To be a champion, you have to beat champions
Written by Sheila Scarborough · September 21, 2008
(Post title courtesy Funny Car’s Tim Wilkerson)
As I write this in the press room, I can hear the wild cheers of the post-race ceremony crowd that spilled out of the Texas Motorplex grandstands and onto the drag strip after the Fall Nationals wrapped.
Hey, why get into the dust-choked mob of departing traffic when you can hang around awhile longer and cheer some overjoyed Wally-winners, including a guy who just knocked off a team on a record-setting winning streak?
Top Fuel’s JR Todd, the 2006 Rookie of the Year, came back against a tough season (he’s not in the Countdown to the Championship ) and took out Tony Schumacher with a 3.912 ET at 309.84 mph.
The US Army rail had been undefeated since the Denver race and Shoe had won 31 rounds in a row (of Todd’s six total national event wins, three have been wins against Schumacher, earning him the moniker “giant killer.”) Todd last won in 2007, also in Texas but at the Houston race.
“Tony’s the toughest guy out here and if you beat him you’ve accomplished something,” said Todd. “I was pretty jacked up anyway, but racing him you know you have to leave first because Alan Johnson makes big horsepower and Tony doesn’t usually beat himself. When I heard the fans chanting my name, that was pretty special. I’m kind of choked up.
“The way our year’s gone, I didn’t think it was ever going to turn around. Every race we’d be gaining ground in qualifying and thinking ‘This is going to be it, finally’ and then get out there and struggle first round and if we won first round we couldn’t get back second round, When we got past second round today, I knew we had some momentum. Getting Jimmy Walsh on board has been the turning point for us.”
“The good thing about racing to 1000 feet is that you can see the win light.”
Funny Car’s Tim Wilkerson and Tony Pedregon launched with almost identical reaction times in the Funny Car final, and by the end of the run, the Countdown points lead had changed to the Levi, Ray and Shoup car as Wilkerson beat Pedregon with a 4.172 ET at 297.55 mph. It is Wilkerson’s fifth win this season.
“I was real embarrassed with my performance last weekend in Charlotte,” said Wilkerson, who was out in the first round in the first race of the playoffs. “It was not [typical] of our car and I told the guys I really let them down because I’m the crew chief, too, and responsible for making the car run, I told them that when we got here, they’d have to beat us, because we’re not giving them anymore like we gave them that weekend.
“In the final, we didn’t want to leave anything on the table; I’m over pussyfooting down the racetrack. We’re going to go as fast as the racetrack was going to let us.”
“Beating John Force and then beating Tony Pedregon, they’re both champions; to be the champion you’ve got to beat the champions and that’s our goal,” added Wilkerson. “We’re not going to back down from that goal. This is the first step towards redeeming ourselves after Charlotte; we’ve got an 11-point lead on Tony and if I had been any good at Charlotte we would have been up 60 or 70 points.”
Louisiana’s Greg Stanfield ran down current champion Jeg Coughlin in the Pro Stock final. His 6.678 ET at 206.35 mph brought Stanfield his first Pro Stock win; he’s now the fourth driver to win in five different NHRA racing classes. Coughlin was 11 - 0 against Stanfield in prior events and this is the first time they have faced each other in a final round.
“Our goal this year was to win a race and finish in the top 10 — we’re not even looking at the championship if it happens it will be a miracle – so I feel like we’ve accomplished our goals,” said Stanfield. “We’ve struggled and struggled, so hopefully this is a turnaround. It’s been an emotional ride and there’s even been a point where I thought I needed to stop and take a couple of races off to get our back, but everyone wouldn’t let it happen.”
“We actually found a problem this morning that I don’t want to divulge, and the car picked up a ton. I consider Jeggie [Coughlin] to be the best in our class. I don’t know if I’ve even beaten him in Pro Stock – I wore him out quite a bit good in Super Stock — so I know I had to get in there and give it everything I had. If it was red it was red, but I wasn’t going to be late, like I was in Bristol.”
In Pro Stock Motorcycle, a series of red lights knocked out key players along the way. Just in Round One, Karen Stoffer and Andrew Hines were on the wrong side of the tree, and in Round Two, Angelle Sampey and Steve Johnson red-lighted.
In the bike final, Chris Rivas met Matt Smith for the first time in a final, and Rivas overcame Smith’s starting line advantage to take the win with a 7.024 ET and 183.97 mph on his Buell. It was Rivas’ second win of the season.
“It’s a huge jump for us in the points; honestly, after the no-start in the first round in Charlotte [due to a fuel-system problem] I wasn’t sure we’d even be in the hunt for the championship,” said Rivas. “I told ‘Big George’ Smith of S&S that it was stupid to keep going on like we were – we looked like fools out there with a no start – and that we should make a huge change and a new start, and that even if we struggled we’d be learning something. We changed it Friday night after we were No. 3. We changed the engine, the fuel system, and the wiring harness, kind of like starting from Square One.
“It’s a whole new system we have to learn, and learn from each run. All we needed was a little bit of data and look at today, we were the number-one bike all the way to the final. We still have a few little hiccups; my lights today [.176, .117, .026, and .091] were horrible — you usually can’t win races with lights like that – so there’s still some learning to do. The ETs were making up for it, though.”
The next race is the O’Reilly NHRA Mid-South Nationals presented by Pennzoil, September 26-28 at Memphis Motorsports Park. It’s the third of six events in the Countdown to the Championship.
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Hey Sheila….with all of the space you allocated to Chris Rivas’ quotes, why didn’t you offer even ONE of his quotes regarding God???
Hi shovelheadkevin,
No offense intended, but for me, religious views are a very personal matter, so when writing for a diverse audience like the Fast Machines readers, I try to stick to post-race quotes that focus on the racing itself.
If I were doing a profile piece where I’m trying to paint a more complete picture of a person, I’d certainly include their religious beliefs if they wanted to share/discuss them in public.
IMO…reporting is reporting. And that includes at least a part of all the salient points that the subject has to make. And, in case you might not have noticed, Chris was VERY public about his views.
Then again unfortunately, I find that most of media and reporting in general has become less objective and more subjective and politically correct….along with a generous dose of the “journalist’s” personal agendas.
Please understand, I’m not saying that you are anti-Christian…hell, I don’t even know you. But to anyone who saw his post-race interview, I’d think that at least a minor mention would be more accurate reporting.
{Incidentally, just FYI, although I do consider myself a Christian, I DON’T wear my faith on my sleeve and was a tad uncomfortable with the extent that Chris gave credit to God. IMO, a bit moderation would have served him better.}
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