Race Wrap: Countdown Jumps Into Gear At NHRA Carolina Nationals

The Carlyle Tools NHRA Carolina Nationals saw the Nos. 8- and 9-ranked drivers take big strides toward premier Countdown to the Championship positioning Sunday at zMAX Dragway, as Morgan Lucas in Top Fuel and Robert Hight in Funny Car appear to be the hot shoes all of a sudden.

They shared the winners circle Sunday with Jeg Coughlin (Pro Stock) and suddenly strong Andrew Hines (Pro Stock Motorcycle).

The Top Fuel class had the most surprises, with current champion Antron Brown, the No. 6 racer in the standings, failing to qualify and three of the top five seeded drivers losing in the opening round on the 1,000-foot course. No. 9 Steve Torrence also exited in the first round.      

Race runner-up Spencer Massey took over the points lead from Shawn Langdon, who saw his Al-Anabi Racing team go 0-2 with Khalid alBalooshi also losing his first test Sunday.

Massey leads Langdon by 24 points, and Lucas — who jumped from eighth place to third — is six behind Langdon. Tony Schumacher, a first-round loser Sunday, dropped from third place to fifth, alBalooshi from fifth to seventh, Brown from sixth to ninth, and Torrence ninth to 10th.

Only Doug Kalitta, at No. 4, maintained his position, while Clay Millican gained a spot and is sixth and his boss Bob Vandergriff climbed from 10th to eighth.    

Hight mixed up the Funny Car standings, vaulting from ninth place to third. Matt Hagan still leads the pack and his Don Schumacher Racing mate Ron Capps remained second. But just enough seismic activity throughout the top 10 to shift some drivers around a spot will make this weekend’s action intriguing at the AAA Texas Nationals just south of Dallas, at the Texas Motorplex at Ennis.    

 Reigning Pro Stock champion Allen Johnson, who entered the Countdown seeded second,  is losing ground in the standings. Coughlin and Jason Line are the ones putting pressure on longtime leader Mike Edwards, who’s hanging onto first place by a 10-point advantage. One to watch is Erica Enders-Stevens, who watched her name fall in the standings mid-season because she sat out several races without funding. She acquired funding from Husky Liners, drove to the semifinals Sunday, and has moved from ninth place to seventh — only a victory, perhaps, away from second place. She’s 99 points behind No. 2 Coughlin heading to her home state of Texas.

Hines, who has struggled all season trying to catch back up to the rest of the happy-not-to-see-you-hogging-the-Wallys-anymore class, reminded the top 10 that anyone can win — and that he and his Vance & Hines team haven’t closed up shop.

Hector Arana Jr. still leads the Pro Stock Motorcycle standings, with Matt Smith still charging hard in second place, 33 points behind. He has only a three-point edge on No. 3 Hector Arana Sr. Sovereign-Star Racing teammates Michael Ray and Scotty Pollacheck round out the top five.

LUCAS DOMINATES – Driving in a brand-new, in-house-built GEICO/Lucas Oil dragster Morgan Lucas won from the No. 1 starting position, closed the weekend with low E.T., ran consistent 3.7-second passes in qualifying and eliminations, and picked up his second victory in four races. Afterward, he said, “We’ve never been in this situation, chasing a championship. We just want to run good. We want to know that we’re doing the best we can do. If you start counting your chickens before they hatch, you start having problems. At this point we feel confident saying we know how to win races. We know how to put ourselves in that position. But we don’t want to put any unneeded pressure on anything.”

NEW HEIGHTS FOR HIGHT – Until two races ago, Funny Car’s Robert Hight was winless in 2013. Today he has two victories in his AAA Ford Mustang and has a strong shot at a second championship. Hight defeated points leader Matt Hagan with a holeshot in the final Sunday (4.083-second elapsed time to Hagan’s 4.066) and figured he did the reset of the Countdown contenders a favor. “Not many people beat Matt Hagan on holeshots, so I’m not going to count on doing it again, either,” Hight said. “That team has been No. 1 for a reason all year. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of other Funny Car drivers right now who are pretty happy I won, because to have him come in No. 1 and come out with a win, that would have been devastating to the whole class. That was a 40-point swing for me. I was 100 [points] back starting the Countdown, and I would have been 120. But now it is 80 and we still have five races to go.”

CLASS HAS PARITY, JEG HAS TROPHY  – Pro Stocker Jeg Coughlin’s third victory of the year in the JEGS.com Dodge Avenger and 55th overall came on a holeshot against top qualifier Jason Line, 6.583 seconds at 210.05 mph to 6.578, 210.97. “The entire Mopar J&J crew and the entire JEGS.com crew did a fantastic job. I had just a phenomenal race car in all eight runs,” Coughlin said after pulling into second place, just 10 points off Mike Edwards’ pace. “It wasn’t the fastest car but it was real close. Coughlin said, “The parity isn’t really what any of us had in mind. I think the top 10 cars are separated by two hundredths of a second, and that’s great. It gives our fans great side-by-side racing, and that’s what they love to see.” He said he’s counting points, for sure. “With five races remaining now in the Countdown, every point counts,” he said. “We are looking at every point we can get. It’s game time. This is the Countdown. This is the excitement of Mello Yello Drag Racing.”

HINES HAUNTS BIKE FIELD– Andrew Hines gave the once-dominating Vance & Hines Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson team its first victory with the new rules package that was designed to limit its advantage over the Pro Stock Motorcycle competition. The three-time champion failed to make the Countdown field, but he said he’s happy “to be a nightmare for the rest of the top 10 throughout the Countdown.” He won for the first time since last November’s season finale at Pomona, Calif., as Hector Arana Sr. red-lighted on his Lucas Oil Buell.

‘STILL ANYBODY’S CHAMPIONSHIP’ – Antron Brown said of his DNQ that cost him three crucial positions in the Countdown, “You never imagine this kind of thing happening. Things just didn’t go our way. That’s how racing can be. You can do all the right things and they still come up wrong. Some days you do all the wrong things and they come up right.” He said the Matco Tools Dragtsre team will regroup. “It’s never over,” Brown said. “We won three races last year but had other things that went wrong, too. It’s still anybody’s championship to win. Trust me, we’re going to give it everything we’ve got. We will be good.”

AL-ANABI DOES WIN ONE – Von Smith carried the Al-Anabi Racing banner to the winners circle, winning the Pro Modified trophy against final-round opponent Pete Farber. Smith earned his second victory this year in his supercharger-powered Camaro and moved up to third place in the standings. Rickie Smith remains the points leader with two more events left in the NHRA Pro Mod Drag Series that ends late next month at Las Vegas. Von Smith’s winning pass came in 5.968 seconds at 240.47 mph, while Farber ran 6.259, 221.63. The next Pro Mod appearance will be Sept. 27-29 as part of the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals at Gateway Motorsports Park near St. Louis.

SPORTSMAN RACERS SHINE – Brandon Booher in the Top Alchol Dragtsrerclass got his first NHRA national-event Wally trophy, while Frank Manzo earned his 42nd consecutive Top Alcohol Funny Car victory over Mickey Ferro to lead the Lucas Oil Series winners Sunday. Glen Treadwell claimed his ninth Competition Eliminator victory in 18 final rounds. Sherman Adcock won for the 11th time in the Super Gas class. Super Stock winner Bryan Worner repeated his 2008 result here to record his third victory in four final rounds. In Stock Eliminator, Anthony Fetch got the double-breakout victory over Bo Butner for his fifth victory in seven final rounds. Jack Sepanek won in the Super Comp class.

DIXON TO HELP PAL TUTTLE – This weekend, sidelined three-time champion Larry Dixon will compete again as he tests a dragster for Dexter Tuttle. Like Dixon, Tuttle plans to field a car in 2014, and Dixon said, “I’m just going to help him out a little. He’s trying to get something going again fulltime for next season. He figured this would be a good time to start working on it and use the Texas race as a test event. I’ve known Dex a long time. We’re good friends. It’s flattering that he asked me to do it, so we’ll go out there, try to sort it out, and hopefully have some fun in the process.” Dixon won the race twice, in 2001 and 2007 and has qualified No. 1 five times. But this weekend, he said, “is just a test. It’s not like I will have run the car beforehand. These cars are so sensitive it’s really hard to run a car on your own without other cars around to help create good conditions on the track, so this is kind of the only way to get it out there. I just need to see how things get sorted out and at what pace. He’s getting a lot of support from DSR [Don Schumacher Racing] teams to sort out some of the engine components that he’s purchased from them, so we’ll just go out, mash the gas, and see how it goes.”