(Photos courtesy NHRA/National Dragster)

A four-hour rain delay Sunday had its silver lining Sunday at zMAX Dragway at Concord, N.C. — at least for Shawn Langdon (Top Fuel), Ron Capps (Funny Car), Jason Line (Pro Stock), Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle), and Leah Pruett (Pro Modified).
 
LANGDON GETS FIRST TOP FUEL VICTORY – It took him 87 races and a new team to earn his first Top Fuel triumph, but top qualifier Shawn Langdon did it against new points leader Tony Schumacher. The victory lifted him from seventh place to third, just 19 points out behind Schumacher in the standings and only nine behind No. 2 Spencer Massey. It was the first of the year for the Al-Anabi/Toyota team that has won the past two Top Fuel series crowns (with Del Worsham last season and Larry Dixon in 2010).
 
“I’m really a firm believer that everything happens for a reason,” Langdon said. “I always kind of wondered, ‘Man, what does it feel like? Why haven’t I won? Am I doing something wrong?’ I raced for the Lucas team for three years and we had a good car at times [that was] capable of winning. I came here to [team manager] Alan Johnson’s and you know the team’s based around winning. The way I look at it right now is I couldn’t have scripted it any better. It’s a surreal feeling.”
 
He said, “I just listened to Alan all year and he said we’d be there in the Countdown. I wasn’t worried because those guys know how to win.” He called Johnson “a man with a plan” and said, “You never doubt Alan. That’s one thing I learned in the past, racing against him, and I’ve continued to learn being on the same team as him. He’s always moving in the right direction.”

BROWN FALLS DOWN – Antron Brown qualified 10th, then lost his points lead with a first-round loss caused by a broken input shaft. “We were going down the racetrack fine,” he said. “We just broke an input shaft. It actually broke an input shaft. We just don’t know why. It’s the second one we broke this year. It didn’t have many runs on it at all — practically brand new. We broke one earlier in the year, but it had almost 25 runs on it. We used to run them 40 times before you change them. The one we broke today had maybe 12 runs on it. It was just checked, so it was just one of those deals that happens. We’re going to investigate it and do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s how drag racing goes. You can go from a hero to zero pretty quickly. It just wasn’t our weekend.”
 
CAPPS BACK IN CONTROL IN FUNNY CAR – Ron Capps, driving Don Schumacher Racing’s NAPA Dodge Charger, extended his points lead to 70 over John Force Racing’s Mike Neff, the man he beat in the final round Sunday. Capps earned his fourth victory of the season as Neff’s Castrol GTX Ford Mustang lost traction immediately while Capps clocked a sizzling 4.067-second elapsed time at 315.49 mph. “The car gives me confidence, but I learned a long time ago not to get overconfident,” Capps said. “I was still a nervous wreck before the first round. I don’t take anything for granted.” He said final-round foe Neff “is a guy who can throw down at any time.”

 
LINE WINS, ALLEN JOHNSON LEADS – Allen Johnson kept his Pro Stock points lead but had to concede the race victory to KB/Summit Camaro driver Jason Line when his Dodge Avenger drifted toward the center line and he had to shut off the engine early. For Line it was the second victory this season, but he said, “Winning this race is a big way for us to start the Countdown, but it doesn’t mean a whole lot unless you can keep going. To get any kind of lead at all is a good thing. We haven’t had one for a while, so it feels pretty good. We ran [the final round] out of sequence because of the weather and ended up following the fuel cars, which can be a tough situation. You have to deal with it the best you can. Obviously it’s easy for me to say, since things worked out well for us, but we made the best of a not-so-great situation. “
 
RECORD-SETTING BIKE FEAT – Andrew Hines edged Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson teammate Eddie Krawiec in the final round to win the Pro Stock Motorcycle class trophy and give the team a tie with the Pro Stock team of Greg Anderson and Jason Line for the NHRA record of consecutive victories for a team. They have 11 this year and 13 overall, dating back to last season.
 
Hines took a huge stride toward catching up with Krawiec, the current champion who still leads the standings and has a 10-point edge on him as the tour heads to the Texas Motorplex, south of Dallas, at Ennis, this weekend. Sunday’s edge belonged to No. 1 qualifier Hines, by .0042 of a second, or about 14 inches. Hines won on a holeshot with a 6.862-second elapsed time at 194.49 mph to Krawiec’s quicker and faster 6.858, 195.14. He said his bike wasn’t making the speed Sunday that Krawiec’s was so he “took a stab at a tune-up in the final that we hadn’t gone in that direction today — and it worked. I needed to try something.”

ON HIS LID BUT UNHURT – Pro Stock driver Shane Gray’s Tire Kingdom Service Central Camaro threw him for a loop — figuratively and literally — during the quarterfinals. He was on his way to defeating Warren Johnson when his car got loose in the left lane and made a sharp turn toward the guard wall, slammed into it, flipped onto its roof and slid on the roof before flipping over backwards, landing right side up, and sliding to a stop against the right guard wall. Gray was unhurt and said, “It happened so quick. The car barely drifted, and then all of a sudden it darted and rolled. Other than being a little sore, I’m OK.” He said that at this weekend’s race at Dallas he will use his Pontiac GXP that he hasn’t driven since June at Englishtown, N.J.

Video still credit: ESPN/NHRA

 
SURFACE UNSAFE, ENDERS SAYS – Shane Gray didn’t blame the racing surface for his accident, but Pro Stock standout Erica Enders certainly voiced her displeasure for the way the NHRA prepped, or failed to prep, it. She, too, was on her way to beating Warren Johnson, when her GK Motorsports Chevy slid around in the left lane enough to force her pull the parachutes and slow her car early in the first round. And she was vocal about the conditions.
 
“Unsafe racing surface,” Enders said. “The worst surface I’ve been on in thousands of runs. I didn’t have a choice. I hung on to it longer than I should’ve. At the end of the day, my job is to get the car back to this trailer safely. We’ve got a car in one piece to go on in the Countdown (to the Championship). That’s the only good thing about that. Just extreme and utter disappointment in the preparation.”

After Gray crashed and Enders teammate and crew chief Dave Connolly also had to abort his run when he slid in the same area of that left lane, the NHRA decided to work on the track. That was of little comfort to Enders.
 
“It was extremely loose,” Enders said. “My rear end was going side-to-side-to-side, and I’m trying to chase the car the whole way down the race track. When we’re in high gear, the car is up on the tire, and we have no downforce. That’s the most dangerous part of the run. It made two big swings, and coming around on that third swing, it was the same feeling I had when I crashed in Bradenton due to lack of experience. I got the ‘chutes out to get the car straight, and Warren came around us.”
 
She knew her car had plenty of horsepower to hold off Johnson. “I left on him, and we were .988 down low,” Enders said of her .020-second reaction time and 60-foot time. “Providing we had a good race track, we were going to the next round to race Shane Gray and not Greg Anderson. That was a big, big mistake – not on our part.”
 
BACK ON TRACK – Larry Dixon, the three-time Top Fuel champion sidelined this season, was back in the cockpit of a dragster this weekend with the Dote Racing entry. The 62-time winner who’s second to Tony Schumacher on the career-victories list, is scheduled to compete, as well, at St. Louis and Reading, Pa., during the Countdown. He fills the seat vacated by Hillary Will’s departure. Dixon said, “I found a car that’s got my name on it, and I’m happy to be here.”
 
PRUETT REPEATS – Leah Pruett said she had a hunch she would wind up in the winners circle again at zMAX Dragway, and her instincts were right-on. She won the Pro Mod Series presented by ProCare Rx final round for the second straight year, driving Roger Burgess’ turbocharged Ford Mustang past Mike Knowles in the final round. “To think that the three times I’ve been here in this car, I’ve reached the finals all three times and won twice,” Pruett also reached the final in the 2012 spring race at zMax Dragway.