NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Bob Tasca III continued his summer surge with the Motorcraft Ford Mustang and the two-time season winner is halfway to the No 1 qualifying spot at Pacific Raceways with a 3.871 blast.

Funny Car qualifying in the cool afternoon was a continuing game of one-upmanship as world champ J.R. Todd temporarily had the No. 1 spot with 3.886 after taking the No. 1 spot from Matt Hagan’s 3.888 after Hagan had supplanted Q1 leader John Force’s opening dash of 3.891. Then Tasca moved them all down one spot with the first 330-mph pass of his career.

“Our season really started in Richmond, bringing over Jon Schaffer and Mike Neff and we started from scratch. If you look at our performance from Richmond relative to the competition were one of the best cars out there and, believe me, we still have a lot of work to do, but we’re really starting to dial it in.

“This is a brand new body that we needed to learn and how to adjust the tune-up, and you saw it all come together on that run tonight.”

Todd’s teammate, Shawn Langdon, grabbed the No. 5 spot with a first-session 3.896 and followed with a consistent 3.898 in Q2. Defending event champ Ron Capps had the last of the 3.80s with a 3.898 with Robert Hight (3.907) and Tim Wilkerson (3.924) holding down the top eight.

Nine Funny Cars found the three-second page in the first qualifying session and Tasca’s and Beckman’s runs made it 11 of the 16 qualifiers in the threes.

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