NHRA Countdown Hits Halfway Point, New Challengers Emerge

Antron Brown in Top Fuel and Erica Enders-Stevens in Pro Stock recorded consecutive victories Sunday at the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals at Madison, Ill., near St. Louis.
 
And for the third consecutive weekend, the Countdown to the Championship saw the standings scrambled, with Pro Stock Motorcycle winner Matt Smith replacing season-long leader Hector Arana Jr. and Funny Car winner John Force helping rearrange his class’ order behind leader Matt Hagan at Gateway Motorsports Park.
 
As the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series heads to Reading, Pa., for this weekend’s Auto-Plus Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, Shawn Langdon (Top Fuel) and Mike Edwards (Pro Stock) regained their leads outright.
 
And veteran Rickie Smith saw his competition for the Pro Modified championship drop away one by one in the early rounds, and he hung on to reach the final round and secure his first NHRA series Pro Mod title. He then announced his retirement from the driver’s seat.
 
Meanwhile, in the Mello Yello series, the points battles took some twists in the opening eliminations rounds.
 
By the end of the first round in Top Fuel, co-leader Doug Kalitta and No. 3 Spencer Massey were gone. By the end of Round 2, No. 1 Shawn Langdon and No. 4 Morgan Lucas were finished for the day. Despite that, the top five stayed virtually the same, although Langdon has sole possession of first place.
 
Most of the movement in the order was in the bottom tier of the 10-driver line-up. Antron Brown, Sunday’s winner, improved two places, to sixth. And runner-up Khalid alBalooshi climbed from ninth to eighth, while Clay Millican lost a spot and his boss, Bob Vandergriff, lost two.
 
The Funny Car scene looks a bit different than it did in Dallas. Hagan will have to contend with Force being his closest competitor. A Round 1 loss to Tim Wilkerson cost Cruz Pedregon three places, from second to fifth. Jack Beckman’s runner-up finish to Force moved within 44 points of the lead, in third place. Semifinal finisher Robert Hight took one step backwards, to fourth place. Ron Capps remains sixth.
 
Mike Edwards regained the Pro Stock lead, although he lost in the final round to Enders-Stevens. Jeg Coughlin is just 10 points off the pace, and last week’s leader Jason Line is 20 out. Enders-Stevens has steadily climbed from ninth to fourth with three races left in the playoff.
 
Matt Smith, who like at Charlotte wasn’t able to share the winners circle with his dad again, nevertheless won the Pro Stock Motorcycle trophy and seized the points lead Sunday from Hector Arana Jr.  He did so even before his final-round race against LE Tonglet.

We will be OK. This is just going to make us dig deeper, work harder and go for it. We saw today how quickly a points lead can change. – Hector Arana Jr.

“We are still in it and there’s still plenty of time,” Arana Jr. said. “We will be OK. This is just going to make us dig deeper, work harder and go for it. We saw today how quickly a points lead can change. We’re only halfway through the playoffs, and this Lucas Oil Buell is as strong as ever.”
 
Hopes will take a more desperate and aggressive tone as the second half of the Countdown begins to unfold at Maple Grove, a track renowned for its hook. While the racers look ahead to reading, we’ll take a last peek back at St. Louis:
 
BROWN TAKING AIM – Antron Brown doesn’t want to sneak back into Top Fuel championship contention. He wants to roar back. And the Matco Tools Dragster driver did that against   Khalid alBalooshi  in the final. They weren’t the quickest in the order (alBalooshi No. 4, Brown No. 6), nor were they in the top half of the Countdown field (Brown No. 8, alBalooshi No. 9). But they outlasted everyone else Sunday. Brown led wire to wire, winning his 40th Wally with a 3.788-second run at 323.97 to alBalooshi’s 3.833, 319.98.

“Our goal from here on out is to go race like every race is the last race. We’re going to push hard. We’re going to push really hard,” Brown said after winning for the third time this season but first time since May at Atlanta. “At the next two races if we can creep up and gain some points here and there, we can go into that last race in Pomona (Calif.) with a shot at it. All we want is to have a shot to win the championship again. It’s still in our scope, so we’re not going to let that go.”
Brown was honored Monday night in New York at the 28th annual Great Sports Legends Dinner to benefit the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis. He joined such athletes as James Worthy, Terry Bradshaw, Dave Winfield, Shawn Johnson, and Nick Faldo at the Waldorf- Astoria bash with emcee Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News.
 
FOR FORCE: WINNING, PROMOTING LINKED – Funny Car icon John Force said after beating Jack Beckman for his 136th NHRA victory and a second-place slot in the standings, “I’m not chasing a championship. I’ll let [Don] Schumacher and Robert [teammate Hight] and all them chase the championship. I’m chasing Corporate America. It don’t matter how many championships [you have]. If you don’t have money, you’re out of business. I’m going to keep chasing money and keep taking care of the sponsors or I’ll be up there in the seats, watching. And I love it too much to get out of the race car.” He’s juts six points behind leader Matt Hagan. Rather than talk about how he beat Chad Head, then Ron Capps and Hight to advance to the final, Force chose to, by his description, “preach” about how he and his colleagues can save the sport.

 “We have to take care of the investments made by . . . Everybody to protect what we do. We’ve got to protect the stadium owners. Got to make our TV better,” he said. “Everything that I do I have a plan, to try to help grow the sport. I love this sport. I owe this sport. I don’t ever want to see it fail. I owe my children, to give them a chance to race. We’re going to take care of the fans. We’ve got to promote, push, do everything 100 times over.”

It don’t matter how many championships [you have]. If you don’t have money, you’re out of business. I’m going to keep chasing money and keep taking care of the sponsors or I’ll be up there in the seats, watching. – John Force

However, he said wife Laurie told him race-day morning, “What you need to do is win, because winning fixes everything.” Force said, “John Force needs to start winning races. I know how to do that. Ain’t sayin’ I’m going to win a championship or win another race. But I’ll be in the fight with these kids.” Force won his latest skirmish, topping Beckman in the final with a 4.097-second elapsed time at 310.13 mph on the 1,000-foot course. Beckman, in the Valvoline / MTS / Mail for Wounded Warriors Dodge Charger, had a 4.127, 309.84 effort.
 
Said reigning series champion Beckman, “The problem is we keep opening the door wide open for ourselves and then we fail to take full advantage of it. We have to win a race if we are going to win the championship. We are probably going to have to win two of the last three races. I guess the upside is we have a car that can do it.”

 
ENDERS-STEVENS SWINGING FOR FENCES – As if coming back from the sidelines and jumping into the Countdown at the last minutes and excelling weren’t warning enough, Erica Enders-Stevens served notice to her Pro Stock competitors after notching consecutive victories at Gateway Motorsports Park. She used a holeshot to defeat Mike Edwards, who had regained the points lead earlier in the day. She ran a 6.540-second pass at 211.23 mph in the Cagnazzi Racing-owned Husky Liners Chevy Camaro to Edwards’s quicker and faster 6.532, 212.36  in the Interstate Batteries/IAmSecond/K&N Camaro. “We came back swinging,”  she said.
 
“We’ve got three races left. That’s 12 rounds of racing. I’m three rounds out of first. And we have to keep these big, heavy hitters like Jason Line, Mike Edwards, Allen Johnson  [from winning].  I could name eight more guys that are right up there and have the car to win week in and week out. But so do we,” Enders-Stevens said. “And I’ve got all the faith in the world in my guys. And that’s our mentality: we’re swinging for the fence. This is our championship, and they’re going to have to take it from us. That’s the attitude that we have to have. We have to remain positive and optimistic. And I’m excited about it.”
 
This repeat of the Phoenix final yielded her sixth victory, tying her total with that of husband Richie Stevens, on his birthday weekend. She won by about four feet, .0126 of a second.
 
Enders-Stevens said she and her team decided to have fun. “You never know when it’s your last race. We just agreed we’re going to make no mistakes,” she said. “This is a make-it-or-break-it weekend here in St. Louis. We made it.”
 
VICTORY, POINTS LEAD CURE AILING SMITH – Pro Stock Motorcycle winner Matt Smith overcame a bout of food poisoning that laid him low through Saturday qualifying and then a handful of strong opponents Sunday to take the points lead and win — even with the game of musical motorcycles going on in his pit all week. He defeated Nitro Fish Suzuki rider and fellow champion LE Tonglet in the final (6.887, 194.52 to 6.950, 192.14) for his second victory of the season and 15th overall.
 
Afterward, Smith shared his crazy week that began with motor testing at Dallas and receiving a call from Scotty Pollacheck that he was leaving Sovereign-Star Racing and wanted to buy one of Smith’s bikes. Rickie Smith brought a spare on his Pro Mod trailer, and in the meantime, Angie Smith volunteered to park her bike and work on Pollacheck’s crew. So with a new lineup of himself, Pollacheck, and John Hall, Smith adjusted to all the activity — exciting as well as unpleasant — and wound up in the catbird seat with three races remaining in the season.

I’ve had the best bike every time we’ve been in the finals and just gave it up. We could have easily won five or six races this year, but I’ve messed up. – Matt Smith

“I have messed up so much this year in final rounds,” Smith said Sunday in the wake of his sixth. “I’ve had the best bike every time we’ve been in the finals and just gave it up. We could have easily won five or six races this year, but I’ve messed up. I tried not to mess up today.” Asked who he would be keeping his eye on in the final three events, Smith said, “Myself. I feel like I’ve got the bike to beat. As long as we don’t have problems, I’ll be fine.”
 
RICKIE SMITH IS NHRA PRO MOD CHAMP – With his semifinal victory Sunday gains top qualifier Jim Laurita, Rickie Smith earned his first NHRA-sanctioned Pro Modified championship. He fell to Mike Castellana (his closest challenger for the title) in Sunday’s final round, but that was secondary news to Smith’s emotional retirement announcement. Smith, 59, of King, N.XC., is a seven-time IHRA Pro Stock and Super Modified king, and this is his first in the NHRA an first anywhere since 1989.

 
He said, “I’ve been doing this for 40 solid years. I drive my own truck and put my own awning up and it’s time to back off, be a crew chief, and let these young guys do it. I am tickled to death to pull this deal off.” Overcome with sentiment, Smith said, “You just don’t know how hard it is to walk away from this thing. I’ve been mentally trying to prepare myself for two years to get out of the driver’s seat. I hope I ain’t like some of these people back home at R.J. Reynolds, who worked all their lives and retired and died in six months. My body’s used to going and going and going. The Good Lord has blessed me now not having heart attacks. It’s just stress trying to bring this money in and trying to fight these guys spending $800,000 to a million dollars. My total budget was probably about $250,000.” He said it will be impossible to race competitively at that investment figure from now on.

 His plans are to serve as crew chief for a Pro Mod team in 2014. Smith said he wants to remain active in the sport for another four or five years, “then walk away knowing, hopefully, I was good name for drag racing.”
 
LUCAS OIL SERIES WINNERS – Thanks to Luke Bogacki’s red light, 72-year-old Marlin Snyder claimed his third Super Gas national- event victory and his first win since the 1992 Topeka race. And Bill Rowe took advantage of Bo Butner’s foul start to take the Wally in the Super Stock class for his first victory since 2002. Four racers earned a first national-event victory: Lane Dicken (Top Dragster), Robert Irby (Top Sportsman), William Carrell (Super Comp), and Kevin Stubbs (Stock Eliminator).
 
FLAMHOLC CRASHES HARD – Pro Modified racer Adam Flamholc escaped with only a broken arm and a concussion following a nasty crash Friday.