EVENT RESULTS EVENT NOTEBOOK POINTS AFTER EVENT ROUND-BY-ROUND RESULTS FINAL SPORTSMAN RESULTS

FRI. GALLERY SAT. GALLERY SUN GALLERY

 

 

THE TEN: Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA Vegas 4Wide Natinals.

1. Tony Stewart adds “drag racing winner” to his crowded resume, says he’s ‘having fun living my life now’ - By three ten-thousandths of a second, Tony Stewart added “NHRA drag-racing winner” to his already resplendent résumé Sunday at the Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Minutes after Stewart claimed the Top Alcohol Dragster trophy, his Funny Car driver, Matt Hagan, put the team’s Haas Automation Dodge Hellcat into the winners circle, establishing his command over the class with his third triumph in the season’s first four races.

They joined Antron Brown (Top Fuel) and Dallas Glenn (Pro Stock) atop the winners podium at the conclusion of this fourth of 21 races on the Camping World Drag Racing Series schedule.

Borrowing a line from the movie “Talladega Nights,” Stewart wisecracked, “I feel like Ricky Bobby: 'I don’t know what to do with my hands,'” at the top end of the track shortly after climbing from his Mobil 1 dragster. Within minutes, he put those hands to use, high-fiving his team for its first double-up victory.

“I got tired of looking at Leah’s Wallys, and I wanted to know what it feels like to have one of my own,” Stewart said after edging runner-up Todd Bruce in the final so-called “quad” in just his fourth national event.

The four-wide format, which has confounded even the most seasoned drag-racing veterans, hasn’t fazed Stewart. He said he figures it’s a bit of an equalizer.

“I’m pretty excited about it, honestly,” he said. “I looked forward to this event when we were doing the schedule. I got excited about it, because there’s no way I’m going to sit here and say I’m not at a disadvantage when you’re going up against guys who have been drag racing for years. But they don’t race four-wide a lot. So that kind of gets ’em out of their comfort zone, gets ’em out doing something different – and it’s all different for me. If anything, this would be a bit of an equalizer, and I wouldn’t be at quite a disadvantage. I embraced it. 

“There wasn’t anything that caught me off-guard, necessarily,” he said. “There’s nothing about the four-wide that I haven’t liked so far. I feel like the approach I’ve been going with every round of qualifying has been a very solid approach. You hear drivers talk about getting disoriented on which light they’re looking at. I’ve found the lights to be easy to stay with.”

He likened this unconventional style to “having the opportunity to run a road course or dirt track in the [NASCAR] Cup Series -- do something that’s a little different. So, doing the four-wide version, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s kind of like a heat-race format, I guess, for short-track racing. You don’t have to win. You just got to finish in the top two until you get to the finals, then you’ve got to go for the win, obviously.”

All in all, he said, “I think it’s pretty cool. I’m excited and appreciative that I get to run it here at Vegas and can’t wait to go to Charlotte and do it again.”

The NHRA is challenging its drivers with back-to-back four-wide races. The action will shift to the East Coast for the April 28-30 Circe K Four-Wide Nationals at Concord, N.C.’s zMAX Dragway.

As for whether his business associates in other endeavors are weary of hearing about his newly discovered excitement for NHRA drag racing, Stewart said, “I don’t give a s---. I don’t care if NASCAR is mad. I don’t care if anybody’s mad. I’m having fun, living my life now. I’m able to control my life. I don’t have to do all the things that I had to do with my previous jobs. I have more control of my life. I have great teammates that drive for us, a great wife, and [Pruett and Hagan] have been the best teachers you can ask for and get advice from.

“They all know I’m having fun. I think it’s the opposite of what you thought,” he said. “The comment I get the most is how happy I am: ‘You look happy. You look at peace.’ And I haven’t had that for a long time. So I’m at a very good spot in my life right now.”

And his team is at a really strong spot right now. Hagan is the Funny Car points leader. Pruett is fifth in the standings among the Top Fuel leaders after winning her opening round Sunday and advancing to the semifinal. And Stewart has mastered the track that denied him in the final against Madison Payne in his previous appearance here last fall.     

Stewart has won at every venue on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway property now.

“The Bullring is their pavement short track, and we won in a USAC spring and a USAC midget car on the same night,” he said. “We’ve won on the dirt track in a 360 winged sprint car.  And I won my first USAC Silver Crown race at the dirt track ... then in the Cup car on the big track ...  and here today. Plus in 1997, our only IndyCar championship finished here at Vegas.”

2. Shawn Langdon calls out Josh Hart at top end after his Top Fuel semifinal staging snafu - In a tough-down-the-line Top Fuel semifinal quad that promised to produce a close finish, a starting-line miscue resulted in Shawn Langdon timing out, Mike Salinas losing traction early, Steve Torrence winning in spite of his momentary confusion, and Josh Hart getting the blame.

Langdon took responsibility for his performance, but he threw massive shade at Hart in the R+L Carriers dragster when he emerged from his DHL dragster.

“I screwed up,” he said, before launching into criticism of Hart. “Josh has been hanging a lot of people out. He’s a good guy. I like Josh. But he’s slow, and everybody knows it. Everybody in the class talks about it.

“Bottom line, I’ve got to get my s--- together. That was uncalled for on my end,” Langdon said. “My guys deserve better than that. I’m very, very disappointed in myself. I know how to race better than that. I know the [seven-second] count. I knew to get in. It’s 100 percent on me. I owe everybody an apology for my sponsors.

“That’s just how we race Josh. The whole class knows he takes a long time. The result is I screwed up,” he said.

Torrence was annoyed, even though he advanced to the final round and eventually finished as runner-up to quasi-teammate Antron Brown and reclaimed the points lead. (In the end, he didn’t fare poorly, for he has won or been runner-up at eight of the past 10 four-wide races, and his six four-wide victories are twice as many as anyone else has earned in any class.)

After slamming his harness on his CAPCO dragster when he stepped from his car, Torrence said, “I just missed the Tree, didn’t do my job. Got caught in some kind of stupid game that was going on with somebody.

“Drag racing is drag racing. We do what we do. Everything that you do is within the rules. I don’t know what was going on, but I just caught myself blinking. I saw the whole bulb was on,” he said.

Hart was anything but apologetic.

“If I was playing games, I wouldn't have been the one that timed out,” Hart, recognized as one of the quickest drivers off the starting line, said. “I guess sooner or later you see everyone's true colors, but I didn't time out. I didn't do it intentionally. I am anticipating the pain from the launch because of my neck, and you can't go out here and start whining about your pain. You have to muscle through it. You got these guys out here busting their butts constantly. So you know, I just did the best that I could. Other drivers obviously are not approving of that, but I didn't do anything wrong. I am racing within the confines of the NHRA. I can't change the rules. I just follow them.”

3. Matt Hagan establishes early dominance in Funny Car class - Matt Hagan’s fifth victory at Las Vegas and 46th overall was an extra-special one, because he shared it with boss Tony Stewart, the Top Alcohol Dragster winner Sunday.

The Haas Automation Dodge Hellcat driver benefitted from nemesis Robert Hight’s loss in their first-round foursome, as well as first-round exits by Ron Capps and Bob Tasca III in their opening-round quad. In the final round, Hagan defeated runner-up Tim Wilkerson, who was competing against the car he consults on and his own son Dan Wilkerson tunes, and a rejuvenated John Force, who is rebounding from a sub-par performance at the previous race, at Pomona, Calif.

Hagan and crew chief Dickie Venables are on a roll, after winning at Gainesville and Pomona, too.

Hagan called Stewart “a wheelman at anything he steps into” and said he wasn’t feeling any real pressure following Stewart’s achievement in the Top Alcohol Dragster final – until Stewart sent him down the track with what was supposed to be encouragement.

“I was like, all right, he’s won -- no pressure,” Hagan said. “Then he comes and crawls under the car and says, ‘I just won. You better win. Let’s go.’  Was like, ‘Ah, I feel a little pressure now.’

"Nah, but it’s great. To win and share this victory lane with Tony Stewart is a huge highlight of my career. People don’t realize what type of guy he is. I had no idea who Tony Stewart was, didn’t follow circle track or anything. [He’s] just a genuinely good dude, man. And those are hard to find nowadays. I’m not just saying that because he’s my boss. He could fire me tomorrow, and I’d say it again. He's the kind of guy you want to win for then drink a beer with afterward.”

4. Dallas Glenn records back-to-back victories in Pro Stock - The third-year RAD Torque Systems Chevy Camaro driver for KB Titan Racing followed his Winternationals victory at Pomona with his sixth overall victory and second at Las Vegas. He edged Troy Coughlin Jr. by about three feet – a mere 0.0092 of a second.

It was atonement for top qualifier Glenn, who reached the final quad here last season and broke at the starting line.

He said, “I didn’t feel I did my job the best that I could’ve” Sunday and was "pumped" to see that he had won, especially against the cagey Coughlin, who launched at about the same moment, and against Cristian Cuadra, who had cut excellent reaction times all day, and against Deric Kramer.

“Even though I was not the best today, I was barely good enough to get it done,” Glenn said. “And that’s kind of what matters in four-wide.”

5. Antron Brown posts first Top Fuel victory of the young season - The three-time series champion, owner-driver of the Matco Tools Toyota dragster at AB Motorsports, earned his 56th Top Fuel victory and 72nd overall, outrunning Steve Torrence by about seven feet in the final round.

“Man, [Force] beat us in the first round by four-thou, the second round by nine-thou, but we got ’em on the third try,” Brown said. “Third time’s the charm. We knew we had to step it up against them because that car has been so consistent. It’s a Xerox machine. That’s why they’re the defending champs.

“When you’re racing four-wide, everything is crazy,” he said. “It’s kind of a battle royal, and the final round was no exception. Every round was a tough match-up. Look at the final today:  you’ve got the four-time champion Steve; Brittany, a two-time champ; myself; and Josh Hart. To come up with that win, that was definitely a statement for our Matco Tools / Lucas Oil / FVP / FDC / Hangsterfers’ / Sirius XM team. That was a heck of a win. I’m just super-pumped, super-proud.”

Nearly half of the top 10 drivers in the Top Fuel standings were gone by the end of the first round: points leader Justin Ashley, No. 5 Austin Prock, No. 8 Doug Kalitta, and No. 10 Tony Schumacher. No. 11 Clay Millican got sent home early, too.   

6. John Force fights back, bites back - John Force took a vacation with his family since his debacle at Pomona, but it didn’t do much to make him feel better about the accident that he triggered that collected J.R. Todd and wrecked both of their race cars. However, once he got back to the racetrack, he started to recover, and started getting his mojo back.

After his second qualifying pass Saturday, one of his PEAK Chevy Camaro crew members came to him and shook his hand. And some made a little much of that gesture, he seemed to think. He said it simply meant that the crew has his back.

“It’s just a run – and I’ve made five million of these runs,” Force said. “You’ve got to watch [out]. This is a mental game. It can make you mental.”

Although he clearly is growing weary of talking about the Pomona incident, Force said Saturday afternoon, “I’ve always lived on the edge.

“I went to my guys [Friday] night,” he said, “and I asked, ‘Do you believe in me? I believe in you. But do you believe in me? ’Cause if you don’t, I need to go home.’ When that stuff [like the accident] happens, especially when you tie up another driver, that’s when OK – you figure this out or get out. And I’m not getting out.”  

Then Sunday he said, “I’ve had drivers coming up to me, and I know they’re not happy with me. I get it. But they always say, ‘You’ll be OK.’ Ron Capps was one of the first – even said he loves me. That matters to me. It keeps my head in the game. This game will beat you up. It beat me up bad.”

After earning a spot in the final round Sunday, Force said, “I’m just the luckiest guy in the world, coming back from being an embarrassment. I’m just glad I can be able to race with these kids.”

He finished third in his quad, but he’s starting to regain that 16-time-champion swagger.

Force did say he’s still evaluating exactly what went wrong with his car during qualifying for the Winternationals. But he said he’s sure of one thing: His age didn’t play a factor in the incident, and he isn’t planning to quit. He discredited a rumor that one or more racers approached him at the Lucas Oil Winternationals and urged him to step away from the cockpit.

“We're going to address my car. My crew chiefs have addressed me. Robert [Hight, his teammate and company president] has addressed me, like, ‘You push it too far.’ I’ve done it before, trying to get qualified and doing stuff, but this wasn't a good time to push it because it got me,” Force told Competition Plus just before this edition of the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

He attributed the accident to “a combination of things. I oversteered it myself. My fault. Maybe the track was really narrow, and I learned a good lesson on that. I'm going to go out and make some runs and see where I'm at with the car. Nothing's wrong with me. No different, other than I'm just getting older. But bottom line, after I make some runs, then I can probably give you some answers. Maybe we'll know what went wrong. And I'm not arguing – I was part of it.”

His 74th birthday is May 4. And not unpredictably, talk turned to Force’s age following the crash, especially considering he also had his final qualifying pass tossed out because he drove across the center line again. Inevitably, as well, rumors swirled at the racetrack that a group of drivers encouraged him to quit.

But Force said, “No, it didn’t happen. Not even one. If there was somebody who said they came to me, well, tell me who they are, because they didn't. If anything, people were probably staying away from me out of respect. I'm sure there's people that don't want to see me hurt, because at my age, if you get hurt, it'd be different than a 30-year-old that gets hurt in a car. But no, I’d tell you if somebody came to me. J.R., he didn't like it. But nobody asked me to retire. I'd tell you if they did.

“Five years ago, I got over the center line, and people were after me then because nobody likes to see that. Then they turn around and do it the next day, and then they're saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, I did it, too.’ Well, who knows why? I don't blame nobody. We just go down the road,” he said.

“Is my age a factor? I don't believe so,” Force said. “But you ask anybody, ‘Why would you be 70 years old and driving a race car?' Why? Because I love to drive them. I'm trying to help the sport. I'm trying to keep cars out there. I don't do it for the money. I made enough money, I can retire. I do it because I love the driving. I love the battle. I love the camaraderie. I love being with the people and the cheer of the crowd, all that s---, you know what I'm saying? But time tells me it's time and I'll know it. And that's all I can say about that.”

 He said he’s ready to keep on fighting the good fight: “Yeah, well, it's what I do.”

Force is reconciled to the fact that observers will have their own opinions and that not all will be favorable – or even unfavorable. He said, “There's two sides to everything. And I don't follow the Internet, but I've heard a lot of people are upset on the Internet. Some are for me, some are against me. That's the way the world is.”

7. J.R. Todd doubly disappointed - For the second straight race, DHL Toyota Supra Funny Car driver J.R. Todd said he had experienced “definitely a forgettable weekend.” But the Kalitta Motorsports driver assumed responsibility for the failure to qualify that wiped out his crew’s phenomenal repair-and-replace effort for which they earned the “Never Rest Award.”

“I put the blame on me. I should have done a better job earlier in the weekend and keeping the thing in the groove and not come down to Q4 to get in the show,” Todd said Saturday afternoon.

“All in all, I feel bad for my guys [after] all the work they put in this past week to get this DHL GR Supra back on track. All the guys back at PBRC [Precision Built Race Cars] and everybody at Kalitta Motorsports and back at the fab shop for busting their asses to get us back out here,” he said. “This is a tough pill to swallow, but I’m sure we’ll stay and run on Monday to get this thing figured out. It's still early in the season, and there’s a lot of racing left.”

Todd said, “I told these guys I’m sorry. They deserve better than this, and I wanted to get them a win this weekend. That’s the way I can pay them back.”
 

9. Chad Green continues Funny Car momentum - With a pair of semifinal finishes and a $10,000 victory in the second Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge bonus race to start his season, Chad Green was on a roll. Then his car wouldn’t roll off the starting line at Pomona in Race No. 3 of the season. So the Midland, Texas, oil-well-servicing company owner said “it’s so imperative” to have a strong performance here and not break that momentum.

“For that to happen to us [at Pomona] was really unfortunate, and we don't want something like that to just kill our momentum. So it's really important that we get right back on track right now, this race,” Green said.

And he did, advancing to the final round. Although according to NHRA four-wide rules, he will not get credit for a final-round appearance, he knows he was racing for the trophy that went to Matt Hagan. But he was in there, digging, alongside runner-up Tim Wilkerson and resurgent John Force, as well.

It wasn’t smooth sailing for Green the whole weekend, though. He bumped into the field on the final pass of qualifying Saturday, knocking out Terry Haddock – the year’s other “surprise” driver. Green emerged from an opening-round quad that saw Ron Capps and Bob Tasca III bow out, leaving Blake Alexander to advance along with him.

Winning the Mission Foods Challenge at Pomona, Green said, “definitely has given me a lot of confidence. And along with that, it's given the whole team ... a lot of confidence. So there's nothing better than success for the team to breed more success.”

He said the team “changed a few parts in the off season, so we're still trying to get the tune-up dialed in. But we're confident we're going to get back in the [3.]80s.”

Green said Sunday that crew chief Daniel Wilkerson “is coming into his own, and it’s cool to see that happening. This is our second year with the same team. We’ve really come a long ways.”

10. Memorable quotes from the weekend - “This is kind of gnarly – and I really enjoy it.” - Blake Alexander, Funny Car racer for Jim Head Racing, regarding the four-wide format
 
“This team has earned this. This was no gimme. We don’t want gimmes out here. This is kind of my father’s dream. I wish I were surfing 70-foot waves. This is for him. He instilled this in me.”
- Jeff Diehl, Funny Car owner-driver, after advancing along with Matt Hagan in his first-round foursome, as Robert Hight and Alex Laughlin were eliminated

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY NOTEBO0OK - BROWN, HAGAN AND GLENN SEAL THE DEAL

FEEL THE BURN - Let the dominance continue for nitro Funny Car driver Matt Hagan. Hagan won his third race – out of four this season – when he took the victory at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The Tony Stewart Racing driver plowed through the competition in his Dodge Direct Connect Charger SRT Hellcat.

In his final quad, Hagan clocked a 3.943-second elapsed time at 326.79 mph to defeat Tim Wilkerson (3.96 seconds), John Force (4.005), and Chad Green (4.222).

This was Hagan’s 46th career NHRA nitro Funny Car win. Hagan, who won NHRA nitro Funny Car world championships in 2011, 2014 and 2020, won a career-best five national events in 2013. He has won four races in a season in 2014-17, 2019, and 2022.

“Let’s start it off talking about Tony (Stewart, who won the Top Alcohol Dragster title in Vegas); the guy is amazing,” Hagan said. “It is pretty cool. I saw that he won, and I thought there’s no pressure. Then he comes and crawls under the car and said, ‘I just won. You better win. Let’s go.’ I thought I feel a little pressure now. It is great to be able to share this winner’s circle with Tony Stewart. It is a huge highlight of my career.

“People don’t realize what type of guy he is. I had no idea who Tony Stewart was. I never followed circle track. I was looking up all his accolades to see what he has done and accomplished when I decided I was going to start driving for him. He’s genuinely a good dude. Those are hard to find nowadays. I’m not just saying that because he’s, my boss. He could fire me tomorrow, and I would say it again. He’s the type of guy you want to win for, and then you want to drink a beer with afterwards.”

Hagan has won multiple events in 11 consecutive seasons. That’s the longest active streak in the series, and it ties him with Robert Hight and retired Pro Stock driver Warren Johnson for the third-longest in NHRA history. The only drivers who have earned multiple victories in more consecutive seasons are John Force (18 seasons from 1990-2007) and Greg Anderson (12 seasons from 2001-2012).

“The parts and pieces they have provided over here at TSR and my crew chief Dickie Venables, there is not a weekend that this guy doesn’t impress me in some way, shape or form,” Hagan said. “He’s the type of guy you want to finish your career with. It has been nothing but glorious the whole time. We’ve always been in the Countdown, and we have always had an opportunity to win a championship every year and those are tough to get. A lot of people go their entire career and don’t get an opportunity to do that.”

Hagan qualified No. 3 with a 3.936-second time and then won his first and second quad, and then was victorious in his final round quad.

“To start the season off this hot and win three of the four races is pretty awesome,” Hagan said. “I have won a couple of races starting off, back-to-back and stuff, and you have to stay humble. I’m still really proud of my guys and I think we are still going to test (Monday) and bring out our old car and make some runs and make sure it is ready to go. You have seen the chaos and all that stuff that is going on with these other guys like J.R. (Todd) and (John) Force. You have to bring other cars out.

“We want to make sure that doesn’t bite us and make some runs. I don’t think I’m going to get to drink too much (Sunday night), but I’m going to make sure Tony Stewart drinks a few beers tonight. It has just been really special to do that today with him. As cool as it is to be here with Tony, it is cool for my guys. Those are the guys who put in the grit and put in the work. They are a H*ll of a group and they are putting a hell of a race car underneath me.”

Hagan has a glossy 12-1 elimination round record this season. His only loss was in second round against Green in Phoenix.

“What’s kind of wild is when I was running at DSR (Don Schumacher Racing), Dickie is an innovator,” Hagan said. “The year I won the championship, the last one in 2020, we had the opportunity to have a chassis that was like no other. We had a huge performance advantage that Dickie figured out. A lot of crew chiefs we were working with laughed at him. They were saying that will not work. Go ahead and try it. I feel like we had five hundredths on guys. At DSR, you don’t get to hold onto that information.

“It is really tough when you’re innovating, and you find something, and then you have to pass it along to three other teammates and different things like that. I think it was very frustrating for Dickie, and then coming over here to TSR, it was like his first opportunity to put a stamp on what he wanted to do, and he knew no one else was going to have that information. Tony also provides us with pretty much the green light to do whatever we want as long as it is within the rules.”

Hagan hasn’t had the best results in Four-Wide races in his career, and there was no secret formula to his win Sunday.

“Luck,” said Hagan about what changed this weekend. “I would like to sit here and say it was me or something, but it is not. I’ve done everything in the Four-Wide, from not staging the car like (Shawn) Langdon did today and red lighting and not knowing which lane I’m in. So, you have to dummy it down up there. My crew chief does a really good job of stepping his foot in the beams, and I look at the bulb. As he turns a screw, he tells me I’m in lane three.

“What is crazy in round two today is Force turned the top bulb off, and that distracts you whether you like it or not. You look over and you’re coming back, and the tree is falling. When stuff like that happens, it makes you get out of character. I think that anybody who says they have the Four-Wide figured out is probably full of sh*t. That’s my opinion. You get lucky out here. You do a good job, and you try to dummy it down to make sure you figure it out and what you’re doing. There is a lot that goes into it.”

As good as Hagan has been to start the 2023 campaign, he knows it is how you finish that matters most.

“I think what we need to work on as a team is just a hot weather tune-up,” he said. “You look at Robert Hight last year; they never fell off throughout the season. We always run really well during the beginning of the season and the Countdown, and I think that’s why we are always in the hunt. I think the difference this year is the innovation that Dickie has made with the chassis, and it has a lot better grip. When we get to those hot weather racetracks and those tricky racetracks, we need to be able to win those races in the middle of summer and the Western Swing.

“That’s really my main focus. I know we have been talking about it as team for a while. Even if we have to drag it across there to Indy when it gets nasty and greasy. We need to have a tune-up that we can run 3.95 to 4.05 and go down a dirt road.”

ANTRON ALWAYS LANDS ON HIS FEET - Never sleep on Antron Brown.

The veteran Top Fuel driver/owner always seems to find himself in the mix for wins.

Brown, who won NHRA Top Fuel world championships in 2012, 2015-16, celebrated again on Sunday.

Brown won the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Brown, who pilots the Matco Tools/Toyota Dragster, clocked a 3.760-second elapsed time at 319.75 mph to defeat Steve Torrence (3.774 seconds), Brittany Force (3.769 seconds) and Josh Hart (3.791 seconds) in the final round quad.

“I’m just super pumped and super proud because we were working on our stuff this offseason to make it better,” Brown said. “We didn’t stay like we did last year; we changed even more stuff. We just want to get better and better.”

Sunday's triumph was Brown’s 56th career NHRA Top Fuel win and his 72nd national event victory, with the other 16 coming in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class. This was Brown’s fourth time he won the spring race in Vegas (2011, 2016-17, and 2022) and it is his sixth win overall in Sin City.

Brown, who guides AB Motorsports, entered Vegas ninth in the points standings with a 3-3 elimination-round record through three races. He moved up to fourth in the points standings.

Brown finished second in is his first-round quad with a 3.780-second run and was second again in his second-round quad with a 3.769-second lap. That set the stage for his win in the finals, his first win of the season.

“You have to remember we are at the Four-Wide,” Brown said. “When you go to the Four-Wides, everything is crazy. It is a battle royal, and we showed it there in that final. Every round was a tough match-up. Everything was really tight. In the final, all four cars were right there with each other.

“In the final round, people out there have won races and won world championships; it was a battle royal. To come out with that win, that was definitely a statement for our Matco Tools Lucas Oil Toyota, and all our guys. That was a heck of a win.”

A year ago, Brown claimed three race wins and finished second in the points standings.

“We know when the Countdown comes, you have to be strong,” Brown said.

Brown has won in the Four-Wide format in his career, but these events aren’t his best, so he was glad to find Victory Lane again.

“We were relentless,” he said. “We never gave up. We didn’t qualify where we wanted to (ninth at 3.769 seconds). We want to qualify in the top five all the time. We thought we were going to do that the last qualifying round, and we went out there and 40 feet out, we dropped a hole. The crazy part is our driveshaft came up and looked good like we were going to run a 71 or 72 as we did in Pomona. We were right there. First round, it got a little tricky. We saw cars smoke the tires, and we backed it down and got down the track.

“That’s what I love about our team is that we evolve as time goes on. We do not stay the same. As the day went on, the track got tricky. It got hot. The track got hot, and if we had slipped up, we would have lost. In the final, when the track got better, our TRD boys were talking on the radio (to his crew chiefs) Brian (Corradi) and Mark (Oswald), and that’s what is so special about Toyota Racing, they were telling us to step it up a little bit, and it picked up at half-track. The car did exactly what it needed to do to get the win. I was looking up; Lord have mercy. It was just a blessing to do that at the right time when we needed it. It was a complete team effort. That’s what it is going to take to win races this year and win championships.”

In 2022, Brown’s team was seemingly in an uphill battle until it got on a heater in the six-race Countdown and nearly won a world championship. Now, Brown hopes to ride the wave of an early season win.

“The thing about it is if we get more laps, we learn more, and the more we learn, the better we get,” he said. “If we go into the Countdown and go in there as a top-tier team, we will not have to play catch-up. That’s the game plan. We want to go in there in the top three. We are going to work our tails off to try and make that happen, but there are so many great teams like Mike Salinas, all the Kalitta cars, and Clay Millican. There are over 12 cars that could win on any given Sunday. It could be anybody’s race. Tony Schumacher’s team is coming around. Our main focus right now is to keep improving and getting better, turn on win lights, and get in the winner’s circle. If you can do that, you will learn from every lap that you go.

“Who will be there at the end is who gets the most laps and learns from them and be there at the end.”

Brown acknowledged he would enjoy his latest trip to the winner’s circle.

“We are going to party like it is 1999,” he said. “We are going to rock Prince tonight, trust me. Then we are going to come back, and if we can keep on winning rounds and building momentum, that is the key to winning championships.”

It wasn’t lost on Brown that he’s moving up the Top Fuel all-time victory list and that he’s only six behind Larry Dixon’s 62 race wins.

“Larry was my rival, and at one time me and we didn’t like each other too much,” Brown said. “We didn’t talk a couple of times, but he’s always been my hero because the man has grit. He races hard, and we have six more to get to that 62. Larry isn't done racing. Don’t be surprised to see him back out here. He’s just the cream of the crop. He always carried himself with dignity, honor, and integrity, and that’s why I have great respect for him. I love him like a brother. He will always be my hero. We are going to try and get there to (62 wins).”

Brown also touched on NASCAR legend Tony Stewart getting his first drag racing win as he was victorious in the Top Alcohol Dragster class in Vegas Sunday.

“Trust me, that day is coming,” said Brown about having a rivalry with Stewart in Top Fuel. “Smoke is coming. The only thing that is a little quicker than Smoke and is a little thicker is that black smoke. I got something for you, Tony. I’m just joking.

“Tony is super competitive. He didn’t win this race today in Top Alcohol because he had a great car. He won it because he had a great team and he was a great driver. I watched Tony in everything he did, from Sprint Car to Late Models, Indy Cars, dirt cars, NASCAR, Truck Series. When Tony got in drag racing, he is a pure student of the game. No matter what he races, he studies it and breaks it down to every fraction, and he gets better. He elevates the game for everybody.”

HEY, DALLAS, YOU'RE THE POINTS LEADER -  Well, he did say it was tougher to qualify No. 1 than to win.

And that's fine with Dallas Glenn, who wasn't good enough to qualify on the pole but had more than enough to win his second consecutive national event by putting a holeshot on Gainesville winner Troy Coughlin Jr. and leading him, Cristian Cuadra and Deric Kramer through the lights en route to the sixth career victory of his relatively short career.

"I think even though I was definitely not the best today, I was just barely good enough to get it done, and that's kind of what matters in four-wide," said Glenn, who was good enough to hold the provisional No. 1 spot on Friday. "You don't have to win the first two; you just have to win the last one.

"Going into that final, Cristian, he's been driving very, very, very well, and I knew I was going to have to be good. I think TJ and I staged about the same time and then I almost didn't get my foot down. And then when I let go, it was like, 'Oh, I didn't think I got that very good."

"And I'm just running through the gears, and it goes a little bit left, and it sounded a little weird near the finish line. I just saw my win light come on and start flashing, and I was just super pumped up because I didn't feel like I did my job best that I could have."

Glenn, the 2021 NHRA Rookie of the Year, entered eliminations as the second quickest with a 6.610 elapsed time. In the first quad, he ran a 6.636, 206.51 to advance alongside Steve Graham and then a 6.654, 205.98 to advance alongside Kramer, who reached the strip first.

As Glenn puts it, his RAD-sponsored Camaro was on the mark even when he wasn't.

"This car's just absolutely the best car I've ever been in by far," Glenn said. "I mean this car, it definitely shows right here, and I just want to capitalize on it as best I can. I was really, really excited to get this win here."

Though the conversation of a championship would be great to have, Glenn understands that even though he's won 50 percent of this season's races and leads the points, he's still got a lot of racing to go.

"It's a little too early to think about winning the championship at this point," Glenn explained. "All I'm going to try to do is just keep trying to win races. That's the main goal. You just take things one round at a time, and if you just take things one round at a time, you can win races, then the points kind of settle themselves out."

Considering Glenn drives not only the race car but also the team's hauler, he will have plenty of time to think about his newfound position in the Pro Stock pecking order.

"It's going to probably bring a smile to my face every now and then, thinking that I'm on top right now," Glenn admitted. "That's something that's kind of new; I've never experienced. I'm always kind of just been hungry chasing somebody. Now I got to be fending off the wolves that are coming for me. So it's a little bit different of an experience, but I'm going to enjoy it definitely as long as I can."

 

 

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK - HOPES DASHED FOR HADDOCK, TODD;  STEWART ADAPTS QUICKLY TO FOUR-WIDE FORMAT; IS DOMINATION OF THE CLASS A THING OF THE PAST?  

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS – Funny Car owner-racer Terry Haddock is competing in his 323rd NHRA event at the Four-Wide Las Vegas Nationals, and he recently has started to reap some rewards for his perseverance.

After 174 DNQs and 136 first-round exits, the Temple, Texas, engine-repair shop owner has seen a turnaround. He has only 14 elimination round-wins, but three of those have come in the past 14 days as he made it into the top 10 in the standings.

“We’re just going to try to keep doing the same thing,” Haddock said at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “We've worked hard to change our program during the off-season, and we're trying to get consistent. And with consistency, we'll get a little faster.”

Haddock was in the field of 16 until late Saturday afternoon, when Chad Green bumped him out. Still, the New Jersey native knows his program is heading in the right direction. And he isn’t planning to stop pursuing his dream now.

“This is so much fun,” he said earlier in qualifying. “I’ve been chasing this for 25 years. And people tell you to give up when things are hard or stop because it’s too much or you’re making bad decisions.

“It’s even more rewarding because after last week [following his breakout performance at Pomona, Calif.], it’s overwhelming how many people are watching when you think people don’t care what you’re doing. So thank you to everybody who’s messaging us, watching us, putting up with us, and giving us money to keep this running.”

Two major factors in Haddock’s increased achievements are having Johnny West return as tuner and selling his Top Fuel dragster. The latter is the reason for the former – West said the reason he came back to work with Haddock is that the dragster is out of the shop.

“It’s too hard to run two cars out of one trailer. It needs to be two complete operations,” West said.

That was no problem for Haddock: “I'm happy the dragster is gone," he said.

“I was never a big fan of the dragster. I don't come from the right area to where we can afford to do this. So I always had the dragster, and in my head, I thought that the dragster would generate money to help this,” he said with a nod to the Funny Car. “And it turned out the world's changed so much in the last couple of years that it became a very flawed plan. And not only did it take more money, but it also distracted me. So then we weren't giving anything 100-percent effort.

“We were trying, but the results weren't showing. So we decided at the end of last year that we were going to sell the dragster and concentrate on one car, try to have a better program, be better prepared."

West’s influence has been a huge boost to Haddock’s program.

“Johnny worked for me a couple of years ago, and he taught me so much. Johnny is a details guy, and the details win races,” Haddock said. “But my life, because I want to do this so bad, I'm always doing everything I can to keep doing it, that sometimes I miss the details and the details of what turned it around.

“Last year, this Funny Car would be, on an average, every fifth run, it would go 4.02, 4.05, 4.0. We knew how to run 4.0, but we couldn't do it again because we were missing things; because the attention to detail wasn't there,” he said. “So the whole idea is to learn how to go four-flat every time you pull the wires, and then it'll accidentally run 3.90. But if you look over history, if you go 4.00 every run, chances of winning races are better than going 3.90 flat once a summer. So it's learning to think differently and be more prepared.

“In The Bible, it says that wisdom is a friend of experience. So we're going to go with that,” Haddock said. “It’s just the truth. When you have a kid and you see the world, all of a sudden being a dad becomes more important, because I need to make sure he turns out right. So sometimes when you look to the world for guidance, it's flawed. The guidance in there [The Bible] is always right, and it's always the same.”

TODD’S CREW GET SETBACK AFTER HEROIC EFFORT – For the second straight race, DHL Toyota Supra Funny Car driver J.R. Todd said he had experienced “definitely a forgettable weekend.” But the Kalitta Motorsports driver assumed responsibility for the failure to qualify that wiped out his crew’s phenomenal repair-and-replace effort for which they earned the “Never Rest Award.”

“I put the blame on me. I should have done a better job earlier in the weekend and keeping the thing in the groove and not come down to Q4 to get in the show,” Todd said Saturday afternoon.

“All in all, I feel bad for my guys [after] all the work they put in this past week to get this DHL GR Supra back on track. All the guys back at PBRC [Precision Built Race Cars] and everybody at Kalitta Motorsports and back at the fab shop for busting their asses to get us back out here,” he said. “This is a tough pill to swallow, but I’m sure we’ll stay and run on Monday to get this thing figured out. It's still early in the season, and there’s a lot of racing left.”

Todd said, “I told these guys I’m sorry. They deserve better than this, and I wanted to get them a win this weekend. That’s the way I can pay them back.”

FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME - A year ago, the first part of the season was a struggle for Pro Stock driver Matt Hartford.

Through the first five races, he won just two rounds, and his best qualifying position was eighth.

He seems to have changed his fortunes in 2023.

Hartford clocked a 6.599-second lap at 206.45 mph in Q3 Saturday to take the No. 1 qualifying spot at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

This was Hartford’s first No. 1 qualifying spot in his Pro Stock career, a career that kicked off in 2006.

“Yeah, this is awesome for our entire team,” said Hartford, who pilots the Total Seal Chevy Camaro. “We've been working on this since 2006, so it's been a long time coming. Some of these people come out here and within their first 2, 3, 4 races, they get a number one and we just always watch and go, ‘Wow, someday we'll get it.’ But it's just hats off to having a great team around me and having a great race car. Jerry Haas builds a fantastic car; KB Titan is building great power right now and our team is really gelled, and we just keep our heads down and focus on one run at a time.”

Hartford has spent his career going from just hoping to make the field at national events to becoming a championship contender. That’s what makes being the No. 1 qualifier – in his 161st career Pro Stock race – so rewarding, because it is far from an easy feat to accomplish.

“Some people have made it look pretty easy,” Hartford said about being No. 1 qualifier. “There's been people that come out and immediately they can be a number one qualifier. It is extremely hard to qualify, let alone qualify in the top half, and then qualify number one, and I think we've proven that. There was a time... We talked about it at dinner last night. There was a time when we were 16th and just overjoyed. It was like, ‘Oh my God, we're in.’ And last night we're all sitting at dinner with our heads down going, ‘Man, we're number two and we know we could have gone to number one and we just missed it.’ So, it's just a different mindset I guess as you progress up through the sport. And our team has had... We've come from the bottom, and we've worked our way up. Not that we're on the top by any means, but we have a fast car right now and it's one run at a time and our whole goal is to turn this yellow hat into a blue hat and then turn them into a white hat.”

Hartford arrived in Vegas tied for second in the points standings and fresh off a runner-up finish at the previous event – the Winternationals at Pomona, where he qualified second.

Hartford finished a career-best fifth in the points standings in 2019 and 2020 and was sixth a year ago. Hartford has five career Pro Stock wins one each season since 2018 but has yet to find Victory Lane in Vegas.

Hartford’s first win was in Houston in 2018, and he said winning can be less of challenge than being the No. 1 qualifier.

“You can win from anywhere and if you have some good racing luck, you can certainly win and not have the fastest car or not drive the best if people have issues against you,” Hartford said. “To qualify number one, it is all about you have to make less mistakes than anybody else out there and you have to have killer power. If you make a mistake, you're not qualifying number one. If you don't have good power, you're not qualifying number one. 

“So, I think it takes more to qualify number one than it actually does to win because you can win on luck. Go back to St. Louis, that one year I think Warren Johnson rolled to the water box, rolled to the scales, rolled to the next one. I don't think he raced anybody for four rounds, and he won the race. So that's luck. Number one qualifiers ain't luck.”

After competing in NHRA’s Pro Stock class for nearly two decades, Hartford has always kept plugging away and he acknowledged he thought he should have had a No. 1 qualifier position at least once last season.

“I think we looked back at last year and we let a lot of things get away from us,” he said. “There were a lot of rounds that we looked at and we were pretty disappointed that we knew we could have won the round and the box score didn't necessarily show it, but we had a fast car from Denver on last year. But the box score showed that we didn't perform as well as we could have. And this year our whole goal was come out here and just focus on what we know and forget about any distractions out there. 

“I don't care what's going on with Greg Anderson or Bo Butner or Erica Enders. It doesn't matter if we go up there, if I let the clutch out on time and I hit my shift points and we set up the car correctly, let the win lights come on where they may, when you're always worried about who's in the other lane or what they're doing or what they're thinking or why are they faster, you lose sight of your own program. Our goal is to worry about ourselves and stay in the confines of our own trailer. We're not out socializing, we're not out hanging out. We're there to work on our car and just stay in our own little box.”

Hartford will begin Sunday by competing in a quadrant with Camrie Caruso, Erica Enders, and Jerry Tucker. Hartford has a 6-3 elimination round record this season. Hartford’s focus Saturday night is to get ready for the Four-Wide experience.

“Camrie’s number three in points. She's won a race this year. She's been a number one qualifier. She's in my quad,” Hartford said. “Erica is as badass as any driver's ever been, she's in my quad. And then Jerry Tucker's obviously got a lot of power. He's got all the lead camp behind him. So, for us we need to roll up there, and do the same thing. One, just make sure you get in, get both bulbs lit on your tree. 

“It doesn't matter when, just make sure they're on before those seven seconds are out. And other than that, be ready because you have no idea if you win, lose, or draw when you get to the other end. It's a tough race doing this Four-Wide deal. Once again, focus on your own program, focus on doing everything that you can correctly in your lane and see what happens.”

 

 

LAST OF THE DOMINATORS? – “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to dominate like we did before,” Steve Torrence said, referring to his 43 Camping World Drag Racing Series victories in one five-year period (2017-2021).

In general, his peers agree. The consensus seems to be that that’s true for the foreseeable future.

Three-time Top Fuel champion and Hall of Famer Larry Dixon, who waged fierce battles in the early 2000s with yet another king of the class in Tony Schumacher and remains second to Schumacher in overall victories with 62, weighed in on the discussion.

“I think teams that compete at a championship level will have a combination of driver/crew/crew chief/funding that are obviously operating at a level higher than everyone else for a given amount of time and will stay there until there’s a chink in the armor" -- meaning, a change in driver/crew/crew chief/funding -- "or a rule change/point format or another team flat steps up and tops what they are doing,” Dixon said. 

“At that point can that given team reset (fix what is lacking) or is their run done?” he asked. “We’ve seen Alan Johnson reset quite a few times over the years with different drivers/teams/funding.

“With that said, I’d be shocked if it never happened again,” Dixon said.

Top Fuel’s Justin Ashley said, “I think that records are meant to be broken. And sure, I think eventually someone will dominate the class like he has. But right now, with the state of the class the way it is, I find it hard to believe that you will have someone that much ahead of everyone else.

“Just the competition out here is so, so good,” Ashley added. "You have multiple race winners, multiple champions, and then even part-time cars who are really, really good cars that could very easily be full-time cars. So I do think that, yeah, eventually, maybe down the road, somebody can dominate like he has. But right now, with the current state of Top Fuel the way it is, I think it will be too difficult to do.

“That's kind of where my head is at. I can't imagine it being anytime soon,” he said. “You almost have to have four perfect rounds of racing on Sunday to just give yourself a chance. No matter where you line up, even in the short fields, it just makes it that much harder, because your match-up in Round 1 is probably going to be pretty tough. It's the best certainly I've ever seen. I think it's the most competitive ever.

“That's the interesting thing, right? It's like everyone always talks about, ‘Oh, on paper it's supposed to be great,’ but it's difficult to actually live up to that. And it did last year in 2022, and now 2023. Yeah, it's literally that much better,” Ashley said.

This season officially isn’t four races old yet, but Ashley said it “seems like a grind because you never take it for granted, no matter who you're racing. In other words, it's just like Rounds 1 through 4. Most of the time it feels like a final round. Starting in Round 1, where you used to kind of work your way up through to the final round, it would be the two best cars on the property. But now there's so many good cars that it feels like that much more of a grind because every single round, the margin for error is just so small.”

And Antron Brown, the three-time Top Fuel champion, concurred.

“The domination days, I think, are gone, because, think about it, Tony Schumacher did it for a stint of time for like eight years in a row," he said. "Steve did really good for four years. But of those four years, there's a lot of teams in transition. Just like back in the day, you only have four good cars. But Steve dominated when the competition was still tough. He wasn't outrunning people by a tenth of a second, like [tuner] Alan Johnson and Tony Schumacher used to do back in the day. So he did something really special, and it all lined up at the right time, and his team just got to give him credit. But I don't think you're going to see it.

“I think you can see teams get in the groove. You might see that some more. I think as technology advances, more of these teams are just getting better and better. And the talent pool is moving around and it's rising,” he said.

“I think now, just to win a championship beside itself is like winning two championships that Steve Torrence did, or even a championship that I won," Brown said. "The competition was tough when I did it, but it's at a whole different level now – way different level now. Back when we won our championships, you probably had about five or six cars that could win on any given Sunday. Steve won a championship, it was the same, but he was more of a dominant car. And our team, honestly, we didn't run that good when he won all his championships. Now, I would say you got 12 teams that can win on any given Sunday. I think the top competition has doubled since then.”

What Brown said he’s seeing is “just way more parity. The parts haven't changed, and everybody's been able to massage your stuff. And you have guys that have been rising up, like your Neal Strausbaugh, crew chief on Leah's [Pruett’s] car, doing a great job. They got the funding, and Leah's doing great. Austin Prock’s coming in the picture. His car is running great. Doug Kalitta’s [and] Shawn Langdon's [cars are] running really good. Josh Hart ... you go down the list ... Clay Millican ... You could name any team like the top 12 that go to every race. They can win on any given Sunday.

“You have to get on a roll where you're dominant because everybody's car can run just as good as the other person's car right now,” Brown said. “The hard part is I don't ever think you want to see the competition go down. If you look over the course of the last 10 years, the competition just gets better and better every year.”

SACKMAN WELL-ROUNDED – Former Antron Brown crew member Matt Sackman has been making his mark in the Top Alcohol Dragster (TAD) class – as a driver and a mechanic. The five-year TAD veteran told Competition Plus TV’s Lee Craft that he’s “just an average crew guy out here, working for Randy Meyer and driving one of his cars.” Find out all the different categories in which he has competed and just how long he has been at the dragstrip in his PEAK Pit Note.

GLENN FAR MORE THAN PRO STOCK DRIVER – Dallas Glenn, Friday’s provisional top qualifier in the Pro Stock class, won the most recent race, at Pomona, Calif., and was a semifinalist at the Gatornationals season-opener. In talking with Competition Plus TV’s Lee Craft for our PEAK Pit Notes, Glenn proves that his drag-racing experience goes beyond the factory hot-rod category. Hear what he has to say about his four-wide strategy and what his goal is with the KBTitan entry this weekend, as well as his thoughts about big-money bracket racing.

STEWART ADAPTS QUICKLY TO FOUR-WIDE FORMAT – Tony Stewart didn’t master the four-wide format right away, but throughout this entire first experience with the unconventional format, he has embraced it with enthusiasm.

Stewart made the 16-car Top Alcohol Dragster field on the second day of qualifying at No. 5, behind quickest qualifier Shawn Cowie, Mike Coughlin, Kim Parker, and Summer Richardson. He’ll start Sunday’s Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series action in a foursome featuring Richardson, Johnny Ahten, and McPhillips Racing teammate Jasmine Salinas.

“I’m pretty excited about it, honestly. After two days, I’ve run in all four lanes now. There wasn’t anything that caught me off-guard, necessarily,” he said. “I feel like the approach I’ve been going with every round of qualifying has been a very solid approach.”

What seems to befuddle a fair number of pro-level drag racers doesn’t seem to have fazed him at all. He said, “You hear drivers talk about getting disoriented on which light they’re looking at. I’ve found the lights to be easy to stay with.”

Stewart said, “So I’ll be honest, I really like it. I think it’s something really cool. I mean, obviously the history of drag racing is just two-wide, but I like having the opportunity. This is kind of like having the opportunity to run a road course or dirt track in the [NASCAR] Cup Series, do something that’s a little different. So, doing the four-wide version, I’ve really enjoyed it the first two days.”

He said he recognizes that “the way that you approach the race is a little bit different than a two-wide scenario, because you don’t have to win the round. You just have to finish in the top two. So it’s kind of like heat-race format, I guess, for short-track racing. You don’t have to win, you just got to finish in the top two until you get to the finals. Then you’ve got to go for the win, obviously.

“There’s nothing about the four-wide that I haven’t liked so far,” Stewart said, getting the feeling that it’s well-organized for something that could have been be chaotic. “I feel like the officials do a great job of keeping each driver informed that there’s something that changes and there’s somebody that drops out. The officials have done a great job of letting the drivers know what the situation is and that there’s a lane that’s out.”

He's all in for the four-wide challenge, he said: “I think it’s pretty cool. I’m excited and appreciative that I get to run it here at Vegas and can’t wait to go to Charlotte and do it again.”     

 

 

CREW RISES TO TOUGH OCCASION – Jason Rupert’s part-time crew handled with aplomb a situation Saturday that a far more experienced team would have found just as challenging, according to tuning consultant Rahn Tobler.

The drama for the California-based team started with Rupert’s Q3 run and played out successfully through his final qualifying pass.

“It went out on the first run today, and it dropped a cylinder fairly early in the run, which really kind of slowed it down. It still went down there and ran a 4.09 [-second elapsed time]. But on that run, it hurt a main bearing, which necessitated an engine change,” Tobler said. “But it also broke a part in the rear end, which necessitated a rear-end change.

“The two of [those problems] combined on a much more seasoned team than this is a challenge,” he said. “But these guys rose to the challenge. They got it done.

“We had an engine at Pomona that we took out. And we knew it was all set – we didn’t have to fool with too much. So it went in,” Tobler said. “It was a pretty seamless transition. Thankfully, we had [on hand] Steve Chrisman, who builds the rear ends. He helped facilitate the changing of the rear end, which went real well.

“And we just decided we would try and get up there [to the starting line]. And if we got up there, fine, and if we didn’t get up there, fine,” he said. “We got up there in plenty of time. The guys really did a good job. And we were able to make this last run.”

Rupert used it to reset his career-best speed at 317.87 mph to go with his 4.067. On the strength of his Friday night pass of 4.04 seconds on the Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s 1,000-foot course, Rupert slipped into the No. 15 stating position. He’ll race in Sunday’s first round in a foursome that includes Alexis DeJoria, John Force, and Paul Lee.

GREEN REBOUNDS – With a pair of semifinal finishes and a $10,000 victory in the second Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge bonus race, Chad Green was on a roll. Then his car wouldn’t roll off the starting line at Pomona.

Green matched Winternationals Round 1 opponent and good friend Tim Wilkerson in reaction time (.081 of a second), but his Bond Coat entry refused to move, conceding the round-win to Wilkerson.

So the Texas native said he was ready to get back to the racetrack and make up for lost opportunities: “We were already pretty hungry to do that, but just getting that little taste [of success] makes us really want to do that. It was really disappointing how we had that unfortunate accident there in E1 to end the race. So we're really looking forward to getting back out there.”

Green said “it’s so imperative” to have a strong performance here and not break that momentum.

“For that to happen to us [at Pomona] was really unfortunate, and we don't want something like that to just kill our momentum. So it's really important that we get right back on track right now, this race,” he said. “We're totally confident in that car. Didn't run like we wanted to right out of the gate yesterday [Friday], but I have all the confidence we're going to get it done today.”

He bumped into the field on the final pass of qualifying Saturday, knocking out Terry Haddock, the year’s other “surprise” driver. Green will line up Sunday in Round 1 against Ron Capps, Bob Tasca III, and Blake Alexander.

Winning the Mission Foods Challenge at Pomona, Green said, “definitely has given me a lot of confidence. And along with that, it's given the whole team, these guys, it's given them a lot of confidence. So there's nothing better than success for the team to breed more success.”

He said the team “changed a few parts in the off season, so we're still trying to get the tune-up dialed in. But we're confident we're going to get back in the [3.]80s.”

WILL SCHUMACHER FIND VEGAS LUCK AGAIN? – If revisiting a venue at which a driver has had a lot of success is a positive omen, then this could be Tony Schumacher’s lucky, get-strong weekend. The Top Fuel eight-time champion has eight victories here, including four at this event in its pre-four-wide days (2004, 2009, 2013-14). This unique format was introduced in 2018.

Schumacher, driver of the SCAG Power Equipment dragster, did reach the final quad at this race last season, but he never has won in four-wide fashion. But with his “unfinished business” mantra for the year after reuniting with crew chief Mike Neff, he definitely is motivated to do it Sunday.
 
“This year, we’ve gotten better with each race, and now we finally have a car that all of us, including I’m pretty sure many of our opponents, can see the true potential,” Schumacher said. “We made it down the track all four times in Pomona. Now we have a tune-up that we just need to nip at. We have four qualifying runs this weekend, which is important. Some of the tracks where you only get three, you’re always one run down and for a new team like ours, you need those four runs. So, everything is looking fantastic for this weekend. Weather is excellent. Vegas is always a great track.”

He still is a bit haunted by what happened to him at the previous race: “Pomona, man, that was a hell of a race. Lost by 15-thousandths of a second. Got us a good car. Zippy and I, we left there saying, ‘We made it down the track four times. We’re in a really good spot.’ We finally found the pieces that all fit together, and now we’ve just got to start adjusting them to go quicker with each run. We’re in a good, good spot going into this race. But, we’re not ignorant. We know we’ve got some really strong opponents, but we’re one of them now.”

To advance to the semifinals Sunday, Schumacher will have to be one of the two quickest in an especially tough group that, thankfully for him, has just two other opponents. The bad news is that those two are No. 1 qualifier Brittany Force and always-dangerous Antron Brown.

 

 

 

FRIDAY NOTEBOOK - FORCE NOT GOING OUT WITH LATEST BANG, TODD TEAM PULLS OFF NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, CUADRA HAS PLENTY OF VEGAS BLING, RACERS DESCRIBE FOUR-WIDE RACING FROM THEIR ANGLES

John Force said he still is evaluating exactly what went wrong with his PEAK Blue Def Chevy Camaro two weekends ago at Pomona that caused him to cross the center line during qualifying, crash into J.R. Todd, and ruin both of their race cars.

But he’s certain of one thing: His age didn’t play a factor in the incident, and he isn’t planning to quit. He discredited a rumor that one or more racers approached him at the Lucas Oil Winternationals and urged him to step away from the cockpit.

“We're going to address my car. My crew chiefs have addressed me. Robert [Hight, his teammate and company president] has addressed me, like, ‘You push it too far.’ I’ve done it before, trying to get qualified and doing stuff, but this wasn't a good time to push it, because it got me,” Force told Competition Plus just before this edition of the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

He attributed the accident to “a combination of things. I oversteered it myself. My fault. Maybe the track was really narrow, and I learned a good lesson on that. I'm going to go out and make some runs and see where I'm at with the car. Nothing's wrong with me. No different, other than I'm just getting older. But bottom line, after I make some runs, then I can probably give you some answers. Maybe we'll know what went wrong. And I'm not arguing – I was part of it.”

His 74th birthday is May 4. And not unpredictably, talk turned to Force’s age following the crash, especially considering he also had his final qualifying pass tossed out because he drove across the center line again. Inevitably, as well, rumors swirled at the racetrack that a group of drivers encouraged him to quit.

But Force said, “No, it didn’t happen. Not even one. If there was somebody who said they came to me, well, tell me who they are, because they didn't. If anything, people were probably staying away from me out of respect. I'm sure there's people that don't want to see me hurt, because at my age, if you get hurt, it'd be different than a 30-year-old that gets hurt in a car. But no, I’d tell you if somebody came to me. J.R., he didn't like it. But nobody asked me to retire. I'd tell you if they did.”

(Force said he didn’t have any injuries from the wreck, even though he explained that he took hard diagonal thrust into the guard wall. “I got right out of my car, and the doc had come over the wall, but I wanted to see J.R. Todd, to make sure he was OK. And when J.R. said he was OK, then they went back and put me through the basic s---. So if I hurt my head, I've been there before. I go to the doctor, go to the hospital, get checked. But anyway, they checked me and turned me loose. They take the car, and that's what they do. But they also look at you and give you the test and see if you can move and walk and do all that stuff. And I was OK with all that,” he said.)

Besides, Force reminded, this isn’t a unique situation.

“Five years ago, I got over the center line, and people were after me then, because nobody likes to see that. Then they turn around and do it the next day, and then they're saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, I did it, too.’ Well, who knows why? I don't blame nobody. We just go down the road,” he said.

“Is my age a factor? I don't believe so,” Force said. “But you ask anybody, ‘Why would you be 70 years old and driving a race car? Why?’ Because I love to drive them. I'm trying to help the sport. I'm trying to keep cars out there. I don't do it for the money. I made enough money, I can retire. I do it because I love the driving. I love the battle. I love the camaraderie. I love being with the people and the cheer of the crowd, all that s---, you know what I'm saying? But time tells me it's time and I'll know it. And that's all I can say about that.

“First of all,” he said,  “J.R. Todd is a good guy. Yeah, he had a lot of problems, and he had the explosion on race day. He's just a real racer, and he understands it. I understand it. We don't like it, but we got to move ahead. But we're going to do to our car what we need to do to help the driver.”

The accident, he said, was “a combination of the car and the driver, and we're still trying to sort it out.

“We lost a car on the first day when I got wound up with J.R. Todd. I'm really glad he's OK. We have to look at it. It's part of the game. How do you get around it? But nobody likes that, especially me,” Force said. “I've been hit before, and I've lost cars, and I don't like it. But it's part of the game. What do you do? So you try to move on, but you got to find the reason. Yeah, I always look at myself that I like to drive on the edge, and maybe I push it too far sometime — and I'm evaluating that, especially on a tricky racetrack.”

Force has raced on plenty of tricky racetracks, ones far less sophisticated as In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, ones back in his match-racing days that had questionable surfaces, no track prep, poor lighting, an absence of modern safety precautions, and in cars nowhere nearly as safe as the one he drives today. And he showed exceptional skill and judgment in navigating them. With a number of drivers, including Funny Car rival Bob Tasca, speaking up about the challenges of that Pomona weekend, he’s not exaggerating.  

“You got a narrow groove, and you're building a lot of horsepower. Not like the old days. You can't get away with things you used to get away with. And this is what's really going on in my head, and I don't want to put any blame on anything, because we haven't had a chance to evaluate the car. We loaded it in the trailer and brought out another car the next day. Anyway, that's kind of where we're at.”

He has made remarks from the beginning of the season that indicate that particular car had been causing him some concern during each of the first three races.

“Very simple deal,” Force said. “We built a new front end. OK, but I don't want to look at that. And the front end is good. It's just it has too good a steering. And I attack. I'm jacked up when I race and oversteering it. And before, you could crank the wheel and it would turn, but it had a lot of drag. So they're addressing that.”

So what’s different about this car he’s competing with this weekend?

“They're putting shocks to slow the steering down. It helps the driver, but you don't want to go too far that way or you can't steer it, either. So we are addressing the problem,” Force said. As of Tuesday of this week, he said, “We haven't even got the car we crashed. They took it from us. We couldn't even get the data on the run. We couldn't even get data. They had all our computers. They had everything. And we got it back the next day, I think. But we were in the middle of a race, and we just went from there. We will definitely fix it. And I know how to fix anything I'm doing and that my guys will fix the cars.

“Hell, I don't even know if they brought it back yet, because we brought out new cars. But instead of just bringing out a new car and putting it out there, we're putting a shock absorber system on it that a lot of people run. I ran them years ago, just to slow the steering down a little bit – because when I got over to the right and got out of the groove and I whipped it back to the left, it made a left on me and a combination of things, and I got over and got it off the wall. I even thought I might have scraped the wall, because I've hit the wall with the headers, because when it went over to the other side, when it recovered, when I came off, he [Todd] was right there. I didn't even hit the wall. I actually thought I did, because when you hit a header or the rear of the car comes around, it scrapes. I've gotten out of cars and people said, ‘You hit the wall.’ I go, ‘No, I didn't.’ And turns out, well, this time I didn't.”

He said he’s ready to keep on fighting the good fight: “Yeah, well, it's what I do.”

Force is reconciled to the fact that observers will have their own opinions and that not all will be favorable – or even unfavorable. He said, “There's two sides to everything. And I don't follow the Internet, but I've heard a lot of people are upset on the Internet. Some are for me, some are against me. That's the way the world is.”

After his second qualifying pass Saturday, one of his crew members came to him and shook his hand. But Force warned not to make too much of that gesture. It was just an affirmation that the crew has his back.

“It’s just a run – and I’ve made five million of these runs,” Force said. “You’ve got to watch [out]. This is a mental game. It can make you mental.”
 
Although he clearly is growing weary of talking about the Pomona incident, Force said Saturday afternoon, “I’ve always lived on the edge.

“I went to my guys last night,” he said, “and I asked, ‘Do you believe in me? I believe in you. But do you believe in me? ’Cause if you don’t, I need to go home.’ When that stuff [like the accident] happens, especially when you tie up another driver, that’s when OK – you figure this out or get out. And I’m not getting out.”  

KALITTA TEAM PUTS TODD BACK ON TRACK WITH HERCULEAN EFFORT – George Barnett and Nick Smith normally provide a pleasant welcome greeting to the dozens of corporate-partner guests who enter the Kalitta Motorsports hospitality tent at the Camping World Drag Racing Series events. They serve food and make sure everyone is taken care of in a warm and professional manner. Then when the fanfare of the race weekend hits a decrescendo, Barnett and Smith store the tables and chairs, break down the awnings, load all the hospitality equipment into a semi-trailer, and head to the next destination.

But as J.R. Todd was competing in the Lucas Oil Winternationals, Barnett and Smith had dropped what they were doing at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip and were booking down the highway on an urgent 2,000-plus-mile, cross-country mission – to get Todd’s DHL Toyota Supra repaired ASAP. 

Todd and his primary Funny Car were involved in a high-speed collision with John Force’s PEAK Chevy Camaro in Saturday's first qualifying session at Pomona in the third race of the season. Force crossed into Todd’s lane and came up behind Todd on the left side, between Todd and the left guard wall, then draped his parachute lines over Todd’s car as he cut in front of the DHL entry and dragged it with him as he contacted the right-side wall. 

Crew chiefs Todd Smith and Jon Oberhofer, along with car chief Chris Forton, already had planned for Barnett and Smith to get a head start back to the Midwest with the remainder of Todd’s car, capitalizing on the hours that were supposed to be some much-deserved time off. Then when Todd’s engine let go and blasted the back-up car to pieces, execution of the plan became even more imperative. Meanwhile, team Hospitality Manager Chris Hill and Kraig Fasnacht combined to do the rugged tear-down work that generally requires all four strong men to complete.  

And like a hospital emergency-room staff awaiting trauma victims, Joe Fitzpatrick and Dan Murphy stood by at Brownsburg, Ind., to receive the wounded DHL Toyota Supra arriving fresh from its Southern California on-track violence at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip.  (They had gone through the drill many times as fab-shop kingpins at Don Schumacher Racing in its multiteam heyday. Today, they practice their race-car surgery at their own clinic, Precision Built Race Cars, located near the Indianapolis suburb’s so-called Nitro Alley.)

Fitzpatrick said he had “seen worse” damage to a race car, but it still took an investment of about 90 man-hours in two and a half days to fashion a new front half for the primary Supra that was collateral damage in Force’s runaway Funny Car ride. 

(To see a detailed video of the work as it was done and hear the explanations from Fitzpatrick and Murphy, please look online at Precision Built Race Cars’ Facebook page.)

Crew chief Todd Smith and crew members Isaiah Taylor, Jaime Gandara, Forton, Tanner Meyer, James Couture, Jacob Wilder, Mike Morris, and Matt Mays had planned to enjoy a quick jaunt from Pomona to Las Vegas this past week. Instead, they made a detour by way of Ypsilanti, Mich. There at the Kalitta Motorsports race shop, they received the repaired primary chassis from Precision Built Race Cars that Thursday evening. The team then worked all day last Friday and Saturday to prepare the car for competition this weekend. 

With a new backup chassis and two Funny Car bodies for competition, they headed back West at the start of this week for this first of back-to-back four-wide spectacles. (The second involves another cross-country trip, this time to zMAX Dragway in Concord, N.C.)

So Todd’s entire team hasn’t enjoyed the down-time most of the competition did. But what he does have is added respect for each person who sacrificed free/family time to help him, more than a little bit of awe for their ability to pull it all off, and massive gratitude. 

“The DHL team has a pretty amazing work ethic,” Todd said. “This job isn’t a nine-to-five job, and it’s not for someone that’s weak-minded, that’s for sure. I feel bad, because it was a weekend off for them until all this happened. They busted their [butts] getting everything torn down and loaded up so they could hit the road Monday morning to get back to Michigan to pull a third car out of the corner of the shop and get it ready to go. Then we got the primary car back from Indy. So they had a busy week, and I really hope they were able to get at least a little time off to relax and regroup before they had to hit the road to drive back to Vegas.
 
“I think we have some of the hardest working guys in all of motorsports. They’re awesome – they never complain. They love what they do, and it’s awesome to have guys like that who have your back. I hope I can pay them back really soon with a Wally. That’s about the only way to pay them back for all their hard work to this point.”

Like Top Fuel’s Steve Torrence, he wasn’t a big believer in the 44,000-horsepower phenomenon until he started to master it. He has won the four-wide race twice, and in 2018 – on the way to his Funny Car championship – he won in both this spring race and the Halloween-weekend event. So he’s a three-time Funny Car winner here.

“We’ve won four-wide races, but really, I just like racing in general, whether it’s testing, racing singles, two-wide or four-wide,” Todd said. “I don’t care, as long as we’re racing and hopefully turning on some win lights and repeating some of that Las Vegas magic we’ve had in the past.”

As if all that weren’t enough excitement, Todd dashed from The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway following Friday-afternoon qualifying to the Las Vegas Aviators AAA baseball game at 7 p.m. to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. The Aviators is the AAA team of the Oakland A’s.

“It’s cool to promote our sport outside of drag racing,” Todd said. “Hopefully, I won’t throw it in the dirt, and we can get some baseball fans to come out to The Strip and check out some drag racing. I threw out a first pitch at a Cincinnati Reds game a few years ago, and I got it across the plate. So, hopefully I can do that again this week.”

THE SONG AND DANCE - Stop us if you have heard this before – Brittany Force is dominant in qualifying.

That was once again the case at the Four Wide Las Vegas Nationals on Friday.

Force clocked a 3.697-second lap at 335.73 mph in Q2 to take the provisional No. 1 qualifying spot at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

“It feels good to get back on track and currently No. 1, to run like that, such a big improvement from Q1, going from a .74 to a .69 is huge for the scene,” Force said. “And when I crossed the finish line, it felt like a killer run. Got on the radio, and I could actually hear someone for once say,’ .69.’ So, we all congratulated each other on the run. That’s very exciting to do. The great thing is we get two more before we’re going into race day.”

In the ten years Brittany Force has been racing Top Fuel, she has proved two things without a doubt – she can win world championships as she did in 2017 and 2022, and she can qualify No. 1 at national events.
 
Force was already the No. 1 qualifier at the season-opening Gatornationals and the No. 1 qualifier ten times last season. She has been the No. 1 qualifier 43 times in her Top Fuel career.

Force lost in the second round of both the Gators and Arizona Nationals. She then was upended in the semifinals by her teammate Austin Prock at the Winternationals in Pomona, Calif., the most recent race on the national circuit.

She is chasing her 17th career Top Fuel national event victory this weekend.

“I think it’s come around much quicker,” said Force about the tune-up her crew chief David Grubnic is chasing. “We did a lot of offseason testing, new things that we were putting in this mix, and we knew it was going to take us a little while until we found our footing and got back on track. And so again, we knew that going into the season, and it’s coming around much quicker than we thought, which is good news. But in the long run, it’ll set us up better, especially going into the end of the season and the Countdown.”

Force acknowledged competing in the Four-Wide format is definitely different.

“Honestly, I think it’s so chaotic up there because you have to focus, and you have to make sure what lane you’re in, looking at the right bulb and finding that amber,” she said. “So, I don’t know. I don’t what it is. It’s tough up there to really calm down and try to focus on everything that’s going on because every run you go up there, something is a little off, something’s a little different, and you got to clear that out of your mind and just stay focused.

“It’s a lot. It’s still, pulling up there, you have this anxiety because it’s something different. It’s not your normal routine and I feel like, again, all the chaos helps you focus down even more than you normally would because you, there’s too much, there’s just so much going on up there, and you really got to find your focus. 

​AN ABUNDANCE OF POWER  - If Cruz Pedregron has proved anything at the last two national events – Pomona, Calif., and Las Vegas this weekend – his team has figured out a qualifying tune-up.

Fresh off grabbing the No. 1 qualifying spot at the previous event – the Winternationals – the veteran driver is on the verge of duplicating the feat at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Pedregon clocked a 3.910-second elapsed time at 326.71 mph in Q1 Friday, which was good enough for the provisional pole at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Vegas.

“Yeah, the track was really good even with not a lot of cars running on it, but really for us, it’s been trying to back the car down,” Pedregon said. “We showed up; we had one extra month to salt or to bask in our glory from winning, dominating Pomona. And I think that we thought we were pretty cool, and so we opened the show in Gainesville, just smoking the tires. 

“That car was an animal to drive. We go to Phoenix, and the same thing; it’s trying to run low ET every run, and it’s just all over the place. And Pomona, we started to get it figured out, and we went low there, but it’s just a matter of back down a little bit and trying to go down the track and just really smart, so many of these cars that win these races, they’re just kind of hovering around qualifying. So, we know that it’s nice to have a low ET., but we’re looking for that consistency.”

Pedregon qualified eighth and 13th at the Gatornationals and Arizona Nationals, respectively, and lost in the first round at both races. He qualified No. 1 at the Winternationals and lost in the second round to Ron Capps.
 
“Well, I’m just trying to drive it straighter, and the car’s just, it really was all over the track,” said Pedregon, who pilots the Snap-On Tools Dodge Charger Hellcat SRT. “I’m sitting up higher in the seat. I’m tightening my belts tighter and just trying to get better visibility out of it; I’ve had the car wanting to run it. Gainesville was going to run probably .82 or .83 in one of those runs, and I just flat drove it out of the groove and up against the wall.

“And so, for me, it’s like a bull; I’m trying to hang on to it is as hard as I can. And I told JC (crew chief John Collins), ‘Hey, don’t back it down too much. I can handle it.’ But at the end of the day, you still have to have a car that’s forgiving, and we just didn’t have that lately. We’re starting to see flashes like we had in Pomona so it’s going to warm up (Saturday) so we will see; I’m sure someone will probably try to fire one out there. And .91 to .93 is not too far I think; who knows? But we’re grateful for it. But we’re not looking to go into Sunday with that low ET. We’re just looking to... If we can wrangle some more low 90s (Saturday) and just keep the car hooked up, we’ll feel good about Sunday.”

If Pedregron holds the No. 1 spot through Saturday’s two qualifying sessions, it will be the 64th of his career. And Pedregon, who is 11th in the season points standings, isn’t complaining about his powerful car.

“It’s a good problem to have, honestly,” Pedregon said. “Yeah, you could always slow it down. The hard part is to get them to go fast, especially our car. It’s running good from the hit of the throttle all the way through the middle. And I would say guys are a little better than us. If there are any weaknesses or speed at the finish line, guys will run a little faster than us, so I’m sure JC and Ryan (Elliott), and Lee (Beard) will tweak that a little bit.

"Hey, speed matters, right? But yeah, we’re good. We’re a fast car, man. But I feel confident that we’ll race well also. And I love the four-wide. It’s the quad. You saw the last run; that could be a final round there. I think it was (Ron) Capps, myself, (Matt) Hagan, and I think (Robert) Hight; that’s, as they say, primetime players right there.”
Having Collins, Elliott, and Beard in his stable is something Pedregon sees as a positive.

“JC is still the crew chief, and he’s making the calls,” Pedregon said. “I think where Lee comes into play is he’s there to bounce things off. But I think, really, at the end of the day, JC’s still the guy in the driver’s seat. He’s still making the calls along with Ryan. Ryan’s a younger guy, it’s his first opportunity as a consistent crew chief and he’s doing a great job. So, it’s really a team effort.

“I know that sounds boring, but really, it’s all those guys. I think one of the things we worked on in the offseason, the two weeks we were off, the one week I think we were off, we were really trying to get the clutch to apply smoother, and they came up with something. It’s working here, and it’s paying off. But hey, not over yet still. But it’s so great to come up here and to do that. But yeah, as you can see, I think that was a good race. There were a couple of .93s and a 94. That’s a heck of a race. And we’re just glad to be a part of that group.”

Cooler tracks, hot tracks, Pedregon believes he has the Funny Car that can succeed at any venue.

“Oh yeah, it’ll translate,” he said. “Yeah, I think we can run anywhere. And now I think we’ve run in humid, dry sea level. The car is fast everywhere, so I’m very confident that no matter what conditions, we’ll be fast. It’s just a matter of I’ve got to keep it in the groove. The car’s a wild, wild child man. It’s trying to buck me right off that seat. I’m just trying to hang on and do my job and let the car speak for itself.”

GLENN CONTINUES TO IMPRESS - Following his victory in Pomona and taking the points lead for the first time in his young career, Pro Stock’s Dallas Glenn continued to impress on Friday in Las Vegas, making the quickest run in each qualifying session, including a class-best 6.629 at 206.07 in his RAD Torque Systems Chevrolet Camaro.

If that holds, Glenn would pick up his first No. 1 qualifier this season and the third in his career and the former NHRA Rookie of the Year appears to be on a great path. He’s enjoyed previous success in Las Vegas, winning the fall race in 2021, and advanced to the final quad at the four-wide race a year ago.

"Matt (Hartford) and I had the best two cars in Pomona, and I think it just carried right on over," Glenn said. "This track just kind of agrees with me, from the starting line to my driving style, and the way the car is set up. I didn't expect to see that good of a run in Q2, because we made a really nice run in Q1, and the air was worse. Hopefully, that means there's even a little more left in it because I think tomorrow morning is going to be the good run.

“I know I change my style a little bit for four-wide. I almost rush myself a little bit in staging because I do kind of take a long time to stage. For four-wide, I try to make sure I don't dilly-dally around. Four-wide racing is a great time; it changes it up a little bit."

Hartford is currently second with his 6.635 at 205.66, while Gainesville winner Troy Coughlin Jr. is right behind after he went 6.636 at 207.11.

WALLY TROPHY: ANOTHER SHINY VEGAS BAUBLE FOR CUADRA? – As he begins his 50thrace this weekend, Pro Stock patriarch Fernando Cuadra Sr. hasn’t won a Wally trophy in NHRA competition. But he owns some of the most gleamingly beautiful items the City of Las Vegas has to show off. And that’s in a desert oasis overflowing with lavish treasures.

Cuadra Sr. already was brimming with pride at the notion that son Cristian Cuadra received congratulatory greetings from Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador for becoming the first Mexican to qualify No. 1 in an NHRA pro class (last month at Phoenix).

“López Obrador, they wanted to congratulate [him], because this is a big thing happening and it happens with the governor of the state also. And it makes so much noise, that first qualifier with my sons. And on top of that, Ford since 1977 didn't have anything happening. So the President and the governor of the state, they like to honor those people that are really making it in the sports to bring the image of Mexico high,” Cuadra Sr. said.

He has even more to take pride in at Las Vegas – away from the dragstrip.

The hand-crafted boots, wallets, belts, and selected Western-wear products produced in Leόn by his 12,000 employees (2500 in the Cuadra-brand factory) throughout his 24 plants – the pride of Mexico’s Guanajuato state – have taken their place in the finest retail outlets. “Cuadra,” his stores that also operate in Austin and McAllen, Texas, takes its place among the luxury retailers at the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Palazzo at The Venetian, The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace Resort, and the Fashion Show Mall on Las Vegas Boulevard.

“Vegas first of all, is a good place to test merchandise, because it's global,” Cuadra Sr. said. “You have Americans, Chinese, whatever the nationality, you want to try, and you have good feedback and there are a lot of guys gambling, that make money, so they are willing to spend the money. So that's one of the main reasons we are in Vegas heavy. Other stores are coming here in Vegas and also outlet. We're looking for outlet for those guys who want to make deals.

“We are in Caesar, Fashion Mall and Palazzo. Palazzo was the first one, and then Caesars, and then Fashion Mall, and it's coming, another two surprises,” he said with a sly smile. “It's good and affordable, and everybody can spend something at the level they want with a high-quality product. We don't bring the quality down because of the price. We cut margins, but not quality.”

The story of how the Las Vegas connection all started at McCarran Airport. Cuadra has been a pilot for 30 years, and all three of his sons, who also have licenses in the United States and Mexico, fly airplanes. “They co-pilot with me, and now they are flying for me.” But Cuadra, always looking for business opportunities, did some B2B sleuthing there on the tarmac.

“We have four, five years now in Palazzo. And everybody's asking me, ‘Why Palazzo?’ They have much more traffic. Palazzo, they receive Middle Eastern guests and other people that stay there and they love it. That's a very interesting part. And how I found out that because I'm a pilot,” he said. “So I landed at the McCarran Airport, and I saw a lot of private airplanes and I saw a Boeing Business private jet, and I said, ‘Who else is coming?’ I asked a lot of guys, private, that level, where they like to stay. They gave me three options, and one of them was Palazzo. I said, ‘OK. I'm going to bring the merchandise to them.’ So that's where we are doing fairly well.”

The Corral Boots name adorns the side panels of his Pro Stock entry for powerhouse Elite Motorsports, but many at the racetrack are unaware that the multinational businessman, who maintains a residence at Edinburg, in Texas’ Rio Grand Valley as well as in Leόn, has his company’s goods on sale in nearly 30 countries.

Cuadra Boys Racing announced March 21 that it was adding Columbia Impex as a major associate sponsor for the rest of this Camping World Drag Racing Series season. Columbia Impex is an importer/distributor of genuine reptile and exotic leathers that serves manufacturers and designers of a variety of small leather goods, including belts, watch straps, handbags, footwear, and garments. Cuadra and Corral Boots, the Cuadra family’s premium footwear and accessories brands, have had a longstanding relationship with Columbia Impex.

“The Cuadra Boys” team consists of Pro Stock drivers Fernando Cuadra Sr., Fernando Cuadra Jr., Cristian Cuadra, and Top Sportsman driver David Cuadra, Cristian’s twin brother. Dad said the Cuadra quartet is planning to see David get his Pro Stock license so they all can race in the same class. The original idea was to see them in the same foursome here at this four-wide event, but the agenda at this point is to accomplish that at the next race, at zMAX Dragway. 

“I wanted it here. But we need a license. We needed to prepare the Pro Stock car,” Cuadra Sr. said. “So Richard [Freeman, owner of Elite Motorsports] has it, and he is going to finish this week the car. And David is flying over there [to Oklahoma] to test it and get everything in place.”

Cuadra Sr. said, “Columbia Impex has a wonderful reputation in our industry. We are honored to have the opportunity to represent such a quality organization and introduce them to the racing world.”

Likewise, Ruben Villanueva, Florida-based manager of Columbia Impex, said, “We are thrilled to sponsor the Cuadra Boys. They are a fantastic family, and their brands utilize some of the finest materials available. As we learned of the multiple exposure opportunities provided through the sport of drag racing, it became clear that joining the team as a sponsor partner made sense, not only to support our current business partners but also to gain interest from new customers.”

Columbia Impex came on board with the Cuadras and Elite – the largest professional team in drag racing – at the Phoenix race.

Actually, Cuadra Sr. has a financial interest in Columbia Impex. He said, “It was my original supplier back in the day. I'm talking in [19]79-80. The guy passed away and I [had] asked him, ‘The day you want to sell the company, give me the first option to buy it or run it or do something with it.’ They say OK. The guy passed away. The son knew that agreement. He sold me the company. We own and we have a partnership with the guys, so we have a heavy investment on that supply chain.

“And that company is independent from the group, because they do the sourcing and all the contracts for the American ’gators in Asia for the pythons and stuff. So they are looking always the details on the supply chain. The guy that is there [has] over 50 years with the company. It's very well known in the industry.”

The Cuadras also have a milestone coming up in 10 days. Fernando Sr. will turn 64 years old April 26 – the same day sons Cristian and David turn 24. Helping them celebrate early are their Las Vegas guests: his niece, his brother's partner’s daughter, who is running part of the company, Cuadra, along with team members of the marketing department and the Chief Merchandise Officers. “They are here, all of them,” Cuadra Sr. said.

MAN OF MANY COATS - One could easily argue that Alex Laughlin is drag racing’s version of the Swiss army knife. So far, he has competed at 4-Wide races since 2016 in Pro Stock, Mountain Motor Pro Stock, Pro Mod, and Top Fuel. As if driving a fuel Funny Car isn’t complex enough, he will get to do it alongside three other drivers.

“I actually like the 4-wide because I feel somewhat of an advantage since I’ve won plenty of extra rounds from confused competitors not realizing which part of the tree they are supposed to be looking at,” Laughlin said. “Awareness is everything in four-wide racing. Las Vegas is a track that I haven’t had the cards fall my way, but I’m looking to change that.”

Laughlin and Jim Dunn Racing will have their Funny Car adorned in the colors of KGC Construction and Nitrous Keys. KGC has been a primary supporter of the team for a number of years, while longtime Jim Dunn Racing fans, Nitrous Keys, stepped up to be an associate sponsor of the team for the first time in 2022. The supplier of replacement ignition keys for car dealers, collision centers, auto repair shops, locksmiths, and consumers will be debuting a new logo on the Funny Car. Fans and businesses can also take advantage of special pricing on their website, www.nitrouskeys.com, through the end of the Las Vegas race weekend.

HERE’S HOW IT LOOKS FOR US – Top Fuel owner-driver Josh Hart made four-wide racing sound relatively simple: “The four-wide format is unique, but from the driver’s perspective, you just have to focus on doing your routine. There are twice as many people up on the line, but my job is still the same. I need to pay attention to [crew chief] Ron [Douglas] and focus on my job.” That’s true for each driver and his or her respective tuner. However, other drivers describe a much more complex set of challenges.

Top Fuel racer Leah Pruett said she thinks “the four-wide event comes at an appropriate time in the season. The off-season rust is kicked off and everyone is moving and grooving in working order. We shook off all the single passes of the off-season, gathered a couple dozen side-by-side hits and now turn it up with the focus of four-wide.” And “focus” is the operative word.

She said the difference in staging for a four-wide event is far different than it is in a traditional two-wide situation. The explanation, she said, “can be very lengthy, but ultimately crews, crew chiefs, and drivers need to exercise maximum situational awareness on the line. We have to pay attention to what all of the communication signs mean, because so much can change so fast. Someone can break, so drivers have to know what bulbs we expect to be lit or not and therefore not get timed out. The basic principles are the same: pre-stage and get staged before seven seconds of the other person fully-staging. In this case, it still takes just one person to be fully staged after all pre-staged to start the timer, so if you are waiting for two or three people to get fully staged, then think you have seven seconds, you are in for a rude awakening.

“Basically, you want to get staged as soon as possible, because the alignment of four cars to get to the stage beams eats up five to 10 seconds on average. So you’re already burning more fuel than normal. Balancing your cadence is key for consistency.”

Her Tony Stewart Racing teammate Matt Hagan goes through the same paces in a Funny Car, and he said, “The Four-Wide Nationals are always different. Everything we do is repetition and doing the same thing every time – burning out the same, taking care of the clutch, backing up the same, staging the car, how much fuel we burn on the burnout and getting up to the line to run. Four-wide changes all of that.

“You have three other cars you have to deal with. I think everyone does a good job of hustling up there and getting the crew chiefs to raise a hand and turn the knob to stage. Sometimes, you can have cars that throw the timing off for everyone. Sometimes you have to put extra fuel in the car to be on the safe side of things,” he said.

“Four-wide is also different, as far as the racing goes. I don’t know if the other two cars left the starting line. Sometimes, if your car is beat up or on fire, you lift. On race day, not knowing where those other two cars are, you have to go to the end,” he said. “If you hope to advance, you have to get to the end, since only two out of the four move on. And it’s tough when you can’t see the other two cars. You have to be mindful of parts and pieces and ask yourself as a driver whether it’s worth going down all the way.”  

“The staging at a four-wide event is challenging. I have not staged a car. I’ve red-lit there. I’ve done about everything you can do in a car there. I rely on my crew chief and myself. Dickie [his crew chief, Dickie Venables] puts his foot in the bulb, even though I know which lane I’m in. It is another indicator of where I’m at. He’ll blink the bulb a couple times so I can see it. It’s easy to get confused up there, so you really have to pay attention during the staging process.”

Steve Torrence has claimed six four-wide Top Fuel victories, including two in four attempts here at Las Vegas (2018, 2021), and he was runner-up at this event a year ago. He has a 21-3 overall record in four-wide events the past six seasons (including the ones at Charlotte). However, he said, “I used to hate four-wides. It can be confusing, looking at all those bulbs across four lanes. I remember [at] one of my first four-wide races, I was in Lane 3, looking at the wrong bulb, thinking someone needed to stage [to activate the Christmas Tree starting system], and the whole time it was me.

“But the thing is, you get more comfortable,” Torrence said. “You develop a routine, and then, when you have the kind of success we’ve had (twice as many four-wide victories as anyone else), opinions change.  Now I wish we had more than just two.”

Brittany Force, last year’s Top Fuel winner and Friday’s provisional No. 1 qualifier, didn’t say she’d like to have more than two four-wide races a year. Rather, she said, “I’m glad it’s just that.” But she said, “The anxiety has calmed down a little, but it’s still there because it’s different. I’ve done it a handful of times. You kind of get a hang for it.”

Her not-all-that-secret secret is to go and stand in each lane and visualize what to expect of she happens to draw that particular lane. “I’m very big on visualizing what I want to do up there: like, where I’m sitting in the car … looking at that Christmas Tree, where my position is ... what kind of light I want to cut …That helps me.”  The trick, if you is “not letting your eyes bounce all over the place and just staying focused in your lane.”

Here’s Justin Ashley’s take on it: “Four-wide racing is a different beast. Anything can happen when you have over 40,000 horsepower on the starting line at the same time. The main thing about four-wide is that it’s so different from what we’re used to doing. In addition to the different staging protocols, each team gets one qualifying run in each lane, and race day consists of only three rounds. The last few four-wide races have certainly opened my eyes to the subtle nuances that come with this type of event. It’s a challenge that we’re excited for as a team. It’s easy to get caught up in all the variables. Instead, our Phillips Connect Toyota team is focused on being the best version of ourselves we can be. We’ll put our best foot forward and let the rest take care of itself.” 

Funny Car part-timer Jason Rupert said, “It’s a lot different, for sure. You just try not to make any mistakes nd remember which lane you’re in and try not to hold anyone up.”

Pro Stock sophomore Camrie Caruso has had a couple of shots at it, and she admitted that four-wide racing can be a bit overwhelming: “I am trying to get used to the four-wide format. There is a lot going on when you stage, and last year during my rookie year, it was tough. I know the fans love it, and we are here to put on a great show for the fans and our sponsors. My goal this year is to just get better and have some fun with it. Luckily, The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway is an awesome racetrack.”

Top Fuel’s Buddy Hull is driving his Methanol Moonshine Dragster in four-wide style for the first time, and he already understood before jumping into the deep end of the pool that “there is a lot going on when you race four-wide, in addition to just the sheer power on the starting line.”

He said, “You have over 40,000-horsepower all bunched up, and the sound and vibrations just really get everyone fired up. I am glad I have a team led by Mike Guger behind me, because I think we can have some fun and go some rounds. Phoenix was our first race of the season, and we learned a lot. We aren’t in the position to test in the off-season so that race was a great chance for our whole team to come together and get ready for the rest of the year.” And at the least, he’ll have an eye-opening experience. 

Doug Kalitta just might be the lone racer who happily has embraced the four-wide concept from its beginning in 2018. And his opinion hasn’t changed. Earlier this week he said, “I look forward to racing in the four-wide events, because it’s a cool idea from one of the greatest track developers of all-time, Bruton Smith. I mostly just love supporting one of his visions and one of the coolest innovations in the history of drag racing.

“It’s the same, as far as getting to the finish line first to win the race, but it’s kind of nice on race day when the top two cars advance to the next round. I think the fans really like these events, too. I’d love to win one of these one day – we raced in the final a couple years ago. Maybe this weekend will be our time.”

Then again, Kalitta said he likes racing in Las Vegas, in general, and that’s because he has won here (in 2004, 2015, both in the fall trip). “They usually get great crowds, and it seems like the fans are all having a really good time. There’s so much to do there, so I think the fans take pretty good advantage of that – they come to the races during the day and get to enjoy all the fun things you can do in Las Vegas at night. So it’s a really fun weekend for the fans.”

ENDERS, ANDERSON, SCHUMACHER AMONG VEGAS LEADERS – A handful of active Camping World Series racers have had tremendous success through the years. Enders leads all pro drivers on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with nine triumphs. She has won at least once here in the past four seasons (doubled last year) and scored back-to-back “doubles” in 2014-15. Her on-track nemesis, Greg Anderson, isn’t far behind her, with eight Las Vegas victories (starting with “doubles” in 2003, 2004, and 2007, and a pair of fall victories in 2010 and 2017).

Tony Schumacher is a four-time winner of this spring event (2004, 2009, 2013-4), and he has eight trips to the Las Vegas winners circle altogether.

“I’ve won at Vegas a lot but have never won a four-wide trophy from either here or Charlotte,” he said.  “I will say, the last time that Zippy [crew chief Mike Neff] and I raced together at the Vegas four-wide event, we were literally in the lead in the finals when the car shut off. So, we’re continuing with our theme of ‘We have some unfinished business’ this weekend.” 

Ron Capps and John Force lead the Funny Car class with six Las Vegas victories apiece.

Five-time Las Vegas Top Fuel winner Antron Brown is seeking his first four-wide trophy at this venue. However, he leads all pro drivers in final-quad appearances, with nine at the Las Vegas and Charlotte events combined.

THE SWAGGER FACTOR - Alexis DeJoria admits there was a time when she had a posture problem.

Not having a race car will do that to a driver. Just for clarity, DeJoria did have a good race car; it wasn’t doing what she and her championaship tuning duo of Del Worsham and Nicky Boninfante wanted it to do. It just wasn’t behaving right.

“I was probably walking an inch shorter than I am right now,” DeJoria admitted. “It’ll definitely wear on you.”

DeJoria had nine first round exits in 22 races during the 2022 season, and only six times did the 12-time national event finalist, six-time winner make it past the second round. And, it wasn’t all the car’s fault, as DeJoria will readily point out.

In five of those nine races, she lost either by foul start or a boundary violation. What the car wouldn’t do, DeJoria felt obligated to make up the difference.

“I could tell you I had some private crying moments over our performance last year and my performance,” DeJoria said. “So everything’s come together.”

It wasn’t as if DeJoria and her championship pedigree team had forgotten how to perform and win. There were other variables in play.

“Last year, we were doing a lot of trial-and-error runs," DeJoria said. “We had a new body that we had to assimilate to and then a new clutch set up. So it was a lot of really testing during the year, during the races. Some was good, some were bad. We had a chassis issue, too, so we were battling uphill.”

A funny thing happened on the way to a new season; her Toyota straightened up and started to fly right. At the season finale in Pomona, DeJoria parlayed a No. 6 qualifying effort into a semi-final finish. It was the best she had qualified since the Western Swing.

DeJoria has five round wins this season in three races, including a #2Fast2Tasty Shootout victory in Phoenix. To put it all in perspective, it took her eight races last season to get the same round wins. She sits third in points behind 2023 national event winners Matt Hagan and Ron Capps on the strength of two semi-finals and a quarter-final finish.

“I can tell you I’m standing up straighter every time I come out here,” DeJoria said enthusiastically. “So what the sport does to your ego and to your confidence, it’s like a rollercoaster ride. My heart and soul are connected to that race car. When we don’t run well, I don’t feel good. I’m not happy. When the car’s doing well, I’m happy; got a spring in my step. It’s just different. So huge confidence builder coming out of the gate this year.”

Yes, when the race car isn’t happy, the Hot Rod Mommi isn’t happy, and it doesn’t take long for the family to find out. And the last thing anyone should have done is comment, “It’s just a hobby, not a big deal.”

“Yeah. “Oh, it’s just a hobby, right?” DeJoria responded. “No, it’s not a hobby. Not when you’re racing 22 weekends between February and November. This is my profession, this is my wheelhouse, and this is where I’m supposed to be. It’s just racing to everybody else, but to us, it’s competition. That’s our names on the line, that’s pressure, that’s performance and everything.

“You’ve got all these guys that have done all this work to the car, and they’re standing up there and just hoping and praying it does well. So you got to be on top of it, and we definitely are right now.

The self-motivation books and self-help prophets have a common theme, “Leave your job at the workplace. Don’t bring it home.”

“Good luck with that,” DeJoria added. “Does anybody do that?”

These days, DeJoria is bringing home a good vibe from the strip.

“I’m probably more outgoing and not so focused on the car and our performance and everything,” she said. “It kind of lightens the mood at home. My family’s a lot happier around me because I’m happier. But it all goes in hand; it really does. It’s hard not to take your work home when you’re doing it all the time, and you’re working on the weekends, coming home during the week when everybody’s working in their normal lives. It’s very different. So yeah, the vibe and the mood is a lot brighter.

“Winning is huge for all of our confidence, the team as well, because last year was really tough. It was rough, man. But we stuck together, and just, I kept telling the guys, I’m like, ‘Just know, we’re building for next year. 2023 is going to be our year. Just we got to get through this and the trials and tribulations and blood, sweat, and tears.”

And she wasn’t wrong either. Standing up straight reveals a lot of wisdom.