EVENT RESULTS  TOP FUEL FUNNY CAR PRO STOCK PRO STOCK BIKE PRO MOD SPORTSMAN

WED GALLERY  THURS. GALLERY  FRI. GALLERY  SAT. GALLERY SUN GALLERY MON. GALLERY

 

MONDAY NOTEBOOK

SCHUMACHER MAKES U.S. NATIONALS HISTORY WITH 10TH TOP FUEL TRIUMPH - Tony Schumacher nosed his U.S. Army Dragster ahead of Steve Torrence’s  Capco Contractors / Rio Ammunition Dragster at the finish line Monday to earn his NHRA-record 10th U.S. Nationals Top Fuel victory at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis.

Schumacher used a .036-of-a-second reaction time to Torrence’s perfectly respectable .045 to win by .0065 of a second, or about three feet.

With his winning 3.806-second elapsed time at 317.64 mph, he broke his tie with retired Pro Stock legend Bob Glidden and became this NHRA Labor Day classic’s most successful racer in any class.

He also Schumacher collected another $100,000 to match the 100-grand he received for winning Saturday’s Traxxas Shootout final against Leah Pritchett.

Torrence, the No. 2 qualifier, countered with a 3.803-second, 325.06-mph pass on the 1,000-foot course for a $30,000 payout.

“What a special moment. What a magical place,” Schumacher, who was runner-up here in his NHRA professional debut 20 years ago, said. “You don’t want to leave anything on the table, and we didn’t.

“In 30 years, when I’m thinking about a great moment, that’d be it. It was great final . . . live on FOX [TV] . . . Indy . . .  having a chance to win your 10th in a race separated by inches.  People want to see a close race, and that’s what they got. I’m so blessed to be a part of it,” he said.  “It’s been such a great career. It’s so much fun. It just doesn’t end. It’s a blessing to be part of it.”

Schumacher ended his 450th race in the winners circle with Funny Car’s Matt Hagan to give Don Schumacher Racing a sixth nitro-class sweep this season. Sharing the celebration were Pro Stock’s Chris McGaha and Pro Stock Motorcycle’s Andrew Hines.

Schumacher will enter the Countdown to the Championship as the No. 4 seed and Torrence as the No. 3-ranked driver. Antron Brown, in the Matco Tools / Toyota Dragster, will lead the field with a 30-point advantage over No. 2 Doug Kalitta.

His race against Torrence had added significance because this event marked the 20th anniversary of racer Blaine Johnson’s death here in a qualifying accident for the U.S. Nationals. Blaine Johnson’s brother, Alan Johnson, is Torrence’s tuning consultant. He also guided Schumacher to six of his 10 U.S. Nationals victories and five consecutive series titles. The Johnson brothers had dominated Top Alcohol Dragster competition in the 1990s, with four straight championships and five NHRA divisional titles in a row.

“I know how much that  meant to A.J. Alan Johnson lost his brother 20 years ago. They had an angel riding with them. I thought, ‘You know, this is a big round for both of us. It’s incredibly important.’ And then to race that close . . . what a beautiful thing.”

Schumacher said his cockpit canopy prevented him from knowing just how close Torrence was behind him as they blazed down the racetrack.

“I didn’t see him for one second,” Schumacher said. “I heard him. The canopy is a beautiful thing. It isolates some of the sounds.”

Schumacher said something he has said many times, that he’s “a gifted driver.” He said that might sound cocky on his part. However, he explained the context of that: “I don’t mean that I’m better than anybody. But I love my job, and that’s a gift. I love driving a race car, and that’s a gift. I drive for the Army – that’s a gift. I drive a car that’s fast enough to win on any given day, and that’s a gift.”       

The loss was the narrowest of Torrence’s three final-round defeats here in the past four years. And Torrence said, “This is a tough one to take. My guys worked so hard and gave me such a good race car – plus we really wanted to win it for A.J.  Not to take anything away from Schumacher and that team. Their record speaks for itself.  But to be that close to winning at Indy for the third time in four years and not get it done is … it’s just hard to take.”

That’s partly because Torrence absorbed his first loss to Schumacher in four final-round meetings.  The Kilgore Texas, native beat the eight-time series champion, who lives at Austin, Texas, earlier this year at Englishtown, N.J. Torrence also won at Atlanta in 2012, topping Schumacher.

Monday’s result was no consolation for Torrence, no salve that it was one of the closest in this race’s Top Fuel history. That’s because all of Torrence’s runner-up finishes came by slim margins. He lost to Richie Crampton by only .033 of a second in the 2014 final and to Shawn Langdon the year before that by .089 of a second.

Schumacher and the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series will turn their attention to the Countdown, which will start in two weeks at zMAX Drgway at Concord, N.C.

Top Fuel racer Terry McMillen was as dejected Monday as Schumacher was elated.

McMillen, a tightly budgeted privateer and perennial Countdown outsider by just a handful of points each time, fouled out against No. 1 qualifier Clay Millican in the day’s third pairing, tossing away his chance to knock Pritchett from the Countdown. He was .178 of a second too quick off the starting line.

“I let my team down by going red. I didn’t give ourselves a chance. I failed my guys. I failed our team,” McMillen said, knowing that, like the Cubs from his hometown of Chicago, his mantra would continue to be “Wait ‘Til Next Year.” He said, “It’s what NHRA drag racing is all about. We’re going to continue this march.”

Pritchett lost in the opening round to Don Schumacher Racing colleague Shawn Langdon, but she squeezed into the playoff field by a single point. Her No. 10 qualifying position gained her two points Sunday, while McMillen received just one point for starting 16th. And that was the difference.

“I’ve never been a bigger Clay Millican fan. Terry and I are friends, but this is business and I wanted to Clay to win big. After his red light, I said, ‘OK, he’s out. But we still have a job to do.’ We tried to win that round, but most importantly we had to do it cleanly without an oildown,” Pritchett said. She said she couldn’t afford “to lose points that could have let Terry back in it.”

Pritchett said she was late in pulling from her pit “because of adjustments we had to make, and that led to the engine shutting off and the parachutes coming out not far from the starting line.  

“In the big picture, it is bittersweet and we [weren’t] able to win the U.S. Nationals, but we have moved our focus on a championship now that we’re in the Countdown,” she said. “And I can’t tell you how incredible that feels.”

“It’s a weight off not only my shoulders but everyone who has helped me get to this point.”

Pritchett has patched together a schedule since her Bob Vandergriff Racing ride vanished abruptly in April. She will compete at each of the six Countdown races, although she still has no funding outside of DSR for the St. Louis and Dallas races. FireAde will sponsor her at the Sept. 16-18 Charlotte race and again at the season finale at Pomona, Calif. Mopar-Pennzoil has picked up sponsorship for Pritchett at the Reading and Las Vegas stops.

SUNDAY TOP FUEL NOTEBOOK

MILLICAN’S ‘LITTLE TEAM THAT COULD’ LEADS FIELD, McMILLEN’S COUNTDOWN QUEST STILL ALIVE, RACERS RECALL BLAINE JOHNSON, STOP ASKING MILLICAN WHEN HE’S GOING TO WIN, ZIZZO IN ZONE, TATUM MAKES FIRST U.S. NATIONALS ELIMINATIONS, BROWN CHECKING HIS TO-DO-LIST BOXES, FOUR RACERS FAIL TO QUALIFY

MILLICAN KEEPS NO. 1 POSITION – Steve Torrence started the weekend with a record-quick and class-fastest Capco Contractors / Rio Ammunition Dragster.

Clay Millican swiped the lead from him Saturday with a 3.692-second pass at 316.82 mph at 1,000 feet and hung onto it Sunday at the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals to lead the field for the first time this season and the fourth time in his career.

He’ll face nail-biting Countdown hopeful Terry McMillen, the No. 16 starter, in the opening round of eliminations Monday at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis.

Torrence qualified one-hundredth of a second slower in the No. 2 position at 3.702, holding off No. 3 Brittany Force by a razor-thin four-thousandths-of-a-second margin. And he teased Millican at the top end of the racetrack, accusing him of “stealing” his green hat, the one given to top qualifiers.

Millican yukked it up with Torrence, talking about his “Little Team That Could.” However, he shared that his Parts Plus / Great Clips / UNOH Dragster is the same car that Torrence qualified No. 1 at Denver with last year.

Right now, crew chief David Grubnic has it souped up, although the car didn’t do anything terribly impressive Sunday. But that’s deceptive, Millican would say.

“Grubby was pushing today. He really was,” Millican said. “We didn’t; think anybody could go better than a  [3.]69, but we were prepared to find out what we could get away with for tomorrow. A lot of people might not think that was a great idea. But the truth is Grubby knows exactly what he wanted to do. We might have gone too far on either of the runs today, but we learned something from it. He’ll take that for tomorrow.”

Millican said of the four top-qualifier awards he has earned in NHRA competition, “this is certainly the biggest one, no doubt about that. It’s an awesome, awesome feeling.”        

McMILLEN DODGES BULLET FOR NOW – Terry McMillen can’t seem to avoid last-minute drama when it comes down to the Countdown. He survived one close call Sunday in his mission to make his first playoff since joining the NHRA ranks from the IHRA in 2007.

But he will go through another wave of stress Monday morning. And it might appear even more daunting, considering he has to face the No. 1 qualifier, Clay Millican, in the opening round of eliminations Monday.

McMillen entered this weekend tied with Pritchett for 10th place. And he made the field on his fifth and final opportunity Sunday to stay in the fight for that elusive last-place berth in the Countdown and extend his streak of no DNQs this year to 18 races.

His 3.895-second elapsed time at 308.50 mph bumped out Australian Wayne Newby, of Rapisarda Autosport International. Then he had to wait anxiously at the top end of the course to see if Newby could return the favor – after sweating out the last-ditch pass of also-unqualified Chris Karamesines. Neither Karamesines nor Newby could slide into the field. That pushed McMillen’s battle with Pritchett ahead one more day.

With one of his engine’s cylinders out early into his run, Newby missed his last chance to qualify by two-thousandths of a second. Karamesines would have had to post a career-best E.T., and he was unable to do that.

“It was close, man,” Mc Millen said, telling of the stress he and crew chief Rob Wendland endured, worry what tuning call to make before his own attempt. In the end, he did what he was supposed to do. “we went down the track A to B,” he said.

“It’s a great day in Indy,” said the Elkhart, Ind., resident whose team works out of Brownsburg, Ind., just about three miles away for Lucas Oil Raceway. “We’re going to have a party – but we’re all going to drink lemonade.”   

The Amalie Oil Xtermigator Dragster owner-driver has had tough luck in trying to make the playoff field. Twice he lost a tug-o-war with Dave Grubnic for the final spot. Another year he oiled the track and the points penalty knocked him down to No. 11 in the standings and out of the 10-driver playoff field.

With a concerted effort at well-heeled Don Schumacher Racing to keep Pritchett’s playoff dream alive and with her generous Papa-John-come-lately sponsor, McMillen’s quest became that much harder.

“Think mom-and-pop grocery store versus Wal-Mart Super Center,” McMillen’s partner Cori Wickler said.

“We want to do whatever we got to do. My guys are working twice as hard as everybody else out there. Not taking anything away from the other teams, but maybe we don’t have the manpower and we build a lot of our own stuff to make it right for us and our situation so there is a lot more pressure on overall team in general to go there and be as prepared as we possibly can and put our best foot forward,” McMillen said.      

And once again, his fate has intersected with that of Grubnic, for Grubnic tunes the car of McMillen’s first-round opponent. Pritchett will line up against Shawn Langdon, the 2013 U.S. Nationals winner and series champion – and someone she has raced against in Jr. Dragsters when they were youngsters in Southern California.  McMillen has raced with and against Millican in the IHRA. So both McMillen and Pritchett know well their opponents, who will help determine their Countdown future.

McMillen knows the margin for error Monday will be paper-thin.  

“We’re all running these cars on such a fine line,” he said. “It can drop a cylinder that it hasn’t dropped all weekend long and not get you down the track and you get beat. It’s a situation unlike any other, and that’s why we have to run the race. We don’t have 500 miles to fix problems. We have three seconds and you have to be perfect. The guys have to be perfect and that’s what it takes to win in NHRA drag racing. I think when you look at that and the prestige of the U.S. Nationals, it’s certainly on my bucket list.

“It’s got a lot of very deep meanings. I lost my son. And that was one race that we wanted to race at and he never got to see it. It’s pretty special to me,” McMillen said.

“Right now I believe in my guys. I believe in my team. They’re the ones that allowed us an opportunity to get to this level. We have probably one of the youngest teams out there on the NHRA circuit right now as far as working on the car, so they have a lot to be proud of and they have a big fight on their hands. Each one of them are up and willing to go to battle, so let’s duke this thing out, and hopefully the cards fall our way.”

BLAINE JOHNSON REMEMBERED – Steve Torrence paid tribute to Blaine Johnson, who died 20 years ago here at this race in a Top Fuel qualifying accident. Torrence is in his second year with tuning consultant Alan Johnson, who masterminded brother Blaine’s way through success in the alcohol ranks to the top tier of the headliner class.  

And Torrence said this weekend that “in my opinion, without a doubt,” Blaine Johnson would have been the greatest Top Fuel racer of all time.

“You go back and look at the statistics of that guy in alcohol and the way he drove the fuel car and the chemistry that Blaine and Alan had together.” He that made them “the most dominant duo in drag racing” and had they had the chance to continue pursuing Top Fuel greatness, “they would have risen to the occasion together.”

Instead, Alan Johnson hooked up with Gary Scelzi for three Top Fuel championships and later Tony Schumacher for five straight titles. So with those two, Johnson scribbled his name all over the record book.

Schumacher began his march to his $100,000 Traxxas Shootout victory Saturday by defeating Brittany Force, who shares Alan Johnson’s technical expertise with Torrence. It happens to be Schumacher’s 20th season as Top Fuel driver, and he had the unique experience of factoring into the 1996 Blaine Johnson story here at Indianapolis. Rookie Schumacher, driving at the time for the Peek Brothers, had earned the 16th and final qualifying position in 1996. That paired him in eliminations against Johnson, who had qualified No. 1 but had his fatal accident in the process. That was what Schumacher called “my welcome mat to drag racing.” Intending to give Johnson a proper race in absentia, Schumacher instead had to idle down the track on the solo pass because his fuel pumps locked up.  All that long way down his lane, Schumacher could hear the Purdue University Choir singing "Amazing Grace." Ten years later, in 2006, Schumacher had decided his goal was to win this U.S. Nationals for Alan Johnson, his crew chief at the time.  So he holed himself up and spent his solitary time teaching himself to play the guitar. He won that race as part of his record nine at Indianapolis.

All those memories washed over Schumacher here Saturday as he prepared to race Force, and Johnson by association, in the Traxxas Shootout that was part of the second overall qualifying session.

“I thought about that when I was racing Brittany first round,” Schumacher said after pocketing his second $100,000 jackpot. “I knew what it meant to them. But again, it’s not my job to allow someone to win. But Blaine was good guy. This past Thursday 20 years ago I was at a party and got to meet him. He was a true champion. He was someone I looked up to. Everybody did. He was just a great, great guy.”

Schumacher said his race against Force was “a bittersweet moment.”     

ENOUGH, ALREADY – Clay Millican has one of the most consistently positive personalities among NHRA racers in any category. But even his cheerfulness has its limits.

He admitted to reporters Saturday night that he’s weary of that one constant question: When are you going to earn your first NHRA victory? He just relies on advice from his mama, Miss Martha Millican.

“You know, the crazy thing is it’s always ‘When you going to win one of these things?’ That’s an impossible question for me to answer,” Millican said. “If I knew that, I would get my third or fourth mortgage on my house and go to Vegas and bet on when that race was.

“I got a good group of people, and I believe in them and they believe in me. Ad I think we can make it happen. I’m just proud we made the Countdown and made of that run we just made,” he said after reeling off a track-record 3.92-second elapsed time. “That’s a great group of people [team owner] Doug Stringer put together.”

Millican, who earned six straight IHRA Top Fuel series corwns, put the situation in perspective: “Dan Marino is a pretty good quarterback, and he never won the big one. But I think we have a team and a car capable of winning the big one, and maybe it will be Monday. You never know. But what I do know? But this comes from Mama – ‘When the time is right, it will happen.’ ”

ZIZZO IN A ZONE –  T.J. Zizzo is on a tear. In Saturday night’s session, third overall, the Rust-Oleum Dragster driver used a 3.772-second pass to improve his career-best elapsed time. That marked the second time in four races he has done that. Zizzo also recorded a career-best in speed, reaching 286.2 mph by half-track and crossing the finish line at 316.82 mph.

His 3.772 matched Richie Crampton’s E.T. in the Lucas Oil Dragster, but Crampton took the provisional No. 11 spot and Zizzo No. 12 because of a better speed (319.52 to 316.82 mph). Still, Zizzo was thrilled.

"Man oh man!" Zizzo said. “It was bad to the bone! I basically gave free reign to [crew chief] Mike Kern. I just told him, 'I don't care -  just do what you need to do.' “

As they fired up the car for the Saturday night run, clutch specialist Tony Smith told Kern, “Don't be bashful.”

Kern Shot back, “I'm not."

As he strategized Sunday’s final two qualifying sessions, Zizzo said it was important to him to stay in the top 12 on the provisional ladder so his best E.T. would carry over and leave him with a baseline.  

"We had to make sure we qualified in the top 12 today and I don't say that ever," Zizzo said. "It was just making sure we got solidly into the top 12 so now, we can go back to our experimentation."

Everything has been going so much better here this weekend for Zizzo than it did last year, starting with his mercifully uneventful Friday pass of 3.810 seconds at 319.82 mph.

"Way better than last year's start, let me tell you," Zizzo said, admitting he approached the opening session with a measure of apprehension. "I winced, because I was scared. We came here last year and even on websites out there, I saw that people were embarrassed for us because we were putting oil on the racetracks all the time. Even on that run, I winced at three seconds and took my foot off the gas a little bit. Then I thought, 'Things are looking pretty good, I'll stay with it.' It's a thing you do when you make some mistakes here at the US. Nationals."

Zizzo said that was “a good start, but nerve-wracking, nonetheless. We changed a lot of stuff coming here. We wanted to have some good-looking parts, and we do have some decent-looking parts (after Friday night’s session). We're headed in the right direction."

If he and his team feel giddy enough to ride on a Ferris wheel, maybe their new friends, Tony and Linda Lenzie, from the Chicago area like Zizzo, can help them. The Lenzies are guests of Zizzo this weekend as grand prize winners of the Rust-Oleum Stops Rust Sweepstakes. Entrants were required to paint something using Rust-Oleum paint. The mission was to paint something old and make it look new again, complete with before and after photos legitimizing the project's authenticity. Tony Lenzie's entry was an early 1900s Ferris wheel chair the he completely restored. He sanded and painted it and returned it to its original beauty.

TATUM MAKES FIRST U.S. NATIONALS ELIMINATIONS – Tripp Tatum – Gordon Tatum III, to the IRS and anyone asking him to fill out official forms – broke into his first U.S. Nationals field in the early Sunday qualifying session . . . although his ticket-punching 3.796-second pass at 322.34 mph was not his quickest of the weekend. He ran a 3.785, 322.50 late Saturday but fell below the protected-12 line at No. 13. When he jumped into the starting order Sunday, he remained No. 13 but was elated.

He said his Saturday weekend-best “was a hell of a run” and thanked Bobby and Dom Lagana for putting him in their family-owned Nitro Ninja Dragster.

Dom Lagana said immediately after the Q4 pass, “We weren’t trying to run that fast, but we want to get Tripp qualified for the U.S. Nationals.

Tatum, of Germantown, Md., is a graduate of Nitro University with more than 100 laps in Anthony Dicero’s A/Fuel dragster. He made his NHRA Top Fuel debut this March at the Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla.

ALL HE WANTS IS EVERYTHING – Antron Brown is halfway through his to-do list at the U.S. Nationals.

The Matco Tools / Toyota / U.S. Army Dragster driver has been the Top Fuel points leader since the completion of the Denver race and has four victories in eight final-round appearances this season. What he wanted to do here this weekend is parlay that into securing the No. 1 seed for the Countdown that begins in two weeks at zMax Dragway at Concord, N.C.

He did that Saturday.  

He said Sunday, “Our No. 1 goal coming into this weekend was to get that No. 1 seed for the Countdown. That's where all our focus was. Getting it is a weight lifted off our shoulders. Now we can just go for it tomorrow and not have to worry about anything. We want to win this race."

HEARTBREAKING RESULT – Were it not for the protected-12 system the NHRA uses in qualifying, Wayne Newby could be racing Monday at the U.S. Nationals in his second year here with Rapisarda Autosport International.

He posted a 3.819-second elapsed time Saturday, which was quicker than No. 16 qualifier Terry McMillen’s 3.895. But he had to struggle Sunday, with his previous times erased.   

“It was a disappointing way to end our weekend,” Newby said. “On our first run of the day the car spun the tires off the line then smoked the tires 1.5 seconds into the run. After a quick pedal, we ran a 4.446 and were in16th place.

“In the final session, we watched McMillen go down the track and run a 3.89 to bump our car out of the field. We were confident of running faster and regaining our spot. However, our chances disappeared when we dropped a cylinder early in the run.”

Team owner Santo Rapisarda, on hand this weekend from Sydney, said, “The team gave it their best shot. We knew it was going to be a challenge to come over and race at Indy. I’m proud of my boys, [tuners] Santo Junior and Santino, and all the team. We learned a lot over the weekend, and the team can hold their heads high.”

Joining him on the DNQ list were Terry Haddock, Chris Karamesines, and Luigi Novelli (who, few might know, used to race midgets and sprint cars around the Chicago area and even here when this venue was called Indianapolis Raceway Park).

SATURDAY TOP FUEL NOTEBOOK

TONY SCHUMACHER WINS TRAXXAS TOP FUEL SHOOTOUT AS DON SCHUMACHER RACING DOMINATES, MILLICAN DIPS INTO 3.6-SECOND RANGE TO REPLACE TORRENCE AS PROVISIONAL NO. 1 QUALIFIER, BROWN A VIRTUAL LOCK FR NO. 1 COUNTDOWN SEED, EXPERIENCED GUGER AVAILABLE, REMOTE CONTROL GIVES CREW CHIEFS SAFETY EDGE FROM STARTING LINE, DAKIN DOING IT HIS WAY

SCHUMACHER WINS TRAXXAS TOP FUEL SHOOTOUT - For the second time in his career, Tony Schumacher took advantage of a lucrative bonus drag race at Indianapolis in which he said Traxxas “takes the points and gets rid of that and says, ‘Here’s a pile of money. Be a machine.’ It makes it a lot of fun.”

Schumacher defeated Leah Pritchett in Saturday’s final round of the Traxxas Top Fuel Shootout to set a strong baseline for the final two qualifying sessions for Monday’s eliminations at the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals.

Schumacher covered the Lucas Oil Raceway 1,000-foot course in a stunning 3.717 seconds at 328.86 mph in the U.S. Army Dragster to win against Pritchett’s stellar 3.738, 317.05 in the Papa John’s Pizza Dragster in her debut appearance in the Traxxas Shootout.

He advanced past Brittany Force and Antron Brown to win on the same dragstrip where he will be trying Monday to earn his record 10th U.S. National victory. And it played out as Don Schumacher Racing grabbed all four semifinal spots. If he wins Monday, he will break a tie with retired Pro Stock great Bob Glidden for the most triumphs here in any class – and collect anther $100,000.   

“It’s the 11th time – two Shootouts and nine wins [at the Labor Day classic] – where that last light has come on for our team. This is a magical place. There’s something special here.”

Racing any of his DSR mates, he said, “makes it harder, honestly. We all have such great cars. And our drivers are hired for pure talent. Every one of those drivers is capable of winning a race. Unfortunately, you know what’s in those cars. You know they’re going to be fast. You know they’re going to be running in the low [3.]70s. You know it’s going to be hard.”

The DSR stranglehold, Schumacher said, “probably was uncomfortable for some other teams to watch it happen like that.”  But he said the pressure to win against his peers is great.

“Believe me, there’s bragging rights in that shop. My dad may own all the cars, but we’re not all best friends,” he said. “We get along fine, and we’re teammates. But when it comes down to it, Leah or Antron winning doesn’t pay my mortgage.”

Schumacher said, “What the fans want to see is two people who know what they’re doing in two cars that are equal on two lanes that are excellent. Then they get their money’s worth. We want to see good, honest battles, monster racing, and a finish that’s worthy of what they’re paying.”

Pritchett took her runner-up status in stride.

"Overall, it was a picture perfect day – except for the last 3.7 seconds," she joked. "The progress this team has made is just phenomenal.

"You always hope to be in the final and then when you get there you want to win. My mindset all weekend was to take it one round at a time and not look ahead,” she said. “I just really want to win this for my team and Don Schumacher for getting us this far so quickly. And having 'Papa John' [Schnatter] here and all of his team from Papa John's Pizza made it even better.”

Adding an element of surrealism to the spectacle, Pritchett said Schnatter "had to get back to [his home in] Louisville, but he had his helicopter hover over the track to watch the final. But maybe this was just practice for Monday when we race in the 'Big Go’ for the U.S. Nationals trophy."

MILLICAN BLASTS TO PROVISIONAL NO. 1 – Clay Millican failed to qualify for the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals last year.

But the six-time International Hot Rod Association Top Fuel champion put himself in serious contention Saturday night at Lucas Oil Raceway for his long-awaited first NHRA victory.

Millican did it with a jaw-dropping 3.692-second elapsed time (at 316.82 mph) in the Parts Plus / Great Clips / UNOH Dragster that left him “happy and smiling and high fiving myself and yelling on the radio” inside the car.

“It just felt good. It’s the ultimate roller coaster. Hands down, Cedar Point don’t have nothing on that ride right here,” he said, referring to the Northwest Ohio amusement park with thrill rides.

Surprisingly, Millican said, “the car actually quit before the finish line. It hurt a piston. And it probably could’ve gone even quicker – as in a [3.]67, we think, looking at the computer. But forget all that. It did go 3.692, and it’s the first 3.6-second run ever at the U.S. Nationals and that’s something they can’t take away from us.

“No. 1 qualifier could be tomorrow. There are two runs left,” he said with his kid-on-Christmas-Eve enthusiasm. “I’m hoping it’s 110 – 115 degrees tomorrow and we can stay No. 1.”

He said the damaged piston “didn’t surprise Grubby [crew chief Dave Grubnic]. He wanted to make sure it ran really hard early. He said he missed the fuel system just a little bit.

“But it was an incredible run. I knew once I got past 330-foot mark it was on a good run. And when it quit before the finish line, I was like ‘Oh-oh.’ But when I looked up . . . I probably shouldn’t say I looked up to see the 3.69 – but I did. I’m just so proud. Just think about it: we’re a single-car team and we have a bunch of kids and we got the veteran Lance Larsen and Grubby turning the knobs. That was an awesome run. I’m so happy with doing that.”

Was he expecting the 3.692?

“Well Grubby told me he was going to get after it. We were early in the session. He said he was actually looking forward to running early in the session, because we knew they prepped the track and one of the crazy things is, it’s one of those ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’s, but if it stays or not – it was a great run and we know we have a good qualifying spot. So we literally went from DNQ last year to the top of the page right now. We did not get to race here last year, so this is big for us,” Millican said.

“I was like – this thing is on a mission. It was going. I mean we had really good numbers all the way down, and it’s a career best,” he said. “So it’s the best numbers I ever felt, that’s for sure.”

BROWN VIRTUAL LOCK FOR NO. 1 PLAYOFF SEED – Points leader Antron Brown had the momentum heading into this race. At the previous event, at Brainerd, Minn., he won the postponed Seattle final round and was runner-up for the Lucas Oil Nationals. And Saturday, he virtually clinched the top seed for the Countdown.

Brown entered the U.S. Nationals with a 167-point advantage over No. 2-ranked Doug Kalitta with 188 points available this weekend. He and Kalitta both picked up some points during the first day of qualifying Friday. By the end of the second qualifying session early Saturday afternoon, Brown had made the spread 168 points, giving him almost surely the top billing for the start of the Countdown to the Championship.

Calculations show that the only scenario that would knock Brown from being No. 1 entering the playoff is if all 13 drivers behind him in the provisional Indianapolis order passed him and he received an oildown points penalty.   

The five-time 2016 winner said his Matco Tools/Toyota/ U.S. Army Dragster team has “been putting in a lot of work, and everything has been coming to fruition. It’s paying off. We are just trying to peak at the right time.”

He said he had hoped to add the Traxxas Shootout to his list of 2016 achievements. However, Tony Schumacher advanced to the final round by defeating Brown in the semifinal of the three-round bonus race. Brown zipped past tire-smoking Terry McMillen in the opening round Saturday afternoon.

Just the same, Brown knows last week’s test session refined the reliability of his Don Schumacher-owned dragster.

"We used it as a real test session. We changed parts in and out so we could see how it would react,” Brown said. ‘And the car did exactly what we wanted it to do a lot of times. We made a lot of early shutoff runs, but the good part is that we had to implement a new clutch disk into our pack and it's working out really good. That gives us a lot of confidence."

The Top Fuel class has two more sessions scheduled for Sunday to set the field for Monday’s eliminations. Ultimately, Brown said, he wants to atone for last year’s second-round U.S. Nationals loss, to Dave Connolly on holeshot. (Brown recovered beautifully, winning the next three races, which happened to be the first here of the six-race Countdown. That powered him to his second overall title.)

He has three Indianapolis victories, two on a Pro Stock Motorcycle (2000, 2004) and one in a Top Fuel dragster (2011).

GUGER STILL AVAILABLE – Spotted in the Top Fuel pits this weekend was Mike Guger, longtime nitro-class mechanic and tuner for Leah Pritchett at Bob Vandergriff Racing before the boss closed the doors and retired in April. Guger, the last to shut off the lights and lock the door at BVR because he stayed on to manage and sell some inventory, remains unattached.

That’s despite the fact he and Joe Barlam tuned Leah Pritchett to the February victory at Phoenix – which earned her a career-first performance in the Traxxas Shootout.   

“I haven’t heard from anybody,” Guger said. “It’s the nature of the business. Not a lot out there right now, you know? At this point, maybe in a month or two, things will shake loose a little bit. It’s only been, what? - five or six weeks. In the big scheme of things, that’s not that much.”

Guger hasn’t heard from anybody in the Top Fuel ranks, but he said Khalid al Balooshi had approached him about the possibility of hiring him to tune his Pro Modified car(s) in the Middle East.

“That was a couple weeks ago. I’m kind of waiting to hear on that,” he said. “In 2010, he took a bunch of cars over there, a lot of cars. I just found one of the cars, Alex Hossler drove it. And I liked running it, I enjoyed it, I really did, it was pretty cool.”

He said the schedule likely would mean “about six races in Bahrain and six races in Qatar. I would do it. I got no problem with that. Something different. I’d be into it.”

It would mean a paycheck. However, Guger said, “I don’t want to do it for a paycheck. I want to do it because that’s what I want to do.”

He said he isn’t sure what direction his career might take. With Vandergriff saying recently that he might field a Top Fuel team again, Guger left the opportunity open to rejoin Vandergriff.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve been thinking pretty hard about that, and I haven’t really come up with anything yet.,” Guger said. “I’m approaching 60 and I’m getting kind of, you know, I don’t know… I don’t think age matters a lot out here. I don’t think it’s age. I think it’s money. Who’s got money, you know? I’ve been doing it for 45 years or whatever. So it’s time – I think it’s time to do something different.”

As for a resurrected BVR, Guger said, “I don’t know who or how. But I know that he is talking about running again, so we’ll see.”

He said he would go back to work for Vandergriff if the opportunity were to arise.

“Sure. Why not? We had a few issues. But I will say this for him: He gave me my shot.

Nobody else gave me a chance [to be a crew chief] and he did. I’ll always remember that.”

CREW CHIEFS HAVE REMOTE-CONTROL SAFETY DEVICE – NHRA nitro-class fans are well-aware of the NHRA-mandated Safety Shutoff Controller that Dave Leahy developed at Delaware, Ohio-headquartered Electrimotion. The presence of automatic shutoffs started in 2009.

“The safety box was designed to shut the car off in case the driver can’t, for whatever reason – on fire, knocked out, unconscious,” championship Funny Car crew chief Dickie Venables said.

Now, Clay Millican and Tony Schumacher are among the Top Fuel drivers whose crew chiefs have the power to cut off the dragster’s engine from the starting line.

It’s the latest addition to a system that has evolved from the initial Safety Shut-off Box to include a small, track-mounted shut-off receiver and a car-attached device that helps prevent oildowns. Mandatory devices on the car and a guard wall-mounted transmitter that communicates with a safety-box receiver can save a driver in distress. They can stop the flow of fuel and turn off the ignition to the 10,000-horsepower engine and deploy the parachutes in response to a variety of triggers (manifold burst-panel rupture, fire-bottle activation, excessive oil-pan pressure, dragster rear-wing failure, driver pressing a steering-wheel-mounted button, or driver incapacitation).

Dave Grubnic, crew chief for Clay Millican’s Parts Plus / Great Clips / UNOH Dragster, might have been the most recent one to use the NHRA-approved remote control.

Two weeks ago, at Brainerd, Minn., the team was elated that Millican recorded his career-best elapsed time (a 3.696-second pass at 326.32) in his Round 1 victory. That E.T. reflected a significant three-hundredth-of-a-second improvement (from his previous best clocking of 3.72 seconds). And Millican gushed that “my mate Grubby sure cut it loose, all right. He really poured the power to it through the middle of the racetrack, and it paid off.

But just as quickly and decisively, Grubnic had to shelve any urge to push for more. As a testament to his wisdom and restraint for the sake of safety, Grubnic activated the remote control during Millican’s quarterfinal run. The dragster had dropped a cylinder immediately after the launch, and Grubnic reeled it in.

During the teardown, the crew discovered that Grubnic’s instincts were spot-on and that halting the pass was a blessing in disguise. They saw that one of the rear wing mounts on the car was broken.

Said Millican, “If we had made another 326-mph run, the rear wing maybe would have been broken off. If that had happened, it can’t be run again until it’s sent back to the manufacturer – because without that wing the car acts like an arrow without feathers. You have no control. We have a safety system in place where the crew chief can shut the throttle off. Grubby saw the cylinder out early in the run, and he’s the one who shut me off. We weren’t going to win that race with seven cylinders, anyway.”

U.S. Army Dragster driver Tony Schumacher said he has been zipping down the track when assistant crew chief Neal Strausbaugh has jerked the car to a premature stop with the push of a button.

Schumacher said, “In a Top Fuel car, the motor’s behind you. I can’t see cylinders go out. You can feel ‘em, unless they go out early. We’re trying to make this live TV package work, which seems to be working great. And to do that, [it’s smart] to give the crew chiefs a way, if they see something flickering that has the potential to cause an oildown, to shut the car off. It’s awkward in the car, because it just shuts it off [abruptly]. But we can’t see some of that stuff, like a sparkplug coming apart or color changes in the cylinders and the exhaust. A few times Neal has shut me off when it might have been low E.T. of the round.”

When they huddle around the computer in the hauler back at the pit, each time they see that Schumacher could have completed each run without any problems. Just the same, Schumacher said he approved. “It was the right decision. Safety first,” he said. “And at the end of the year, you look back on times drivers slowed the race down, you don’t want to be on that list. It’s our job to evolve the safety and the cleanliness.”

Moreover, he said, “We’re trying to make a better show. Ultimately, we are an entertainment business. We are a competitive business; we’ve got to win. But if winning shuts the track down for 30 minutes at a time, the whole system’s broke. So the NHRA shutting the cars off when you’ve got problems, is it going to cost a race here and there? It could. But is that a bad thing? No. I think we’re doing it for the right reasons.”

So sometimes it’s clearly a matter of safety. Sometimes it’s a matter of oildown prevention. Either way, Mike Green, Schumacher’s crew chief, and Strausbaugh, devised their own hand-held version of the shut-off system. Green said he wasn’t sure which teams have the remote control but he knows that “we made our own.”

Green said Funny Car team owners Chuck and Del Worsham have one ready for they conduct licensing passes for aspiring pro drag racers.

“The safety system the NHRA put up is very well accepted. It’s active and working,” Schumacher said. “Any time any sanctioning body comes up with what we like to think is a solution to the problem of a driver being knocked out, how can anybody be anything but OK with it?” Taking it one step further not only can’t hurt but it has spared at least two teams some ugly consequences.

DAKIN DOING IT HIS WAY – Younger drag-racing fans might not know that Pat Dakin, who partnered with Gary Rupp for about 20 years, was a powerful force in the Top Fuel ranks in the 1970s. They might not know he also was runner-up to Shirley Muldowney in 1977 for the series championship or that he won twice in Montreal (1971, 1973) and advanced to four other finals. They might not know that he suffered a skull fracture and shattered hands and wrists in a 1998 blowover accident that knocked him out and knocked him out of racing for 10 years. He underwent a dozen surgeries in the meantime.

And with Pat Dakin’s 70 years has come wisdom. It has come with a few hard knocks, as well, but the no-nonsense Dayton, Ohio, businessman with the “Trump” campaign side on the side of his Commercial Metal Fabricators Dragster has realized a few truths.

One is that chasing points is foolish.

“I have never cared about points. Never. The lower your number is in points, the more it cost you. So it’s a ridiculous chase. It’s silly. And the expense of these things . . . This all comes out of my pocket,” Dakin said. “I got no sponsors, so we do what we want to do. That’s all. We’re here to have fun, and that’s all.”

He said at one time he did care about points.

“Once. Once,” he said. “Yeah, 1977, and we came in second to Shirley. It’s not worth it. No, just going all the way, one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s crazy. I’ve got better things to do than this.”

He said “absolutely” that drag racing in general is an upside-down business model.

Another truth for him is that his car can run with the best of them.

Dakin has two more qualifying sessions Sunday to break into the field from 18th place at the moment. But he said before qualifying began, “Oh I’ve got no doubt we’ll qualify well. The car, everything’s here. We got four motors. Everything’s fresh and new and good. And the blowers are new and good. We just front-halved the car, so it’s all ready to go. This car does not hurt for anything. I feel very confident the car’s going to run very well.”

He has supreme faith in his crew, too.

“I’ve only got six guys on this thing, only two full-time. They can turn this car around – as long as there’s no major damage, we’ll turn this thing around in 40-45 minutes, every time,” he said.

Dakin seldom has major damage, and he said that’s because he’s “probably a little too conservative the way we run the car. We’re now going to try and to get more aggressive with it. I mean, there’s plenty there. The car’s safe. It’s asking for more, so we’re going to give it to it.”

He has given the fans plenty to talk about in this presidential election year. And he said they have responded favorably to his rolling Donald Trump endorsement the five races he has attended so far.

The reaction, he said, is “mostly good. In fact, all good. I’ve gotten very little, if any, negative reaction on it. A lot people come up and stand next to the sign and have their picture taken. So it’s been very positive. We can only hope that he is successful here in November.”

He said he also wants to make a statement on the track.

“Correct. Yes, we do. Yeah,” the not particularly gabby Dakin said.

He said he plans to race at Charlotte and St. Louis and is considering entering the Dallas race this fall.

FRIDAY TOP FUEL NOTEBOOK

TORRENCE QUICKEST AND FASTEST FRIDAY AS U.S. NATIONALS BEGINS, PRITCHETT-McMILLEN SHOWDOWN STARTS, IMPROVED NEWBY CONFIDENT, INDYCAR PUTS LID ON CANOPY DISCUSSION, QUICK CRAMPTON ENJOYING BETTER-BEHAVED DRAGSTER, DON’T READ ANYTHING INTO WORSHAM TESTING IN KALITTA’S CAR, LITTON ACQUIRES SECRET WEAPON, LUCAS TO BE TORCH-BEARER, KARAMESINES NEEDLES NOVELLI BY TELLING HIM HE’S TOO OLD TO RACE, MILLICAN HAS NO TIME OFF IN ‘IDLE’ WEEKEND

TORRENCE QUICKEST AND FASTEST FRIDAY - Steve Torrence skipped last week’s test session.

And it didn’t hurt him one bit Friday during the opening day of the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals.

The Capco Contractors / Rio Ammunition Dragster driver used a track-record 3.702-second pass at a class-best speed of 328.06 mph on Lucas Oil Raceway’s 1,000-foot course to seize the tentative No. 1 qualifying position in the Top Fuel class.

Torrence was two-hundredths of a second quicker than closest rival Tony Schumacher, who’s bidding to become the most successful racer in the history of this event with a 10th victory in the U.S. Army Dragster.

Four others – Antron Brown, Brittany Force, Shawn Langdon, and Morgan Lucas – also surpassed Langdon’s four-year-old elapsed-time standard at the Indianapolis venue.

Most importantly, Torrence’s blast right out of the gate gave him what he called “a leg up” on his competition in the Traxxas Top Fuel Shootout, which starts with Saturday’s second overall qualifying session. At stake is $100,000 for the winner. Torrence, the first to secure a berth in the bonus race, is seeded third and will face No. 6 Langdon in the opening round.

“We just got a new Morgan Lucas Racing car for our spare car. We were just giving the guys an opportunity to rest, to get that car together, not pressure them for the entire week of putting a spare car together and come out here and run two full days,” Torrence said. “I think that the car was running well enough that we didn’t have anything we really wanted to try.

“There’s a big advantage to having the same [clutch] disk pack every race. And we don’t want to waste those,” he said. “Another issue we were running into was the blower belts. We had trouble with some current batches of blower belts not lasting. So we scoured all over the U.S. [for surplus belts] and built up an inventory. We kind for wanted to save all that and use it for the Countdown.”

He said, “It’s always pretty crucial to come out and run well the first lap, to have good data to build on the rest of the runs. This one is so late in the evening you afford yourself the ability to go out there and throw everything at it and see if you can knock it out of the park. And that’s what we were able to do.”        

Eighteen of the 20 entrants made passes, with Terry Haddock and Chris Karamesines opting out of this first of five qualifying sessions.

PRITCHETT, McMILLEN START BATTLE FOR SPOT NO. 10 – Leah Pritchett was at the Big Go Block Party, a celebration of the U.S. Nationals on the town hall commons at Brownsburg, Ind. A gentleman approached her and presented her a bouquet of flowers. She recognized him even before he said, “Leah, remember? I told you for your first win I was going to give you flowers.” The NHRA Top Fuel racer proudly said, “And here he was, a whole year later. I hadn’t seen him in a year and he brought them and he remembered and I remembered him.” It was more than a sweet display of loyalty from a fan. It was proof that Pritchett’s do-it-yourself marketing was paying off by developing a fan base as she builds her career against some daunting odds.

Terry McMillen also had a surprise in the days leading up to Friday’s kickoff of the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals. Standing in the spotlight on Monument Circle, the Hoosier sun slow-roasting him and his dragster-driving competitors, McMillen didn’t look nervous. He simply looked like a privateer racer who had absorbed disappointments and setbacks. He had received his own mixed bouquet of well-wishes from fans fighting for him, the underdog, and of generous professional gestures from other teams who wanted to honor his David-vs.-Goliath struggle. And then a green ping-pong ball – his green ping-pong ball – popped up in a lottery drawing and gave him a needed boost. He won a berth in Saturday’s Traxxas Top Fuel Shootout and the chance to pocket $100,000. “It’s a blessed day,” McMillen said.

The two have entered a tug-of-war for the 10th and final berth in the Countdown to the Championship in the final race before the six-event playoff starts at Charlotte, N.C. Pritchett and McMillen entered Friday’s first day of the U.S. Nationals in a dead heat for 10th.  McMillen turned 62 this past Tuesday, and compared to 80-something-year-old Top Fuel racer Chris Karamesines, he’s young. But he knows he won’t race for 20 more years. Pritchett, at age 28, is the youngest fulltime pro driver in the class and one of just a handful of under-30s. And the irony is they have more in common than one might think – including the irony that both have received major assistance from Don Schumacher and his race team to survive a season long on hurdles and short on breaks. Pritchett, with funding from John Schnatter and his Papa John’s Pizza empire, drives under the Don Schumacher Racing umbrella. McMillen had considerable help from the DSR team following his accident in April at Houston.

Pritchett said, “What I think has been the most challenging [is] not letting down everybody along the way that has helped me get here.” McMillen’s list of contributors is just as long, and he, too, want to make sure their efforts have not been in vain.

Each started the season seeking that first NHRA Top Fuel victory. She achieved it; he is still trying. Pritchett scored her lone victory in February at Phoenix, in the second race on the tour. McMillen was runner-up for the first time in his NHRA career at the following race, in March at Gainesville, Fla.  

From her victory at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, Pritchett said she “learned that I could overcome any negativity that is in my mind, because I had been coming off one of my worst races in Pomona. I learned early in the season, which I think is going to help hopefully later, to put the confidence in me as a driver and confidence in my team, which I still have part of now. I know why that win happened so early in the season: because it gave me a taste of what winning at the toughest level in drag racing in the world is like. Because I still have that taste in my mouth, it has driven the hunger more and more to where we are today. I think that’s why that win happened then and that’s what I learned: that everything that we are going through to make this happen – and I don’t say that negatively, a lot of awesome great positive things with new sponsors, new protocols, new teams, learning everything – is worth it. I know what it tastes like to win, and that was just one. I want hundreds more. I think it served a purpose to help me not get down on the dream by thinking, ‘Man, we’re going after this and I don’t even know what it’s like to win.’ No, I know what it’s like to win – and it’s totally worth it.”

McMillen gets it. He said of his Gatornationals runner-up effort, “We walked away not disappointed, but we walked away wanting more. We want that first win. We are hungry for that first win, and we are driven to get there. The short-term goal has always been to get in the top 10 by going rounds. And if we are doing that well, then sooner or later we will have that opportunity to get that first win. We’ve had one but there are plenty more on the horizon.”

The Amalie Oil XTERMIGATOR Dragsterowner-driver said his team was exhausted, “but the momentum of just going rounds and just having the opportunity to win the race was enough to push them over the edge and keep going. The icing on the cake would’ve been to win the race. To get that far was a huge accomplishment, and it’s just a compliment to Rob [crew chief Wendland] on giving us a car that was consistently going down the track and that led us to the opportunity. We’re hungry for more, because now that we have a taste for it, we’ve realized what it takes to get there. The hard work, the effort and the determination to never be a group to quit working on it, but rather keep working hard and trying to excel at what we’re doing, we’re going to get there. It’s just a matter of time. We have just as good of a chance as everybody. Leah (Pritchett) has surrounded herself with a great team. Don Schumacher Racing has been truly responsible for helping us get back on our feet after the crash. Don and his team have helped us throughout the year. While I know that all of Don’s cars are top-five contender cars, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the want or the will to go out there and win. I think we have a great opportunity.”

They can drive a nitromethane-powered, 11,000-horsepower dragster at seeds well faster than 320 mph, but they’re not so flinty they don’t feel the pressure.

“I do feel added pressure. It’s added and it’s really staying up. You ramp up with your RPM for a run and it’s kind of at the rev-limiter and we’ve been at the rev-limiter for a long time, so not sure how much more pressure could be put on us at this moment,” Pritchett said. “I can’t think of a more pressurized situation. All of this was for the opportunity to be in the top 10 and here it is, a make-or-break type of situation. We just kind of look at each other, laugh about it, and ask each other, ‘Really? Would we expect anything less at this moment?’ And actually, I’m happy about it. It’s excitement for Terry’s team, for us, for the sport, for the fans. I’m glad that there is a fight going on for 10th. By all means, we will have our game faces on to get it.”

Unlike Pritchett, McMillen been in this predicament several times, and it has not brought him a Countdown spot. So he has a slightly different strategy.

“We’ve been close before. In my first couple of years, I was in the top 10 in Indy, and then we oiled at the end of the track and ended up not making the top 10 by eight points. So it’s been a while since I’ve been that close. We’re just a small team with some really big dreams, and our focus right now is to not make any mistakes, not oil down the track because it’s disappointing when our championship hunt is determined by penalties and things like that. Those are the rules and we all have to abide by them,” he said. “Our focus is to try to run the car as hard as we can but take every effort we can, if we have to back it off a little bit to make sure we don’t oil the track and give up 15 points, then that’s what we have to do. Right now we are all hands on deck. The guys are working extremely hard. However it ends up, we’re going to just know in our hearts that we gave it everything we had.”

At the end of Friday’s first qualifying session, Pritchett was in the provisional 10th spot in the order with her 3.792-second, 311.77-mph performance. Because she is in the protected top 12 overnight, she has a baseline from which to build. On the other hand, McMillen ended up in the No. 14 slot (3.852, 306.88) and will begin Saturday qualifying with no time.

NEWBY’S VISIT HERE ALREADY BETTER – Even before this event began, Rapisarda Autosport International driver Wayne Newby’s experience at the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals is better than what it was last year.

The Sydney, Australia-based driver made three passes last Wednesday in testing at Lucas Oil Raceway with a best-of-the-three clocking of 3.890 seconds at 274.44 mph. That isn’t his U.S.-best. He registered a 3.777-second elapsed time at 323.43 mph in the opening round of eliminations at St. Louis last September. That’s when he and Doug Kalitta had identical E.T.s and Newby lost on reaction time by a mere .0093 of a second, or about four feet.

So although Newby had an unglamorous debut at Indianapolis, his more recent achievements in the U.S. have made him optimistic about his chances this weekend.

“I’m sure we can run low (3.)70s. Running a .60 might be hard, but I’m sure we can run into the .70s and low .70s.”  He said he wouldn’t be surprised to run “.75 and clean [with no oildown].”

Last year he competed at Brainerd, where he qualified 14th at 4.011 seconds and lost to Doug Kalitta in Round 1. But the team developed a glitch that carried over to Indianapolis.

“We blew up every lap. We had a problem, and it took two meetings [races] to work it out. We worked it out on the last lap [in qualifying], but the car didn’t make it down the track. But it didn’t hurt the motor,” Newby said. (He failed to qualify, winding up 20th of 22 in the lineup with a best performance of 4.387, 189.36. The bump was Kalitta’s 3.995-second E.T.)

“So that’s why Santo [team owner Rapisarda] flew me back for St. Louis, and we qualified and ran 3.77. The car ran good,” Newby said.

He said he’s optimistic that qualifying this weekend will go better than it did before: “I’m pretty confident we can qualify and pretty confident we can give them a run for their money, too.”

For Newby, simply qualifying here among this extremely quick group of Top Fuel racers would equal success.

“You’re never going to be like the other teams that are doing it fulltime. But we’re always racing back home, and the boys [crew chiefs Santo Rapisarda Jr. and brother Tino Rapisarda] are always learning. There’s a lot of people who are helping us out over here, too, are very nice and are giving us a lot of input.”

Still, Newby said, “Sometimes you’ve got to be realistic about it. To win over here, really, you’ve got to have a bit of luck – from my point of view, when you’re racing teams with endless budgets and they’re doing it every weekend.”

Racing only sporadically in the U.S. makes it harder to find a rhythm, but Newby has kept it in perspective.  

“It does help [for the racing effort] back home. I know in the last couple of days, we’ve learned about a few new parts that are coming out,” he said. “What Santo [Sr.] gets out of it is the passion. The amount of money he puts into the sport back home, the sport wouldn’t be there [without him].”

With Rapisarda sponsoring events and providing literally half of the field at times, he’s like the Don Schumacher of Australian drag racing. Consequently, the Rapisarda Autosport drivers sometimes encounter what a Schumacher or John Force Racing entrant might weather because they’re the favorites. He said he understands when fans might cheer against him at home. “But I think the people of Australia also appreciate they get three or four good quality Top Fuel cars,” he said.

In the U.S., as well, Rapisarda is all about quality – but he doesn’t put pressure on his drivers (who have included Larry Dixon, Tommy Johnson, Dom Lagana, and Cory McCleanthan).

“The Indy Nationals is the biggest and most important event on the NHRA calendar,” Rapisarda said. “For the Americans, it’s the one event that all the team owners want to win. The pressure is intense. But, for the Rapisarda family, the situation is a lot more relaxed. We race for fun and the love of the sport. The team enjoys racing at Indy. We have a workshop there [in Brownsburg], and it’s been our home base for the last couple of seasons when we race in America.

“We want to succeed and do well, but I tell my boys, Santo Junior, and Santino – and all the team – that we need to keep racing in perspective: try hard, do your best, and take pride in your work. With 20 cars entered in Top Fuel, our goals are straightforward and modest. We want to qualify, put on a good show on race day, and have fun,” he said.    

Newby said, “Anytime you are invited by the Rapisarda Family to race is an honor and a privilege. The first order of business is to qualify. We are under no illusion regarding the challenge we are facing. This year, in NHRA Top Fuel, there has been a quantum leap with the leading teams running times that were unimaginable 12 months ago. Steve Torrence holds the national record with a 3.67 set a couple of weeks ago at Sonoma, and to make the cut at Indy, I think it will take around a 3.75.”

That’s eye-opening, for the top qualifier here last season was Larry Dixon, at 3.744 seconds. He was three-hundredths of a second quicker than No. 2 Billy Torrence. Steve Torrence was No. 3 qualifier at 3.778.  

Newby smoked the tires Friday in his first qualifying attempt.

INDYCAR COMMUNITY STILL SNUBS CANOPY – IndyCar driver Justin Wilson’s fatal accident at Pocono, Pa., triggered questions last August about whether the NHRA’s Top Fuel canopy might provide a safety solution for the open-wheel series.

Wilson was struck in the helmet by an errant nose cone from a fellow competitor’s car as he passed by an on-track accident. The next day U.S. Army Dragster assistant crew chief Neal Strausbaugh, of Don Schumacher Racing, said he was ready to field inquiries from IndyCar Series engineers or officials about the canopy. But no one contacted him or DSR.

NHRA star Antron Brown has had several nasty accidents after which he praised the canopy and pronounced it effective.

“I absolutely anticipated it after Antron’s first crash,” Strausbaugh said. “Since no one has done it, I’ve kind of thrown my hands up in any anticipation of what others might do.”

Strausbaugh was careful not to suggest the IndyCar Series develop and mandate its unique version of the canopy, especially without extensive knowledge of those cars, among a host of unknowns. However, he said he can vouch for the reliability of the device, at least in these relatively young stages.       

“I would hope that they would look into it, open up the rules to allow it, just like what NHRA has done,” he said. “And if people choose to do it, great. At this point, we’re open to any and all questioning. All we can explain is how we did it.”

The IndyCar community appears to have little interest today in investigating a canopy for its cockpits. Opponents question whether vision and driver movement might be jeopardized and whether a driver might become trapped if the car is upside down or on fire or both. Those, of course, were concerns all parties in the NHRA process raised, investigated, and overcame. Some in IndyCar pooh-pooh the canopy for the sake of appearance, of design interest.

So the Schumacher camp, who developed NHRA’s version along with engineering input from several independent sources, has not participated in detailed discussions with IndyCar Series representatives and evidently doesn’t anticipate doing so.

Tony Schumacher, reflecting on the canopy debate exactly one year to the day after Wilson’s death, told Competition Plus, “We do our best to make this sport safe. I do get shocked sometimes that we have the canopy and some people choose not to use it. Again, they have their right to make that decision. They are professionals on all sides of it, and they have the right to look at what they believe is the safest and correct overall for their car and their driver.”

CRAMPTON’S CAR STEPPING UP – Richie Crampton had a bit of a charmed introduction to the U.S. Nationals as a driver. He won the Labor Day classic in his rookie season, in 2014. Then in 2015, he won five times to extend his perfect record in final rounds to seven. But 2016 has been a different story for the Lucas Oil Dragster driver and car builder/clutch expert at Morgan Lucas Racing. Everything was working well, but, Crampton said, “2016 just wasn’t having it.” For a while it sure wasn’t. He had eight first-round defeats in a 12-race stretch.

Maybe 2016 is coming around for him – and just in time for some momentum coming into the Countdown to the Championship.

Crampton took advantage of testing for the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals to reassure himself and serve notice to his competitors that his dragster should be in the mix again. With part-time racer boss Lucas dropping by and winning last year’s edition, his team will be going for three in a row this weekend. And Crampton’s unofficial track-best performances last week opened eyes.

He led both test sessions in elapsed time. His 3.706-second pass (at 320.28 mph) showed that Shawn Langdon’s four-year-old track record (3.740) definitely was in jeopardy straight away. The next day, he led all drivers with a 3.676 (at 323.58 mph), his personal best. He called the chart-topping numbers “very rewarding” and said crew chief Aaron Brooks “and the guys have figured a lot of stuff out lately, and it's coming at the perfect time with Indy and the Countdown to the Championship right in front of us.”

Said Crampton, "We ran a 3.696 up in Seattle a few weeks ago, which was my personal best, so it wasn't a complete surprise to run another 3.60 here.” However, he was cautious to read too much into it.

“Running 3.60s isn't everything in this sport. We know we need to get our car to run in the heat also. Right now we're digging the cooler conditions, and I personally hope it stays this way.”

AFTER MUSICAL CARS, IT’S STATUS QUO AT KALITTA PITS – The third-quickest Top Fuel elapsed time in testing last Wednesday at Lucas Oil Raceway belonged to the reigning Funny Car champion. Del Worsham, who also happens to be the 2011 Top Fuel champion, took a spin or two in Doug Kalitta’s Mac Tools Dragster and posted a 3.727-second, 319.89-mph pass.

“I think he had fun,” Kalitta said.

And why not? He was in the car of the No. 2-ranked driver who won three straight races in May (at Houston, Atlanta, and Topeka) and started out the season as the Winternationals runner-up. That car also has carried Kalitta to three No. 1 qualifying positions and 31 round-wins.

Even with his outstanding blast, Worsham – according to Kalitta – “was actually shutting it off at about 800-900 feet. He was just making sure he didn’t tear anything up. But he was running good with it. Then we made a couple of good runs on Thursday.”

Kalitta downplayed that. His 3.686-second elapsed time a week ago Thursday – which was second only to Richie Crampton’s 3.676 at 323.58 – was his career-best E.T. Accompanying it was a 328.86-mph speed that was tops for both days of pre-Indianapolis testing.

But no one should make anything of Worsham’s reappearance in a dragster or in Kalitta’s confession that he had toyed with the idea that the team of injured Alexis DeJoria’s might have needed him to shake down her new Tequila Patron Toyota Camry Funny Car.

Kalitta said Worsham hops in the Mac Tools Dragster about once a year, “just trying to keep his [Top Fuel] license up. That’s what he was doing. He wanted to drive it, just to keep his license going.”

He said no one should expect to see Worsham trade in his DHL Toyota Camry for a dragster anytime soon.

“As you know, in life, anything can happen. But no, the plan definitely is for him to stay in the DHL car [Toyota Camry Funny Car].  Those guys are doing a great job, and I think he likes the Funny Cars probably over the dragsters,” he said of Worsham, who has been on a tear lately among the floppers with two straight final rounds and a handful of low- to mid-3.8s.

Kalitta, the 1994 USAC sprint car national champion, has driven a Funny Car before and indicated he wouldn’t mind taking a joyride in one again. But he said it’s going to business as usual at Kalitta Motorsports.

“It’s been a little while since I’ve driven one. The way it’s lined up right now, with such a good guy like Del in the car, it’s be crazy to try to switch, as far as I’m concerned,” Kalitta said. “But if the opportunity’s right, it’d be kind of fun to try it again. With Alexis’ car, he was running Alexis’ car, and I was kind of wondering about maybe driving it there. But they were just trying to get things sorted out. They really needed a good test opportunity. So I kind of left that one alone. One of these days, I’ll get the opportunity again.”

He has excelled on dirt tracks and paved ones, and the notion of steering a Funny Car again turned his thoughts to his sprint-car days.

“Back when I was running the USAC sprints, it was about 50-50 dirt and pavement tracks. All of the races for USAC sprints are dirt now. So it’s completely switched. We probably had better success with the pavement. There were some tracks that we were just really good at. We won the Hulman Classic at Terre Haute [Ind.]. That was probably one of the biggest dirt races I won in the sprint car series.  (That race is named in honor of the longtime owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the late Tony Hulman.)

What Kalitta has his mind set upon winning is the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals for his 42nd overall victory. He never has won it, despite leading the field twice (2000, 2004) and advancing to the final round twice (2004, 2008).

“It has been a while since Team Kalitta has earned a Top Fuel Wally in Indianapolis,” he said, “and I would love to finally have one. We did really well in testing one week ago, and I am confident that my Mac Tools team has what it takes to get it done."

The last – and only – Kalitta ever to win this race was team owner Connie Kalitta, Doug’s uncle. That was in 1994, the year Doug Kalitta earned his USAC national sprint title.

Kalitta has won his first-round race at 14 of 17 events this season, and so far he has recorded 10 semifinal or better finishes. He already has more round-wins than all of last year. And with his appearance in the Countdown set, Kalitta has guaranteed his 19th consecutive top -10 finish.

LITTON BENEFITS FROM BEARD’S EXPERIENCE – Sitting alone earlier this week on a stool at a shop table in a windowless building on the edge of Lucas Oil Raceway, performing precise surgery on an indifferent-looking piece of machinery that belongs in a Top Fuel dragster – almost like the Eleanor Rigby of drag racing mechanics – was Lee Beard. He didn’t have music keeping him company. He sat with his back to the door and labored in silence with his head down, his concentration interrupted by nothing.

The multi-time nitro-class championship tuner, who has five decades of experience, had resurfaced recently as a consultant for a second stint to Funny Car owner-driver Cruz Pedregon at Brainerd, Minn. But now his attention is on the dragster of hometown veteran Bruce Litton.   

“Lee is my consultant. He has been here for awhile. He’s helping us out, giving us some advice,” Litton said. “He’s a smart man. You can’t let a smart guy like that sit around. He’s won I-don’t-know-how-many championships, and he has won a whole load of NHRA events. He has proven he’s a pretty smart fellow.”

Litton said he does not have to share Beard with Pedregon or any other racer this weekend. Beard – brought on in recent years to consult for Steve Torrence Racing and Rapisarda Autosport International – helped Pedregon only at the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series’ most recent race.  

“I consulted with him at Brainerd,” Beard said of his re-association with the two-time Funny Car champion. “When I left, he had several legal tablets full of things that I saw that probably needed to be improved.”

So Pedregon has his homework assignments.

“He’s working on ’em,” Beard said. “The cars are awfully complicated today. The Funny Car class competition really accelerated this year. If you got off in any area at all, it was very difficult to qualify in in that top half of the field. And that would usually lead to a real tough competitor first round. He has had a very challenging season.”

Litton, who is making his return to NHRA Top Fuel competition for the first time since this event in 2013, has plodded through his own set of challenges. He has been racing both a nitro Funny Car and a dragster.

Because of his loyalty to the IHRA, where he won two Top Fuel championships, Litton chose to continue to compete, even after the sanctioning body dropped the Top Fuel class. So he bought the famous U.S. Male operation from the Boninfante family and has campaigned that, sometimes along with his dragster. He also has match-raced. But now he’s ready to return to NHRA action.

With Beard supplying advice, Litton is confident he can qualify well and go some rounds.

“That’s what our hope is, and we’ll do what we can,” he said.

FORCE MORPHS FROM SPECTATOR TO PARTICIPANT – In the dank dusk that crept in after the 1998 U.S. Nationals, John Force was posing for pictures in the winners circle, while wife Laurie and young daughters Ashley, Brittany, and Courtney Force watched from a distance by the team’s tow vehicle. A reporter asked Laurie Force what she wanted people to know most about her husband. Wanting to give a thoughtful reply, she cocked her head and bit her lip and paused for a moment. Brittany Force broke the silence by urging her mother, “Say that Daddy never, ever, ever gives up.”

Brittany Force, with her mom and sisters, spent her childhood on the fringe of all the drama that took place on the track and in the glare of drag-racing photographers.  Now she’s right in the middle of it, racing for $100,000 as one of the first to qualify back in March for Saturday’s Traxxas Shooutout bonus race (her third), winning the Gatornationals in her Monster Energy Dragster. She’s in the process of trying to make the 16-car field here, just like the other 19 entrants. She’s headed into the Countdown to the Championship as the likely No. 4 seed. And with title-tuner Brian Husen and legendary mechanical mastermind Alan Johnson helping her win three races this year already, she has an excellent chance this weekend to join her father and sister Ashley as a U.S. Nationals winner.    

“I remember coming to this race as a kid, watching my dad win it,” she said. “There were years and years of cheering him on from the stands or the tow vehicle. We used to blare in the tow car ‘We are the Champions’ on the way to the winners circle. I remember thinking, ‘This is so cool, because this race is so huge. There is so much history around it.’ And I never thought I would be driving a Top Fuel dragster, much less at Indy.”

But she didn’t hesitate to say, “We are capable of winning Indy, and we are going to go after it. It is one of my goals. I hope we get it this year. That is just a dream come true. To be able to hold that trophy in the winner’s circle at Indianapolis would be incredible.”

A fourth-year pro, Brittany Force has the momentum from a victory two weeks ago at Brainerd, Minn.

“There is a lot of pressure going into the U.S. Nationals. It is the biggest race of the season. It gets so much attention and there are so many fans there,” Force said. “It is two races in one weekend, so there is a lot that you are banking on. You want to go out there and do your job and hopefully turn on some win lights.”

Staying in her routine has been her mantra this season. She knows how to do it but also knows the distractions are greater here than at most venues.   

“You have to try and look at it no differently than any other race weekend. You are still doing the same things. You are driving your race car to the 1000-foot finish line. You have to shut out the distractions. There is the extra attention, and I think that gets you more excited since it is a bigger event. That just pumps you up. You have to shut out all the craziness and do your job,” she said.

In each of her previous three Indianapolis appearances, Force has qualified in the top half of the field.

Her success this year has come, she said, because she listened to the advice from Husen and Johnson. “My crew chiefs had me change everything from how I staged and I completely started over. At first I didn’t like it at all. I wasn’t used to it. I was used to one way for the past three years, and I came out here this season and it was almost like starting over,” Force said. “It was a challenge. In the long run, I know why they had me do it, and it makes sense. It has helped me as a driver with my staging, my reaction times, and its helped get lane choice. All those things add up to round wins.”

LUCAS A TORCHBEARER FOR HOOSIER BIRTHDAY BASH – Morgan Lucas had his own personal celebration at Indianapolis last September, winning the Top Fuel trophy at the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals.

This month, he’ll help the entire state of Indiana celebrate its 200th birthday.

Lucas, born in Indiana’s capital of Corydon, will carry a symbolic beacon that, like in Olympic Games intercontinental-unity fashion, will snake its way 3,200 miles throughout the state’s 92 counties.

He’ll do it at 9 a.m. Friday, Sept. 23 in the most unusual way – aboard his Lucas Oil Dragster, powering down the NHRA-owned dragstrip that bears his family business’ branding.

“We’re going to mount the torch to the rear wing. It should stay lit. It’s designed to stay lit. We’re going to do a full burnout and a launch – we’re going to do the whole thing and see what happens,” Lucas said. “We’re going to go up there and hit the gas. And if it goes 300 miles an hour, that’s awesome. If we only go out 100 feet and it shake or smokes [the tires] or does something stupid and we idle down, we still get cool footage. We can’t promise we’re going to go down the track, but we’re going to have some fun trying. If it doesn’t fire they’re going to have to take the tow strap to it and take it down there that way.

“Either way, the pipes are going to be fully lit at some point and you’re going to have that torch back there – and somebody’s going to get a really neat photo of it,” he said.

“It’s already going to be on fire,” he said of the torch. Then he joked, “I hope we don’t re-light it.”

“We only get one chance in our lifetime for a bicentennial torch relay, so this is really cool,” Lucas said before making his first qualifying pass of the weekend. “It’s an honor. The fact the state is considering the racetrack, the dragstrip, Lucas Oil Raceway to be a fundamental part of what is going on in the state and the economy is a big deal.”

The torch is a focal point on the blue and gold state flag, and this torch for the relay is a design product of Purdue University engineering-department faculty and students.

Lucas said, “It looks beautiful. It’s not like you’re carrying around a club with fire on the end of it. It’s a really well-designed, well-built piece of equipment.”

Bearers will pass the flame from one to another, using along the route modes of transportation symbolic of the history and heritage of Indiana. Along with Lucas’ race car, perhaps Indiana’s most globally recognizable vehicle, the exercise will feature farm equipment, a horse and wagon, an antique automobile, and watercraft.

“Indiana is such a diverse state. A lot of people don’t realize how diverse it really is,” Lucas said. “Motorsport is a big part of the economy. I know the [relay organizers] are trying to find a way to showcase more than just the cornfields and things people think about when they think of Indiana.”

Lucas – who was born in Corydon, grew up in Southern California, and lives in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel with his wife Katie and their two sons – said the Hoosier capital is “a great city. You have all the amenities of a big city here but with a small-town feature where everybody knows each other – and you don’t have all the massive traffic that makes you have road rage. It’s a happy place. My quality of life has been better since being here. That’s why it’s such an honor to have the opportunity to take our car and our team and represent drag racing.

“In my life, I’ve been dealt a good set of cards, and I’ve had a lot of cool experiences,” Lucas said. “But I’m sure this is going to rank up toward the top. I’m really excited about the opportunity, and the guys on the team seem like they’re into it, as well. For us, it’s a rare opportunity, and they’ve never had it on the back of a Top Fuel car.”   

The journey will begin September 9 at Corydon and end October 15 at Indianapolis, on the grounds of the Statehouse, site of an all-inclusive Hoosier celebration. The torch will travel six days a week (with Mondays off) for five weeks (a total of 32 days). Lucas said the public is invited to witness the spectacle: “They want people to come out. So if anyone wants to check it out, feel free. It’s a really neat deal.”

Accompanying the torch will be a caravan that includes the Indiana Bicentennial Experience, a museum on wheels that celebrates the history and culture of the Hoosier State.

GRUMPY OLD TOP FUEL MEN – Call them grumpy old men – or just two Top Fuel drivers and pioneers of drag racing who have a great time teasing one another.

Chris Karamesines and Luigi Novelli, both from the Chicago area, had their well-honed entertainment shtick in high gear in the pits Friday before qualifying began.

Karamesines assured that he wouldn’t subject his car to all the trauma it went through here last year in qualifying. He was on track to post a 3.9-second run, but his Lucas Oil Dragster suffered extensive damage. The input shaft broke and trashed the clutch and the engine. His crew chief, Dennis Swearingen said the car “went from 5.6 Gs to minus-1 in a thousandth of a second. There’s just too much damage. It sheered the flywheel studs and beat up everything in the bellhousing.” So he didn’t have time to fix the damage and missed the show.

But the octogenarian – who allegedly is 85 years old but won’t swear to anything much past 39 – said he didn’t expect any of that kind of trouble this weekend.

“Nah. Everything’s going to be fine. It’s going to be wonderful,” Karamesines said.

Pressed for the reason he was so sure, he said, “I have no idea, but we’ll figure it out.”

He said nothing noteworthy was going on in his organization: “Nothing yet. We’re just going to try and do our best here and see what happens. As long as we can beat Novelli, we don’t care.”

Does he really have a rivalry going with Novelli?

“Nah,” Karamesines said. “Just his age. He’s just too old to be driving a race car.”

Novelli, transparent about the fact he’ll be 74 years old in December, reacted with mock annoyance when he found out Karamesines accused him of being too old to be driving a race car.

“I got news for him – he’s ancient. He should have quit 20 years ago,” Novelli said.

The owner-driver of the National Machine Repair Dragster, said they poke fun at each other “all the time” and that their silly sniping has been going on for “30 years, maybe 40.”

Novelli emphasized, “Don’t forget – he started probably [19]58, ’59. I started by ’61. We go back, you know, a long, long time. But, you know, he’s a little bit older and he’s a little bit, supposedly wiser. I doubt it.”

Asked if he thinks he’s wiser than Karamesines, Novelli (who described the state of his team as “same old stuff, same old cars, same old Luigi the old guy, same old working, same old everything”) indicted both of them.

He said, “If we were wise, we wouldn’t be doing this and spending all our money.”

MILLICAN HAS BUSY, EMOTIONAL TIME BETWEEN NHRA EVENTS – Running a career-best elapsed time, making the Countdown to the Championship field, and receiving the reassurance that his dragster was repaired to be structurally sound again . . . Normally would be plenty for one racer to think about at once. But Clay Millican had no time between the Brainerd and Indianapolis events to sit and contemplate any of that. First of all, he and his Stringer Performance team had to scramble after the Minnesota race to prepare the race car for an additional event beyond their already loaded schedule.

They gave Millican the perfect vehicle to win the annual World Series of Drag Racing, which shifted from Cordova, Ill. (not far from the team’s race shop) to Memphis (not far from Millican’s home in Drummonds, Tenn.). Millican defeated longtime buddy and on-track rival Bruce Litton in the final-round match-up of IHRA champions.

That wasn’t all that the weekend had in store for Millican and his wife Donna and son Cale.

Clay Millican was one of nine racing legends in the inaugural class of the Memphis International Raceway Hall of Fame. Sharing the honor with Millican were Shirley Muldowney, James "Augie" McCallie, Mike Dunn, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, Larry Coleman, Larry Reyes, Bill Taylor, and Roland Leong.

Pro Stock racer Allen Johnson and his wife Pam and friends Tom & Joan Calimanis made possible a Doug Herbert B.R.A.K.E.S. school there in the Memphis area, in memory of Clay’s and Donna’s son and Cale’s brother, Dalton. Clay Millican said, a year of work went into planning and preparation for the event.

“It was certainly an emotional roller coaster ride but so very rewarding,” Millican shared in a Facebook post. “The school, the instructors, and the staff members that Doug Herbert has put together is an incredible group of people. What an amazing job they all do.”

His post, on behalf of his wife and son, said, in part:

“Leading up to this event, my family and I visited many high schools. We were all very nervous that we may have no one show up, but the turnout was incredible. The kids and parents showed up in droves. My family and I were only a small part of this. The volunteers that showed up to make the school successful were invaluable to us. The group of Dalton Clay Millican's friends that spent hours out in the hot Memphis sun - THANK YOU! We love you all! To the Sugar Creek Boys and the Cooper boys, we will never forget what you did. The volunteers who showed up that we didn't even know - WOW! How AWESOME! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

“To say it was a GREAT weekend would be an understatement. To everyone at all the high schools we visited, the staff and the kids, thank you for allowing us to come speak to you about B.R.A.K.E.S. To all the kids and parents who came out, we thank you. I could go on forever thanking everyone who made this happen.

“We love and miss Dalton every day. He is with us every day, and he was certainly with us this weekend. Through this wonderful program, Dalton made sure that there are some safer drivers on the road.”