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QUALIFYING SESSIONS RECAP

K&N HORSEPOWER CHALLENGE E1 (1:25 p.m.): Erica Enders, the winner of the fan vote for the K&N Horsepower Challenge, upset low qualifier Jason Line in the $50,000 to win specialty event. Enders drove her Elite Camaro to a 6.723 after Line fouled. Line’s teammate, Greg Anderson had the best run of the round with a 6.670 to top Allen Johnson, who also fouled. Other survivors include Shane Gray, who advanced with a 6.950 after Vincent Nobile and Bo Butner, who topped Drew Skillman with a 6.677.

Semifinal pairings (lane choice first): Enders vs. S. Gray; Anderson vs. Butner

PRO STOCK Q3 (1:33 p.m.): Jason Line remained in the top spot after three rounds of Pro Stock qualifying but that was little consolation for the reigning world champ after he fouled out in the first round of the K&N Horsepower Challenge event (see above). Greg Anderson made the quickest pass of the round with a 6.670 in his win over Allen Johnson while KB teammate Bo Butner also picked up a bonus point with his 6.677 run in his win over Drew Skillman. The final bonus point went to Matt Hartford, who wheeled his Total Seal Camaro to a 6.718.

TOP FUEL Q3 (2:14 p.m.): Steve Torrence stayed atop the Top Fuel leaderboard after the third round of qualifying but for the second-straight session didn’t make it down the track. It was Doug Kalitta with the best session as he made a 3.765 pass to move up to fourth place behind Brittany Force and Tony Schumacher, neither of whom made it down the track in the third qualifying session. Terry Haddock made his first run of the Denso Spark Plugs NHRA Nationals and is in 15th of the 15 cars that have run.

FUNNY CAR Q3 (2:47 p.m.): A 3.921 pass by Jack Beckman helped move the Funny Car driver to fifth place in the third qualifying session. That came in the final run of the session, immediately following a similarly strong pass by John Force who jumped up to sixth place with a 3.924 pass. Courtney Force remained in first with the track-record 3.867 run she pulled off in the first qualifying session. Tommy Johnson Jr. jumped into a qualifying spot with a 3.972 pass after being stuck in the eight-second range in the first two runs. The bump spot is 5.504, held by Jeff Arend.

K&N HORSEPOWER CHALLENGE E2 (3:45 p.m.): It will be Shane Gray versus Greg Anderson for $50,000 in the final round of the K&N Horsepower Challenge in Las Vegas. Anderson will be seeking his sixth championship after taking a 6.669 to 6.719 win over teammate Bo Butner in the semi’s. Gray punched his ticket to the final round after two-time Challenge champ Erica Enders shook the tires in the semi’s. Gray, the winner of the most recent event in Gainesville, ran a 6.714 for the win.

PRO STOCK Q4 (4:01 p.m.): Jason Line will start from the pole position for the fourth-straight race to start the season after his 6.647 run from Friday went untouched after two more qualifying rounds on Saturday. Line’s reward for his performance will be a bye run on Sunday morning. Greg Anderson made the quickest pass of the final session with a 6.669 while Line and Chris McGaha also picked up qualifying bonus points.

First round pairings (lane choice first): Jason Line vs. bye; Drew Skillman vs. Shane Gray; Tanner Gray vs. Deric Kramer; Jeg Coughlin Jr. vs. Tom Huggins; Bo Butner vs. Alan Prusiensky; Greg Anderson vs. Allen Johnson; Vincent Nobile vs. Erica Enders; Chris McGaha vs. Matt Hartford.

TOP FUEL Q4 (4:34 p.m.): Nobody could take the green No. 1 qualifying cap away from Steve Torrence who also had the top pass of the fourth Top Fuel qualifying session with a 3.749. Doug Kalitta came close, moving up to third place with a 3.752 pass and finishing behind Tony Schumacher who had a 3.759 run. Brittany Force was the last driver standing out of the 15-driver field who could snatch the green cap from Torrence but was unable to do so and finished up fourth. 

First round pairings (lance choice first): Steve Torrence vs. bye; Tony Schumacher vs. Terry Haddock; Doug Kalitta vs. Steve Chrisman; Brittany Force vs. Steve Faria; Leah Pritchett vs. Troy Buff; Clay Millican vs. Tripp Tatum; Antron Brown vs. Terry McMillen; Troy Coughlin Jr. vs. Scott Palmer.

K&N HORSEPOWER CHALLENGE FINAL (4:45 p.m.): Greg Anderson successfully defending his victory in the 2016 K&N Horsepower Challenge with a narrow 6.684 to 6.699 victory over Shane Gray in the specialty event, which paid $50,000 to the winner. Anderson, now a six-time K&N Challenge winner, defeated Allen Johnson and teammate Bo Butner to reach the final. Gray, coming off a win in Gainesville two weeks ago, reached his first K&N Challenge final after stopping Vincent Nobile and Erica Enders. [full story]

FUNNY CAR Q4 (5:25 p.m.): Ron Capps picked up the best pass of the fourth Funny Car qualifying session with a 3.877, but Gary Densham may feel like the luckiest driver in the field as he bumped Jeff Arend out of the field with a 5.263 run. Arend entered the fourth run holding the 16^th slot with a 5.504 slot and that didn’t hold up. Jack Beckman moved up to fifth place with a 3.886 pass and Tommy Johnson Jr. slid up to sixth with a 3.887 pass while Courtney Force’s 3.867 run from the first qualifying session held up as the green-hat-earning pass.

First round pairings (lane choice first): Courtney Force vs. Gary Densham; Matt Hagan vs. Del Worsham; Tim Wilkerson vs. Robert Hight; Ron Capps vs. Jonnie Lindberg; Jack Beckman vs. Cruz Pedregon; Tommy Johnson Jr. vs. Jim Campell; John Force vs. Phil Burkart Jr.; Alexis DeJoria vs. J.R. Todd.

FEATURES

Friday was a real headscratcher for a lot of teams, especially in Q2, where only two nitro cars – Tony Schumacher in Top Fuel and Matt Hagan in Funny Car – made it down the track. The combination of cool weather and cool track had fans licking their lips, but the rubber was what the teams call “dead” – too cold with none of the give that teams require to free the rear tires to pick up the necessary wheelspeed.

“The track got so tight and good that none of the cars could get any wheelspeed,” explained Antron Brown. “The cars just hook too hard and then the tires are jumping off the ground and you go into spin. You have to sacrifice some at the start – our 60-foot times go really down – to get through that; you have take clutch away from it because something has to give. If it’s not going to be the track, it has to be the car. We might lose a hundredth, hundredth and a half to 60 feet, but then you can go down the track. I think a lot of people hoped they could get past it because they wanted to set world records, but they were way too aggressive. If you can make it past 100 feet you can usually put whatever you want to it and it’ll hold. 

“We actually were able to make it through that but once we got downtrack there wasn’t any traction for some reason. We were dead stuck to the track and about 380 feet it looked like we stepped on a banana peel. Today should be a lot better. We’ve got some heat in the track, and a lot more Sportsman cars than we had yesterday.”

When you’re the runaway class leader in wins and championships, you’re naturally going to have some other impressive stats on your resume, and that’s certainly true for Tony Schumacher. His win two weeks ago at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals was his fifth, making him the winningest Top Fuel racer in event history.
 
Schumacher now is the winningest driver at 10 of the 21 tracks on the current Mello Yello series schedule, including Las Vegas, where he has eight career victories. His most recent Las Vegas titles came back-to-back at the spring events in 2013 and 2014. 
 
Schumacher is high on his new tuning tandem, which includes longtime crew chief Mike Green and assistant Phil Shuler, who joined the army team after tuning a number of DSR cars over the years.
 
“We have a rock star team right now,” said Schumacher. “Mike and Phil [Shuler]are just working together with their ideas, and it’s great to have the energy Mike introduced at the beginning of the year, kind of by saying, ‘We’re going for it, we’re not going to go out there being cautious, we don’t care where we’re running, we’re going for it.’ It was just a different Mike and I think it charges the guys up. With Phil pushing him, he’s the aggressive side of Mike in the first place. With Mike already having that attitude and Phil coming over and not letting Mike back down, I think we’ve got a car that’s going to go out and win some races.”

Schumacher was happy with his runs on Friday as he sat in second behind only Steve Torrence with a 3.739 pass, but he sees the opportunity for more out of the track. 

 “Honestly, a 3.73, that is not impressive,” said Schumacher. “The track is good enough for a 60-something (3.60 seconds). We were stuck so far into that track, but getting it go forward without shaking, without smoking the tires – do it all – we were on the soft side of that.”

Still, with many drivers struggling to make it down the track, whether it be due to shaking the car or smoking the tires, Schumacher knows there’s a small window to work with.

“Maybe one, tiny, little bit more and we smoke the tires,” the Gainesville winner said. “So, the window is OK for getting down the track even though it’s not with the craziest numbers. Mike said we wanted to run in the 60s but, after watching everyone else not get down the track, it took some courage to do what we did to get down the track and that’s what this Army team is all about.”

Tripp Tatum, who made a handful of events last year in the Lagana family’s Nitro Ninja dragster, is making his season debut in Las Vegas as he continues to gain experience and look for marketing partners for the expanded schedule.

“We want to run at least that this year and work on bettering the program for me and for them,” he said of brothers Dom and Bobby Lagana Jr. “We’re searching for a sports marketing person to help us with the funding."

All told, Tatum has less than 30 nitro runs under his belt, but already has gained confidence and a career best of 3.77. His best through three qualifying sessions this weekend is a 3.82.

“I couldn’t be with a better team to learn with,” he said.  “Last year at Indy was the first time I got really comfortable in the car. It’s just my mind catching up to the car. When the clutch tugs the motor down at halftrack these cars really take off. Take one thing at a time, get the car to run a little faster. This car is much harder to drive from halftrack on that it is the first half. It’s a real handful.”
 

“A plane would have crashed,” was Del Worsham’s comical comparison of his aborted qualifying pass in Q2 Friday night. As Worsham backed up from his burnout, flames could seen under the car and when the body was raised the extent of the problem became obvious.

“As I was backing up from the burnout, smoke started filling up the car,” Worsham recalled. “What had happened was that it shot the bottom of the header gasket out and caught the diaper [the under-engine oil-containment blanket] on fire, and fuel was coming out and just kept feeding it. I go to shut it off, but there’s a problem with the fuel shutoff – we’re all having that issue because there aren’t a lot of parts available right now – and it just got bigger and bigger.”

The NHRA Safety Safari blasted the fire with a fire extinguisher while crew members tried to direct them to spray it into the injectors to kill the engine while Worsham tried to use the ignition kill, which also did not work. Finally, the extinguisher’s CO2 stream was directed into the injectors, which finally snuffed the engine.

It’s been a rough go for former Funny Car world champ Cruz Pedregon the last season and a half, capped by missing the Countdown championship chase last year for the first time since 2010. Pedregon totally overhauled his operation over the winter, including hiring Aaron Brooks who had won a slew of races tuning the Top Fuelers of Richie Crampton and Morgan Lucas before the team was parked at the end of last season.

The struggles of Pedregon’s Snap-On Tools Toyota have continued into this season – he’s not qualified higher than ninth and hasn’t made it past the first round – but “the Cruzer” is optimistic better days are just ahead.

“The car is completely different from how I ran it last year, and Aaron comes from the dragsters so we knew it would him a while to figure out what these things want, tune-up-wise,” he said. “Going into this season I figured it would take us five or six races to get everything situated and sorted out. It’s just been little things, but I feel like we’re close. I think we’re just a run or two away from making some good runs.”

The Las Vegas track-record holder has a new lid that honors some of the best car names in Funny Car history. Jack Beckman’s purple lid bares names ranging from “Black Magic” to “Wonder Wagon” and continues a tradition he started when he first wore a helmet with names that had names of famous Funny Car drivers. 

“I just kinda started going through the old books and whatnot,” said Beckman. “I probably came up with 40 off the top of my head. It’s easy to name the first few and then you start thinking ‘did I name this one, did I name that one.’”

Beckman estimates the helmet, designed and painted by Carson Lev, holds 51 names. Other names include “Showtime,” “Bounty Hunter” and “Alcoholic.”

Beckman scored his first win in the nitro category 10 years ago at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and he is thirsty for another NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series title from the track.

"It's the track where I got my first nitro win in Funny Car," said Beckman, the 2012 Funny Car world champion. "It's the track on the NHRA tour where I have the most seat time because of all the Sportsmen racing I did there. 
 
"I have a lot of history with that facility and it's one of the three tracks on tour when we have two shots a year to get a win. Frankly, I'm frustrated that I bagged a win there in 2006 and haven't been able to close the deal since then." 

Beckman slotted into eighth after the first day of racing with a 4.351 pass. 
 

The Elite Performance team has shown a dramatic improvement this season and at least part of it can be attributed to an active testing schedule with their three Chevy Camaro entries. On Monday following the recent Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornaitonals, the Elite team tested in Gainesville. With Jeg Coughlin Jr. unable to attend the test due to business commitments, Erica Enders drove both her car and Coughlin’s. All told, the two-time world champ made 11 runs in one day.

“I was exhausted but I loved every minute of it,” said Enders. “I would have made 35 runs if we’d have more time. Once we got going, it went pretty fast. I’d make one run in my car, grab my seat insert and head over to Jeg’s car and then go back and may another in my car. When you do that, you get in a pretty good rhythm.”

Both Enders’ Camaro and Coughlin’s Camaro were built by RJ Race Cars and both are powered by Elite Performance engines. The main difference is that Coughlin’s car is new while Enders’ car is the same Camaro that she drove to her first Mello Yello championship in 2014.

“They are very different from a driving standpoint,” she said. “They just have different personalities. Jeg’s car is new so it’s stiff and tight and it just feels like a new car. My car has a ton of runs on it; it’s been rode hard and put away wet. It still works just fine but it definitely requires a little bit different tune-up than the new car does.”

Deric Kramer was absent from Friday’s opening qualifying session but returned to log a competitive 6.73 later in the day in his American Ethanol Dodge.

“We had a problem with the wiring harness on our EFI so we missed the first run,” Kramer explained. “Then, we spun the tires from start to finish on the second. I’m surprised it ran as well as it did. We should all be better today.”

Kramer is debuting a new Mopar Hemi engine built by Madcap Engines. The power plant features the latest 2.1 version Hemi cylinder head.

“On the dyno this engine looks a lot better than what we’ve been running so we’re optimistic,” Kramer said. “We weren’t planning on going to Gainesville but we almost decided to go at the last minute because we were so encouraged.”

Kramer has been rumored to be contemplating a switch to a Chevy Camaro but at this point, he’s planning on sticking with his Dodge Dart for the foreseeable future but he’s also willing to hedge his bet.

“We sent our old Avenger off to Jerry [Haas] to see if we could have it re-bodied into a Camaro but it wouldn’t work out so we scrapped that plan,” said Kramer. “At some point we will most likely have a Camaro but for now we’re not sure when or how to do it. We’ll probably just have one built but if this [Dodge] runs as well as we hope it does, we’ll keep racing it for a while.”

Kramer improved slightly to a 6.722 in Saturday’s third session.

Rookie Tanner Gray, who is set to celebrated his 18th birthday in a couple of weeks, is still looking for his first victory in a Pro Stock car but he’s still winning races. The Wednesday before leaving for Las Vegas, Gray took first place in his winged Outlaw Cart in the Ironman 50 event at the Millbridge Speedway a dirt track near his home in North Carolina.

“Anytime you can win a race; any kind of a race, it does nothing but help your confidence,” Gray said. “It makes you think you’re a bad ass and it also helps take your mind off of other things.”

While a winged outlaw cart is about the furthest thing from an NHRA Pro Stock car, Gray is convinced that seat time is seat time, and any form of organized competition makes for good practice.

“I just like to race and the more you can race, the more active your mind is,” he said. “You tend to stay more focused and that has to be good for your results. The Pro Stock car is very different from anything else I’ve ever raced but when it comes to seat time, it all adds up. They run at Millbridge on Wednesday nights so I’m going to try and do it as often as possible. You have NASCAR guys out there like Rickey Stenhouse and Kyle Larson so the competition is awesome. I also work on my own cart during the week. I’m my own crew chief and I like that aspect of it.”

It takes a lot of guts to get on the back of a Top Fuel Harley, so when you’re trying to make a name for yourself it doesn’t hurt to do so with a little bit of flair. Andy Beauchemin certainly has that in spades as the rider of the Joker Bike, dressed head-to-toe in a Clown Prince outfit.

“I finally put it on the bike in 2007 and they started calling me the Joker and the Joker Bike and so one day these kids said they wanted to come see the Joker,” said Beauchemin. “So I put it on my face and they said ‘you gotta do your helmet like that!”

That turned into a very nice finishing touch to Beauchemin’s outfit. As he tears down the track hugging the back of his Harley the glaring face of Batman’s nemesis gleams off the Canadian’s lid. It’s nearly as frightening as the prospect of strapping on to the back of the bike. Nearly. 

“I always said if you can make fans as kids you’ve got fans all your life,” said Beauchemin. “A couple of kids have even invited me to their birthday parties.”

Beauchemin has had some success in the early going at The Strip. He currently sits in fifth with a 6.544 pass. 

Top Fuel Harley rider Mike Pelrine’s final qualifying pass exemplified the wild nature of the 230-mph two-wheeled beasts as he rode a near-track-length wheelie, steering with his body to keep off the centerline, and somehow kept his machine beneath him at 211 mph (animated gif).

PHOTOS

PREVIEW

With two qualifying runs today, Steve Torrence leads the Top Fuel field with a 3.720 after the first day of qualifying, but the Kilgore, Texas, native felt he had a 3.6-second run in him during the second pass. He took his foot off the gas during the second run and if that’s any indicator on what’s to come in day two, his track record of 3.689 may be in jeopardy. He leads Tony Schumacher (3.739), Brittany Force (3.760) and Leah Pritchett (3.780). Only 14 of the 16 drivers in the entry list ran in day one as neither Mike Salinas nor Terry Haddock ran on Friday.

Courtney Force’s track-record 3.867 paced the Friday flopper field as the Advance Auto Parts Camaro pilot, who has qualified No. 2, 3, and 4 in the first three races looks to round out her portfolio with her first pole of the season. The man who beat her in the Pomona final, Matt Hagan, winner of the season’s first two events, is right on her heels with a 3.868. With 19 cars on the grounds, the battle for the top 16 spots today should get heated, especially considering that Tommy Johnson Jr., last year’s championship runner-up, is currently outside the field after two aborted passes Friday, as are Jim Campbell in Jim Dunn’s 7-Eleven Dodge and Jeff Arend in the 4.0-capable entry of Peter Russo.

Saturday in Las Vegas is one of the biggest days of the year in the Pro Stock class with the top eight drivers battling for a $50,000 top prize in the K&N Horsepower Challenge. After Friday’s two qualifying runs, KB Racing drivers Jason Line, Bo Butner, and Greg Anderson are among the favorites. Reigning champion Line is the provisional low qualifier with a 6.647 while Butner is seeded third and Anderson fourth. Although he’s not in the K&N Challenge, Jeg Coughlin Jr. is also enjoying a solid weekend after his 6.652 run on Friday that is currently second.