Schumacher makes it five in a row
Written by Sheila Scarborough · August 18, 2008
Can anyone beat Tony Schumacher in Top Fuel?
Well, sure they can, but the more he wins, the more the psychological weight builds up in opponent’s heads. This time it was Larry Dixon who fell to the US Army rail in the finals of the Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway in Reading, PA. This race was key because it’s the next-to-last race before Countdown to the Championship fields are set, and it also determined fields for Funny Car and Pro Stock Motorcycle bonus events at the “Big Go,” the upcoming Mac Tools U.S. Nationals.
Five straight Schumacher wins, ten this season, second straight event as No. 1 qualifier….
“It’s definitely been incredible,” said Schumacher. “There really are no words. I could stand up here all day long and try to explain it, but it’s been a gift of a year. We’ve been together for five years, and this year has been the most dominant that we’ve ever been. It’s just an awesome car, and it hasn’t been one of those cars that’s run a tenth faster than everyone. That [final] there, it was a tenth of a second — good race. The driver had to do his job, and I think I’m driving good because it’s tight racing. It’s constant suck-it-up moments.”
With regard to the points structure of the Countdown (his lead will reset to 30) Schumacher said, “They’re going to take all the points away, and I’m going to show up at the last race and try and win the race. If someone else wins the championship, I’m going to walk over there and shake their hand. We know the rules. We read the Rulebook. I knew coming in that if we won every race coming up here, they were going to take all the points away. We’ve been doing it this way for a year now, and I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say it was only good last year because it helped us. As good as we’re running, if we can’t close the deal at the end of the year, so be it, and someone else is going to be the POWERade champ. We have a great team, no matter what happens. If we didn’t show up at the last six races, we still have had a great season.”
In Funny Car, drag racing instructors Jack Beckman and Frank Hawley went head-to-head in the final, but “Fast Jack” schooled the master, won the race and somewhat made up for his red-light last week in the Brainerd final.
“It’s nice to be able to redeem yourself in a seven-day period.” said Beckman, who debuted for Don Schumacher Racing in Reading in 2006. “It’s funny. Hawley comes up to me before the final and says, ‘Jack I want you to completely get out of your mind what happened last weekend. Don’t even think about that.’ I said, Frank, we don’t teach mind games at the school. We’re not supposed to be doing that.
“Obviously, I let the team down (in Brainerd). We did have the best car last week. I screwed up. We had a great car this weekend and it was nice to get a chance to get back in the final, wait for the green light before I stepped on the throttle and get that win. And just to get to race Frank Hawley in the final [was awesome].
“Imagine being a Little League player and you get to pitch against Mickey Mantle. Frank Hawley has been all of that to the sport. To have him come back in adds a whole other dimension to this…and, hell no, I wasn’t going to cut him any slack.
“Like the last thing we needed was another tough Funny Car. I was so happy for him when he won his rounds and he was happy for me all the way up to the final round, so that was cool. It was just a fairy tale weekend, it really was.”
“Closing out a spot in the top 10 is good,” added Beckman. “We go into Indy a little bit more relaxed. The crew gave me such a great, consistent race car. A couple of times, it wanted to move over toward the centerline, but it was a pretty smooth car all weekend long. We just stunk in the middle part of the season — nine races without a round-win. We had to kind of take a couple of steps backward to kind of start picking away at this. We’ve been consistent for a few races. Now, I think we’re starting to get quick, and I think if we can take that into cold-weather tracks, we will be contending for the championship.”
Pro Stock’s Dave Connolly is no doubt kicking himself for his red-light in the final against reigning champ Jeg Coughlin, but he certainly wasn’t the only one leaving a little too quickly.
“We did a good job today, but we were also pretty fortunate. You don’t expect Kurt Johnson and Dave Connolly to go red against you, but we’ll take it,” Coughlin said. “Our car was struggling, we qualified 11th, and we knew we’d have out work cut out for us. The last couple of weeks, we’ve kind of been on that end of the qualifying, but we’ve been real strong on race day, so my hopes were still high. I have a lot of confidence in this team, and I felt we’d be a top-five team on Sunday.
“We need to carry this momentum into the Countdown. Indy is the biggest race of the year, no question about it, but come Charlotte [the inaugural NHRA Carolinas Nationals race Sept 11-14], we’re running for the POWERade world championship, and we want to win a fifth championship. We’ve got all the ingredients to make that happen, even against the likes of Allen Johnson, KB Racing and Warren Johnson and that group. We’re poised, and we’re ready to fire. We’re getting that look back in our eye.”
Pro Stock Motorcycle saw a repeat of the Brainerd final, and although Angelle Sampey’s bike fired this time, she was still beaten for the Wally by Matt Smith.
“We had the fastest bike every round today,” said Smith. “We got over our tranny problems shifting that we had on Saturday. We had a good bike today. Taking over the points lead is huge because somebody told me that you get 30 extra points for being No. 1. I was like, ‘Man, we didn’t get that last year.’ That’ll be good. We’re peaking at the right time. That’s why we brought the new bike out: to try and get some data on it and run it.
“I’m just glad to be able to run for a championship again. We’re going to try and win every race that we can. If we can get far enough ahead of everybody, then it’s going to be hard for them all to catch us. Hopefully, we can get out there ahead as far as we can and let them catch up.”
The next race is the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals August 27 - September 1 in Indianapolis.
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I bet Tony and Daddy Don are crying like babies now. They lost their meal ticket with Allen Johnson leaving to start his own team next year. I have always said the secret to Tony’s success was Allen Johnson tuning his car. We’ll just see how good “The Sarge” is without his championship caiber crew chief. The Schumacker days of dominating Top Fuel are over and I love it. Don Schumacher reminds me of George Stienbrenner of the New York Yankees he buys his championships. Now if only Allen could talk Scelzi into getting back into a Top Fueler and hire him as one of his drivers. Johnson and Scelzi were the Schumacher nemisis at one time in Top Fuel and they owned Don and Tony’s asses. Too bad Tony but all good things must come to an end. Bye Bye