First things first.  Were you at O’Reilly Raceway Park today for the
first day, or evening, of Pro qualifying?  Well, you should have been, and
there’s still time to get here.  Not tonight, but Saturday, Sunday or
even Monday.  But that’s not our point.  If you had been here the first
thing you would have noticed…  “Noticed,” now there’s improper word
usage if we’ve ever seen it.  The first thing you would have seen are
the massive, and very steep grandstands on the east side of the track. 
They are awesome.  Good job, NHRA.  You’ve given your fans one
of the best seats the sport has to offer, and we were pleased to see
that a very nice crowd was in attendance to experience this new amenity.

The song "Back Home Again In Indiana" is associated with actor Jim Nabors and the Indianapolis 500. But as the National Hot Rod Association's
Mac Tools U.S. Nationals approaches, it couldn't be a more appropriate
theme song for Top Fuel drag racer Morgan Lucas.
 
The Corydon, Ind.-born and Southern California-reared Lucas called the
Hoosier State "God's country." And, like his adopted hometown
Indianapolis, he is maturing, even shining, as a big-league player.
 
Indianapolis, one of America's top dozen cities in population, has
taken the sports spotlight. Its National Football League Colts won the
2007 Super Bowl, and their home field -- Lucas Oil Stadium -- will host
the 2012 Super Bowl. The basketball-crazy city -- and the downtown
stadium for which his parents' company owns the 20-year, $122-million
naming rights -- also will host the NCAA Final Four tournament in April
2010. It's a heady time for the Motorsports Capital of the World.

Terry Haddock is about as frustrated as he’s ever been in drag racing.

Haddock is discouraged because he’s one of many racers who interpreted
the NHRA’s testing limitations as assigned to the driver, car and team.
The independent racer, who admittedly competes by racing
from-race-to-race, is up in arms about a recent clarification of the
testing rules by the NHRA.

Haddock was penalized earlier in the year for a testing violation after participating in two IHRA events.

Haddock currently ranks twelfth in the NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel
points standings, the same position held by Robert Hight in the Funny
Car standings, whose fifth test session of the season as a driver has
sparked a raging fire of debate. The NHRA agreed with John Force it was
within the rules for Hight to test in the No. 7 Castrol Ford normally
driven by Force.

When Dean and Cary Goforth first rolled out their Mountain Motor Pro
Stock cars for the first time back in February, both expected that this
would be a banner year for the Goforth Family Racing Team.

With Dean in a brand new 2009 Pontiac GXP and Cary taking over the
reigns of their ’08 Chevrolet Cobalt, it was clear from the start that
the pair from Holdenville, Oklahoma was going to make a splash this
season and look good doing it.

What wasn’t expected, however, was the sudden enormity of their success.

Bryan Pierce is playing the waiting game and hanging in the balance is the future of the drag strip he manages.

The general manager for Virginia Motorsports Park, an NHRA-sanctioned
Full Throttle Drag Racing Series national event host facility located
in Dinwiddie, Va., is waiting to receive the final answer on whether or
not the NHRA plans to renew his contract for 2010 and beyond.

“We have an ongoing contract right now,” Pierce said. “And, we are waiting on it to be renewed.”

Jack Roush, one of NASCAR's premier team owners and the Ford Motor Company's shining star in the auto industry's dark sky, has achieved success by being a visionary.

Drag racing, it turns out, is his inspiration.
 
He's well beyond the romance of sniffing nitro fumes and being
tongue-tangled trying to describe header flames during Friday-night
qualifying. Roush thinks of dragsters and Funny Cars and his
imagination soars into the realms of medical technology and
extraterrestrial energy solutions.
 
"If the hospitals, with all of their medical science, could find a way
to put somebody in a tube and blow him out to a dragstrip whenever a
Top Fuel dragster or a Funny Car is getting ready to make a pass, it
would have a rejuvenating effect more than the electric shockers they
put on your chest when your heart stops," he said.
 

For nearly a year, Tony Schumacher has been extremely careful to be
respectful and gracious about the changes to his U.S. Army Dragster
team that might have devastated another race-car driver or exposed some
snarky side.
 
Alan Johnson tuned Schumacher to five straight NHRA Top Fuel
championships for six overall and a class-record 59 victories. But
Johnson left Don Schumacher Racing at the end of last season to form
his own team that features dragster driver Larry Dixon and Funny Car
veteran Del Worsham.
 
Since then, Tony Schumacher has chosen not to respond to those who
doubted his ability to win races in Johnson's absence. He never needed
to, really -- he has let his record speak for itself. This year he has
won three events, led the standings after four races, and never been
out of the top five.

They have a lot in common at the moment, Funny Car drivers Matt Hagan, Robert Hight, and Cruz Pedregon.
 

But it's not all positive.
 
Granted, Hagan is a National Hot Rod Association rookie. Just the same,
he joins Pedregon, the reigning champion and Hight, a two-time series
runner-up and 2005 rookie of the year, in a year-long struggle. Each
has shown flashes of strength, but none has been consistent. None has
coaxed the full potential from his car.
 
And all three are fighting to be one of the top 10 drivers who will vie for the championship in the Countdown's third edition.