair it for reassembly and transportation here to New Jersey. It is the back-up car this weekend.

When the Jimmy Prock /John Medlen/Chris Cunningham-led crew determined the chassis needed a major overhaul, Lewis rented a pick-up truck and carried what was left of the frame back to Brownsburg.

Beckman said, "We took out the hacksaw and cut it so it would fit in the bed of a pickup. Joe was on the phone with our team (Saturday) night, figuring out what needed to be done once it got back to the shop.” He referred to the DSR “home team” as “good, dedicated, talented people" for fixing the damage from what many Funny Car veterans described as the biggest Funny Car explosion ever.

The “new” car cranked out two 3.93-second passes during Monday’s eliminations at New England Dragway, and Beckman said, "I actually think this new chassis drives a little better. The back half of the other chassis had tons of runs on it, and we had run it over parts of the past four years. To actually be able to go out and run two 3.93s after all the things we had to suffer through Saturday, and then having Sunday's rain delay, says a lot about the character of our Infinite Hero team."

Beckman, who’s ranked No. 2 and trails class leader Courtney Force by a mere 15 points, is seeking his first Englishtown victory. He was runner-up here in 2013.

WANTS WIN IN 'SCOTT'S CAR' – Del Worsham made his first Summernationals appearance in the DHL Toyota Funny Car in 2013, always mindful that the ride is a tribute to Scott Kalitta, who lost his life at this track in a qualifying accident in 2008. And three times Worsham has performed well in the Camry, with top-three starting spots and semifinal-or-better finishes in every visit here.

Worsham’s second career victory came here, but for him, a triumph at this venue would carry extra significance.

 “We have come so close to winning this race every time since I joined Kalitta Motorsports,” Worsham said. “I know how special it would be to deliver this trophy to Connie [team owner Kalitta, Scott’s father]. My DHL team is up to the challenge.”
 

PRO STOCK
 

KB WANTS MORE – Greg Anderson, Jason Line, and Bo Butner are seeking the KB / Summit Racing Team’s 10th victory this season. They have been impossible to stop so far, with Line hogging five Wally trophies and Anderson the other four. Only Chris McGaha at Phoenix and Allen Johnson at Epping, N.H, have been able to reach a final in a non KB/Summit entry. Butner has advanced to two finals.

The news might not be promising for the rest of the class. Anderson has won six times at Englishtown, including last year.

“It’s one of my favorite tracks. It just fits with my driving style and how my car handles,” Anderson said. “My Chevy loves the conditions there. It’s very similar to Epping, and we had great success there last weekend. I couldn’t be happier.

“It’s been a great start to the year,” Anderson, who has raced in four straight final rounds and is second in the standings, said. “My race team is on fire right now, and it’s just a dream to drive that race car. I love racing up here in the Northeast. It reminds me of Minnesota, where I grew up. It feels like going back home. I love racing in Epping. I love racing in Englishtown and these two weeks are probably a couple of my favorite race weekends of the year. I love racing up here, and the fans love it. It’s just a win-win deal.”

Line called this course “a good race track. It has a lot of the same conditions as Epping. It’s a fun place, and my family will be with me. I always look forward to going there.”

No matter how well everyone else performed Friday, at the end of the first day of qualifying, the three KB/Summit racers were 1-2-3 again, provisionally. Line was quickest – in fact, his 6.519-second elapsed was the year’s best. Anderson was second at 6.533, And Bo “Birthday Boy” Butner was third at 6.540, just one-thousandth of a second better than Vincent Nobile.

 

PRO STOCK MOTORCYCLE

 

COMFORTABLE AND IMPROVING – Jerry Savoie already has five elimination-round victories in 2016 for his White Alligator Racing team. And that’s five more than he had at this point one year ago en route to finishing third in the final standings.

The Suzuki team owner-racer from Cutoff, La., said, “Every year it seems like we usually start off slow and step up. This year we got going a little earlier. We normally never run well in Atlanta, but we’ve been creeping up on the bike and we had a really good weekend [there]. The goal this year is to finish in the top three. If we can make it there I’ll be pretty happy.”

Savoie, who won this Summernationals race a year ago, is ranked fourth in the class after three bike events. He was runner-up to Eddie Krawiec at Atlanta in the most recent NHRA race that included motorcycles.

“My reaction times the last couple years have been a struggle,” Savoie said, “and I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on. It turns out we had an issue with the motorcycle, and [in Atlanta] it seemed like maybe we got on the right track with that. With the engine, Tim [crew chief Kulungian] went with a different set-up, and that’s worked really well.

“We ran well a year ago in Englishtown and stumbled onto something,” he said. “To go faster than any Suzuki had ever gone in the class, that was pretty amazing. We just figured out something and hopefully we can keep it going this year. I like it when the weather gets warmer, and I think Tim has the upper hand on tuning in those conditions. When things are clicking, people start pressing against you and make mistakes. When that starts happening, I get even more comfortable.”

He said he feels pretty comfortable right now: “We’ve got a couple things we need to get figured out, but we’re working on it. That’s the whole process of being a race team” You go at it slowly and try to make tweaks. We’ll be fine. I don’t really get stressed. I’m a very mellow person and take it day by day and just keep moving forward.”

LOCAL TRACK WORKER BECOMES PROMINENT CORPORATE OPERATIVE – Eddie Krawiec returns to his home track, the multi-purpose facility where he worked for many years as dragstrip manager, with two victories and a final-round appearance in all three previous races. But Krawiec, the Pro Stock Motorcycle winner here in 2012, has grown exponentially as a businessman as well as a racer since he left in 2007 to join the respected Vance & Hines operation.

He’s no longer the local Old Bridge Township boy made good, riding a Harley-Davidson Pro Stock Motorcycle. He’s no longer the rather brash young man who thought he had arrived in the racing world. (He admitted that when Vance & Hines hire him, he “honestly thought it’d be like a rock star-type deal: ‘Hey, I’m riding a motorcycle’ and that’s all you’re doing.”)

No, today he’s a three-time NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champion, husband and father, and key figure in Vance & Hines’ ever-growing corporate domain.

“We’re heavily involved with flat track, Supercross, the Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) Race, drag racing, road racing, street bikes, and even some cars in NHRA Super Stock,” Krawiec said. “People know us for drag racing, but we have relationships everywhere. It helps us broaden our knowledge base.”

At the Vance & Hines complex at Brownsburg, Ind., Krawiec joins brothers Matt and Andrew Hines in forming a troika of task management. “Matt will think things up. Andrew will design it on the computer, and we have one or two other people who will do that. I handle the daily operations of stuff getting done within the shop.” He addresses marketing issues and customer-service needs in addition to keeping production operating smoothly.

Matt Hines’ forte is design and R&D. Andrew Hines leads the engineering and machining. Krawiec’s niche is in customer service, especially with cylinder heads. Said Krawiec, “Matt will think things up. Andrew will design it on the computer, and we have one or two other people who will do that. I handle the daily operations of stuff getting down within the shop.”

“My phone rings pretty much nonstop. I’m on the phone all day or I’m answering one of the 150 e-mails I get each day,” Krawiec said.

“When I took on my role on the team back in 2007, I knew I wanted to bring my part of the program to the next level. Terry [Vance] said, ‘Why don’t you just move out here [from New Jersey to Indianapolis] and you can do whatever you want to do. Come to the shop and figure it out.’ They were open for the first six months,” he said. “I came here and I observed a lot and sort of got an idea of what was going on. That sort of let me pick and choose where I wanted to fall. I worked in every aspect, from helping develop and build a new product to running the exhaust pipe department when it was on a smaller level.”

When he began, Vance & Hines’ exhaust-pipe demand was about 25-40 pipes a month. By the time he eased away from that department because he had growing assignments elsewhere in the company, demand had risen to 55.  Today it has soared to 150 pipes. That department, with its tripled output, has moved into a 66,000-square-foot building - one of two additional properties there on Northfield Drive.

From Byron Hines, Vance’s partner in business just as in their racing days, Krawiec said he has learned corporate stewardship and responsibility, teamwork and humility, and mastering your own destiny.

“Byron’s the guy that if someone gives him a dollar to go racing, he doesn’t put fifty cents in his pocket – he sends $1.25 to go racing. In the long run, the way we look at it is if our sponsor is giving us 100 bucks, we’d better spend 100 bucks and give ’em 100 bucks’ worth of performance. If not, it’s going to cost you money,” he said. “Byron’s been the guy who has always reinvested in his own deal.” He said he defines hard work by Byron Hines’ standard: “Races are won and lost at the shop; they’re not won and lost at the track. When you get to the track, you need to be prepared to race. If you come to the track working on your equipment, you’ve already lost.”

And one reason the Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson team has earned 11 championships in the past 19 years (and eight in the past 12) is Byron Hines’ theory of self-direction. “He always believed doing it in-house,” Krawiec said of his boss. “You can control your quality. You never know what you’re going to get from an individual. You also can control your R&D. If you’re having problems, you can make changes and see how to do it and understand how those problems either escalate or go away. We try to do every single thing under our roof.”

Although Krawiec keeps track of 22 employees at the 40,000-square-foot race shop, no one refers to him or anyone else as “executives.” They would mercilessly tease anyone who called himself that. “We all have our dedicated roles. When you know what you have to do without being told, it’s just seamless,” Krawiec said. “None of us is above anyone else. Nobody walks around this shop, saying, ‘I’m better than you.’ We all know what we have to do. Nobody ever barks orders. If everybody is excited to be part of what you’re doing, then they’re happy doing it for you. It’s about morale. Team is a loosely used word. A team is a group of individuals who work together to perform one common task.” With the racing, he said, “We do two bikes with five guys (including him and both Hines brothers) and one at the shop.”

Vance has told both Krawiec and Andrew Hines they can continue riding in NHRA competition as long as they choose. And Krawiec said he’s grateful: “It’s great to know you have that security.”

A decade after joining Vance & Hines, Krawiec said he won’t be sad when he decided to step off the bike, for he knows he can be valuable in yet another role for the company.

“I feel comfortable saying that I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. I don’t have to prove anything to myself. I know what I’m capable of. I can get off my motorcycle tomorrow and still be a part of the team 100 percent without any remorse. I would love to be a part of it and do something from the outside, too. I think it’s neat. I really would love to do something for somebody else like they did for me. They brought me under [their wing] and taught me. They proved that they can mold anybody into a champion. I would love to be able to do that for two other individuals. Either one of us can get off the motorcycle and coach somebody. We don’t necessarily have to be riding to be part of a win.”

Right now, for this weekend, racing – racing at Englishtown, N.J. – is exactly what Eddie Krawiec wants to do. And Friday he took the provisional lead in the first session, with a 6.783-second elapsed time that was nearly two-hundredths of a second quicker than closest rival . . . Andrew Hines.   

REED SETTLING IN – With his first race-day appearance at Atlanta (and all its understandable jitters) behind him, Star Racing’s Cory Reed said, “I feel confident that we have a shot at qualifying for the rest of the races. I know I didn’t qualify the first few races but I’d rather not qualify and improve every time with 25 bikes at the race than get in because there are only 14 bikes at the event.”

If he makes this Sunday’s grid, he will have earned it. The Pro Stock Motorcycle class has 26 entrants this weekend.

“We just need to work through the mechanical issues,” Reed said of George Bryce’s latest model which he debuted at Atlanta, “but I’m feeling good on my Star Racing/PSE Buell. I think the new Buell body is good. The EBR that we had before this was capable of being fast, but it would’ve taken a little more work that we just don’t have time for. So it was a good switch to make. We know what the Buell body will do, and George knows how to tune for it. It kind of takes the stress off.”

He said, “Drag racing is such a humbling sport. You always have higher expectations for your race weekend than sometimes what actually happens, so I just focus on being happy with the effort we’re putting in every weekend. Realistically, my goal is to be on top or at least improving every round of qualifying and then hopefully go some rounds on Sunday.”

Reed broke into the Atlanta field at No. 14 and lost in his opening race to Chip Ellis.

I’LL WIN AND HERE’S WHY – Hector Arana Jr. happily provided three reasons he expects to win his 12th Pro Stock Motorcycle trophy this weekend.

“I get butterflies when I think about this race, because I know we have a great chance to win," he said Arana said. "In fact, I can give you three good reasons why we'll take home the Wally."

He said, “First of all, I live up here now. My fiancée [Nicole Nobile] and I have a place in East Northport, Long Island. That's important because I've won races in every place I've ever lived. I was born in Florida and lived there when I was a kid, and I won the Gainesville race before. Then we moved to Indiana and I won Indy. Now I live up here, so logically I should win Englishtown.”

Reason No. 2: His brother Adam is attending this race. Adam was a member of the three-bike team but enlisted in the United States Coast Guard. Seaman Arana recently was transferred to Kings Point, Long Island, N.Y., just up the road from his brother.

 "The last two races Adam came to I won," Arana said. "He was stationed in St. Louis when he first got out of boot camp. He was there last year when I won that race. The time before that, he was on leave and came to Pomona, Calif., in 2014, and I won that race, too. He's coming this weekend, so there's another reason why I should win."

 No. 3 reason: His Lucas Oil Racing TV Buell is tuned up, and he said it’s fast. He also said he’s ready to race.

"My results so far aren't really true to what we are capable of doing," Arana Jr. said. "This bike is fast, and I'm ready to race. I would have run a 6.82 in Round 1 in Atlanta [the most recent tour stop for the Pro Stock Motorcycle class], but when I was shifting into high gear during that run I hit that big bump in the track and missed the shift. That's not an excuse; it's just what happened.”

Then in Friday’s evening session, when he vaulted from No 10 to No. 3 with a 6.799-second pass, he said, “This Lucas Oil Buell is here to race. So look out."

OPTIMISM HELPS – Victory Motorcycles rider Angie Smith, staying positive in the wake of DNQs in the past two Pro Stock Motorcycle races, just might be seeing her attitude pay off. She didn’t crack the top 12 in Friday’s first session, but her tentative No. 14 showing among 23 entrants was encouraging. She remained 14th overnight, although her time improved from 6.919 seconds to 6.888.

“I always look forward," Smith said. "You can't change the past, so you've got to look forward, lay down the groundwork of what you're going to do, and go do it. You can't dwell on the past, because there's absolutely nothing you can do to change it. It's all about looking forward and being positive and trying to do the best job you can every single lap."