NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

“I think we learned a little more,” he said. “The biggest thing we need is laps because we usually only run six or seven races a year. We’re getting to the point where we’re accumulating some parts and equipment, but we don’t have 10 extras of everything, so I’m still conservative as a driver. I try not to wreck stuff because I don’t have the budget for it. If the car does something goofy, I lift because it’s coming out of my pocket. Our ultimate goal would be to be able to run 10 races, which we’re going to try to do next year.”

Jack Beckman and the Infinite Hero team dug themselves a bit of a hole with a first-round exit in Charlotte, dropping three spots to No. 8 in the standings. A solid 3.907 left him qualified No. 2 in the good conditions, but he’s wary about the hot track the team will face Saturday and Sunday.

 
“It looks like the odds are stacked against us for the championship,” Beckman admitted. “But we're only six rounds out of the lead. What we need to do is try to take advantage of as many of those 20 rounds as we can possibly participate in. That really means we have to go to the final here if we have a realistic shot at winning the title. The problem is just clutch discs; they’re just too aggressive. We have to work with what we have, and they’re just so unpredictable. If it wears right away, it won’t smoke the tires. If it glazes and grabs, it’ll smoke the tires. You can get discs that give you such a wide window and others where either way -- not enough clutch/too much clutch or not a good track or too good of a track – and they just fall to pieces.”

The Funny Cars struggled in Q1 with a track temperature of 126 degrees as only two drivers – Robert Hight and Del Worsham – rain in the threes, but all that changed in Q2 when the track temperature dropped to 111 and nine threes went onto the scoreboard, from Hight’s field-leading 3.893 to the 3.994 registered by Chad Head (pictured).

 

Robert Hight’s Auto Club team and boss John Force tested Monday after the Countdown-opening event in Charlotte, and the extra work obviously paid off as he took the Auto Club Camaro to the No. 1 spot with a 3.893 and gained six points as the low qualifier in each of the two sessions.

 
“To be No. 1 in both sessions with how hot it’s been just shows how good my team is,” he said. “Those guys have worked their butts off since Indy when we had that big explosion. We made a lot of changes after Charlotte – about the only thing the same in the car is the driver – but we’re starting to see a lot of smiles in the pit now. After Charlotte, Mike Neff just realized that this was do or die for us, and we needed to make the changes, All year long, we’ve had inconsistency with our horsepower; we’ve had that happen eight to10 times this year. The car just would not repeat, but I think we’ve got it figured out now.”

Coming off an extremely rare and frustrating DNQ in Charlotte, Erica Enders put on a happy face in St. Louis, but the two-time world champ knows that her Elite team still has work to do to make their Mopar Dodge competitive with the class’ leaders.

“It’s no secret that we’ve struggled this year,” said Enders. “Charlotte was kind of the low point. In Q4, we had a deal where a wire relay on the ECU broke, and we lost complete power. I had no way to refire the engine. I couldn’t even hit the starter button. The only thing I can figure is that we were not supposed to qualify for that race. This is a crap deal; that’s the only word that I can come up for it right now, but we still love what we do, and this [Pro Stock class] is still where my heart is.

“I’ve been in this long enough to know that Pro Stock runs in cycles, and right now, it’s not our cycle,” Enders said. “We had a glimmer of hope in Denver when we picked up 20 horsepower, and it showed on the racetrack. We just can’t get our engines to live. This is frustrating because it’s not like my guys all of a sudden woke up and got stupid.”

Enders is also racing in Super Gas this weekend behind the wheel of Tommy Phillips’ Corvette roadster. After a pair of time-trial runs this morning, she’s preparing for round one Saturday.

There were only four days between the events in Charlotte and St. Louis, but Shane Gray’s team used that time effectively by testing its Valvoline Camaro extensively Monday at zMAX Dragway. Even though Gray had a solid outing in Charlotte, highlighted by a No. 4 qualifying spot, he felt that there were gains to be made by testing.

“We all felt like we had a car that could have won the Charlotte race,” said Gray. "In round two, the engine cut off for a second right after the launch, and even though it started right back up, we’d already lost our momentum and ultimately the race itself. It had us a bit puzzled, so we stayed and tested and thankfully figured out what happened. Charlotte could have been better, and it could have been worse, so we’ll count our blessings and try to do better.”

In Friday’s opening qualifying round in St. Louis, Gray’s efforts paid immediate dividends when he drove to a 6.612 to lead the pack. He later improved to a 6.609 to finish the day in the No. 2 spot behind leader Greg Anderson.

Unlike his teammate Shane Gray, Drew Skillman did not test after Charlotte, but that doesn’t mean the reigning rookie of the year didn’t have a busy week. Skillman’s crew took its Camaro back to its shop in Greenwood, Ind., and tore into it for three days to cure an electrical issue.

 
“We made some significant changes,” said Skillman, who drove to a best of 6.646 Friday. “We had a few electrical woes, and that was our biggest problem. I had a shift light that was bad for probably the last two or three races. That alone was enough to really hurt us. We fixed enough things that we should be better off this weekend.”

Bo Butner figures that his 6.633 run in Q1 provided a good baseline effort, but if he’s going to remain a contender in the championship battle, he realizes that he needs to start collecting a few qualifying bonus points. Butner entered the St. Louis race in fourth place in the Mello Yello standings, but he trails his teammate Jason Line by 110 points with five events remaining.

 
“We made a good first run, but what we really need to do is get into one of those top three spots,” said Butner. “We need to earn a few of those 'little points' if we’re going to make a run at this championship. The one good thing is that I made a run that we can repeat on race day. It was safe and conservative. We have a car we can race with, so I wouldn’t trade places with [provisional low qualifier] Greg Anderson if I had the chance.”

Greg Anderson has already qualified in the No. 1 spot six times this season, and he’s on pace for a seventh green hat if his 6.607 pass from Friday night's second session holds firm for the Pro Stock pole. Anderson was the last driver down the track Friday night and took the top spot from Shane Gray, who was two-thousandths behind with a 6.609. All of the Pro Stock teams, including Anderson's, were thrown a curveball after the second session was moved to nighttime, after Top Fuel and Funny Car, to accommodate live television.

“We had the car set up for one thing, and then when we had that big weather swing, or at least when the sun went down, we had to make changes,” said Anderson. “We changed the transmission and rear end because you have to race the conditions. The good thing is that we made one good run in the heat and one at night when it was a bit better, so we should have a combination for anything. Rob [Downing, crew chief] did a great job with all three of our cars. The starting line here is tricky, and you have to tune perfectly for it, and I think we did a pretty good job.

“If you paid attention, you saw that there were just two-thousandths between first and second, which shows how close things are,” said Anderson. “There is no question that any one of eight cars can win the championship or win a race. The other teams have caught us, and we have to do the very best job we can. It probably helps us when things get tight. We tend to focus better.”

For the first time in at least five years, Matt Smith has scaled back his effort to just two bikes: his own Victory Gunner and the similar bike ridden by his wife, Angie. Smith’s customer bikes, previously ridden by Scotty Pollacheck, Michael Ray, and, most recently, Mark Paquette, are parked for the weekend.

“I don’t think that losing those two bikes is going to help or hurt us; that’s not the problem over here, but it’s nice to be able to concentrate on our stuff exclusively,” said Smith. “I’ve been studying our computer graphs, and I’m trying to find out why we haven’t been better in qualifying. We should be qualifying better, but that’s still not the problem here; we just have no luck. We don’t have any luck on Sunday. Last week in Charlotte, I had to run Jimmy [Underdahl], and he made his best run of the year. I could have beat just about anyone else.”

Smith’s luck has not improved so far in St. Louis. He slowed in the opening round of qualifying when his bike wouldn’t shift and never left the starting line in Q2 when he experienced another mechanical problem.

Even though Andrew Hines was a runner-up at the Countdown opener in Charlotte, he can see that there is room for improvement with his Harley V-Rod engines, so he spent the time between Charlotte and St. Louis installing a new set of piston rings.

“We didn’t put the engine on the dyno, but we definitely had some bad rings that needed to be addressed,” said Hines. “I did make a decent run in the final, but we still need to figure out a few things.”

Hines made two solid runs, 6.917 and 6.897, to earn a provisional spot in the top half of the field.

It is too late for Jimmy Underdahl to make the Countdown, but the second-generation racer would happily settle for a consolation prize if he could happen to be NHRA’s next first-time winner. Underdahl enjoyed his best outing of the season in Charlotte when he qualified in the top half of the field and ran 6.87. After two runs in St. Louis, Underdahl is 10th with a 6.955 best.

 
“We’ve finally got this bike to the point where it is tunable,” said Underdahl’s father and crew chief, Greg. “We run a different fuel-injection system than anyone else runs, and we’re still learning what works and what doesn’t work. I have one operating system to control everything. It can get confusing at times, and It takes some effort to understand what you’re looking at. You don’t necessarily see the relationship between what the data is telling you and what the bike is doing. We probably could have made things easier by doing what other teams do, but we believe this will be a better system. It just doesn’t think for you. You have to take care of that part yourself. All year, Jimmy’s riding has been great; he almost beat Hector Arana Jr. in Englishtown. We just haven’t given him the bike to do it.”

Eddie Krawiec’s first run of the weekend was a 6.89, but that was thrown out when his Harley V-Rod came up five pounds light at the scales. Unfazed, Krawiec returned to post a 6.884 that has him solidly in the top half of the field after two runs.

“I have no idea why we came up light,” said Krawiec. “We went down to the scales before we ran, and it was just fine. We added a couple of pounds for Q2 and made a much better run. Now we’ve got something to work with tomorrow. We should be better off.”

Encouraged by his win last weekend in Charlotte, Chip Ellis put Junior Pippin’s Buell on the provisional pole for the St. Louis event with a 6.850 best Friday. Subscribing to the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" mentality, Ellis is running essentially the same combination this weekend that he used to win the Charlotte final five days ago.

“Normally, we don’t run the same engine two races in a row, but after Charlotte, we took this one apart, and it all looked good, so we put it back together and put it back in the bike,” said Ellis. “I had an amazing week. I still need to pinch myself to see if it really happened. I don’t know how good my run was today because I still haven’t seen the data, but I think it was pretty good. I also think that there are other teams out there who might be missing it a bit. I don’t’ think we’ve seen the best from the Harley-Davidsons or Jerry [Savoie] yet.”

Ellis added six more points to his total Friday by leading both sessions. He gained five points on leader Andrew Hines, trimming his deficit to just 37 points, but he’s not going to spend too much time pondering championship scenarios.

“I’m not the type who usually spends a lot of time thinking about that stuff,” said Ellis. “I just try to focus on the next race and next round. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never dreamed of winning a championship, but I try not to.”

 

Sportsman qualifying took center stage to start the day at Gateway Motorsports Park. Seven classes of competition are racing in the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series: Comp, Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, Super Gas, Top Dragster, and Top Sportsman.


Former Pro Mod champ Rickie Smith is on the verge of winning another NHRA J&A Service Pro Mod Drag Racing Series championship: He enters the event with a large 94-point lead over second-place Bob Rahaim, winner of the Charlotte event last weekend. With just this event and the NHRA Toyota Nationals in Las Vegas left on the Pro Mod schedule, Smith can lock up the title this weekend with either a strong performance or missteps by Rahaim and defending champ Troy Coughlin, who sits in third place.    

“If I go to the semifinals, that will pretty much sew it up,” said Smith. “If I do that, they’d have to win the race and then win Las Vegas. If I get to the final, it’s all over no matter what they do.”    

Smith is eager to get the title decided this weekend because despite his win in Las Vegas two years ago, he thinks his nitrous car is at a disadvantage there compared to Coughlin’s turbo car.