Brooms Put Away, But Sonoma Has Brushes With Glory, Danger

No National Hot Rod Association racer will sweep the Western Swing this coming weekend when the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series moves to Seattle’s Pacific Raceways.
 
Neither Spencer Massey, Cruz Pedregon, Allen Johnson, nor Shawn Gann could find the magic once they came down from Denver’s mountain and showed up at Sonoma in the heart of the California Wine Country.

But Top Fuel’s Shawn Langdon and Funny Car’s Ron Capps won Sunday in the Bay Area, where they or their team have connections. Southern California native Langdon (Mira Loma) won for Al-Anabi Racing Team Manager Alan Johnson, who runs his manufacturing business out of hometown Santa Rosa, near Sonoma Raceway. Capps grew up in coastal California, at San Luis Obispo.
 
They shared the Sonoma Nationals winners circle with Pro Stock’s Vincent Nobile — whose team owners, Nick and Irene Mitsos, live and operate their tire stores in the Los Angeles area — and Pro Stock Motorcycle winner Hector Arana Jr.
 
Johnny Gray was among the non-winners who had plenty to say this past weekend.
 
NO PRESSURE – Al-Anabi Racing Team Manager Alan Johnson already had four Top Fuel victories here at his hometown track, dating back to his brother Blaine’s 1996 triumph. Qatar’s Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Thani, the team owner, showed up here for his first race since last September’s U.S. Nationals — where Langdon led the field. And driver Shawn Langdon was fighting to hold off Tony Schumacher and Spencer Massey and keep his points lead. So no pressure on Langdon, right? Surprisingly, Sunday’s Top Fuel winner — who beat high-school buddy and former boss Morgan Lucas in the final round — said he didn’t feel any pressure as he recorded his fourth victory in seven final-round appearances.

 “You would think having Sheikh Khalid here this weekend would add some pressure to do well, but it really relaxed me,” Langdon said after defeating key contenders defeated Bob Vandergriff, Doug Kalitta, and Antron Brown. “He shares the same dream as us, and he shares the same passion as us.”

You would think having Sheikh Khalid here this weekend would add some pressure to do well, but it really relaxed me. – Shawn Langdon

Langdon said, “Thirteen years ago, Morgan and I were playing the ‘NHRA Main Event’ video game. Now we’re racing here in the finals. This is really a dream season. To get four wins on the season is pretty strong in this day and age. We really haven’t seen anybody dominate in the fuel classes in the last couple of years. So to be able to get four wins at this point of the season is a testament to the hard work from the crew chiefs, all the crew guys and the brain trust we have at Al-Anabi Racing.” He leads second-place Massey by 102 points after winning with a 3.920-second elapsed time at 240.47 mph to Lucas’ 4.628 183.69.

 
HAVING SOME FUN WITH FORCE – Ron Capps used a holeshot in his NAPA Dodge to beat longtime rival John Force (4.085, 307.79 to 4.072, 311.13) in the Funny Car final round. “A holeshot win only comes with a great car,” Capps said clutching his 40th Wally statue. “That 4.04 we ran to beat Courtney [Force in the semifinals] was stout.” He said racing Force, the 15-time series champion, made his third Sonoma victory in four years extra-special.

“If you can’t get up for that old man . . . I knew they could step up, which they did. If Force can get into a final, he’s lethal, because he knows how to win and how to motivate his people. If he’s in the final, they’re going to find a way. Sure enough, they went quicker and faster,” Capps said. “I knew how to get up on the wheel. You have to be a big boy. You’re paid to do this.”  He said he’s only quasi-intimidated by seeing Force in the other lane. “I picture him in his underwear, so I’m not nervous,” Capps wisecracked.
 
BACK AT THE FOREFRONT – Pro Stock’s Vincent Nobile won the season-opener at Pomona, Calif., then dropped out of the top four in contention week after week. Maybe the Adelphi University student from Dix Hills, Long Island, N.Y., just needed to return to California. He cashed in on this Bay Area trip, winning easily for Southern California-based car owner Nick Mitsos. He beat  Team Mopar/J&J teammate Jeg Coughlin (6.572, 208.59 to 7.627, 137.95), who had mechanical trouble and shut the engine off early. In this rematch of the Winternationals final, Nobile said he thought his engine was junk. “Our motor was broken in the water box, and I really thought I was a sitting duck. It actually held off and blew right at the stripe, but until then I was pushing my foot through the radiator until I saw the win light turned on. It was a great day and a long overdue win,” Nobile said. It was Coughlin’s 90th final-round appearance.

 HOORAY FOR THE HEMIS – Denver Pro Stock winner Allen Johnson, who lost to teammate Coughlin in their semifinal pairing, said, “I’m a little disappointed I won’t get a shot at the [three-race] Western sweep, but we’re going for a different kind of sweep. This year our team is going for the HEMI sweep. Anytime we can have three out of the four Mopar cars in the semis, it’s a good weekend.”
 
NO BOWING NOW – A year ago, Hector Arana Jr. was mock-bowing to the Harley-Davidson Eddie Krawiec-Andrew Hines team, the so-called lords of the Pro Stock Motorcycle kingdom. And his crew members were running around Sonoma Raceway dressed like peasants, wearing bedsheets they bought at a nearby Wal-Mart. But thanks to new NHRA rules that have stymied the Harleys and thrown the class wide open, and to the hard work from his Lucas Oil Buell team that includes dad Hector and brother Adam, Arana Jr. was the master of Sonoma this time. He stretched his points lead to 149 over Viper Motorcycle Company Buell rider Matt Smith in defeating him in the final round.

Arana won this penultimate bike race before the Countdown to the Championship begins with a 6.878-second E.T. to Smith’s 6.877. They ran identical 195.45-mph speeds. This seventh overall victory, which passes his 2009 champion father’s career total by one, was his fourth this season. “I wanted to get back really bad,” Arana said, referring to his slump after opening the season with three consecutive victories. “I think that’s what happened to me in my little slump: I was trying to win them all,” Arana said. “I was thinking about winning the race before I even won the first round.” He was especially happy to share the winners circle with close buddy Nobile, brother of his girlfriend Nicole Nobile.

 
STOUT NUMBERS – Matt Hagan tied Jack Beckman’s national elapsed-time record in Friday-night qualifying with a 3.986-second blast at 320.51 mph that was second-quickest and sixth fastest in Funny Car history. The speed fell eight-thousandths of a second short of the national speed mark. Beckman set both records last October at Reading, Pa. Hagan, driver of the Mopar/Magneti Marelli car from DSR, was unable to reset the E.T. record, and as No. 1 qualifier, he lost in the opening round to No. 16 Alexis DeJoria.  

 
I TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN – Johnny Gray was no fan of the hastily mandated dual latch and tethering system designed to keep Funny Car bodies from blowing off in case of major explosion and into the grandstands or elsewhere and injuring spectators. “I hate it,” he said. “I think they are putting the drivers in danger.”
 
Now he has proof.  In his second-round race against John Force, the engine in Grays’ Pitch Energy Dodge blew up, cracking the body in two and flipping the firewall up in front of his windshield, blocking his view. Gray was uninjured after hitting the wall and coming to a stop, but he was furious.
 
“That is exactly what I am talking about,” he said. “The firewall is ripped completely over the windshield so I got not clue where I’m going. They can’t get the body up. Had it been a big fire and I was trapped in it, I’d be dead by now. The body’s a mangled mess. It came down and something whacked me in the back of the hand. It’s just stupid to go out an mandate crap without engineering it. That’s what’s stupid.”
 
Rob Wendland, Gray’s crew chief, said, “I see every one of the drivers out here in jeopardy when you can’t see to drive a car. We need side panels on these cars to relieve the pressure. We kept the body on the car, yeah. That’s what they wanted to do. We can also do that with side panels that blow open. You still have the same amount of explosion, but when you continually contain it down to the bottom, it makes things worse for the driver. It does. Hopefully we’ll learn a lot from this and we’ll get with the NHRA and we’ll get some other things going besides this mess.”

I see every one of the drivers out here in jeopardy when you can’t see to drive a car. We need side panels on these cars to relieve the pressure. – Rob Wendland

Gray, in his final fulltime pro season, said he didn’t like being a guinea pig and said if this is how the NHRA treats the racers he’s glad he’s about to retire.
 
A disturbed Ron Capps, who ran two pairs later, expressed concern about the system that failed and said of Don Schumacher Racing mate Gray, “That guy’s riding off into the sunset. He’s going to have a great life. We almost lost him here because of it.  If they had talked to some of the drivers about it, guys who have made a lot of laps in cars, we could have gladly given them our opinion. We could’ve worked together.”
 
Trying to be diplomatic, Capps said, “I’ve got to be careful. I don’t want to say anything bad, but the sanctioning body should’ve talked to some of us drivers. There’s a lot of us with a lot of experience [who have] been through that. I tired to explain to my [team] owner about how that tethering would not be a good thing if exactly what happened to Johnny would happen.”
 
FIRE FIGHT – Bob Tasca’s Motorcraft Quick Lane Ford Mustang had an engine explosion and fire in the final qualifying session Saturday. He jumped out, unhurt, but poor communication between the Safety Safari and Tasca in the emotional aftermath resulted in some shoving and bruised feelings. An animated Tasca tried to motion to the Safety Safari members quickly to get a fire extinguisher to the site, as flames were underneath the body. A burly emergency-crew members shoved both hand against Tasca’s chest and backed him up to the wall. A defiant Tasca made clear “Don’t touch me!” gestures — all while one, the two other Safety Safari crew members struggled with the newly ordered latches on the front of the body.
 
“I’m in the car. I see it on fire. I’ve got to get out of the car and start grabbing people to tell ’em to put the fire out,” Tasca said. “We’ve got a lot invested in these cars and we don’t need the whole thing being burned up. I was a little hot, in more ways than one, and that’s what happened. We’re very fortunate the Safety Safari does a great job, but there were a couple of guys sleeping on that shift.”