Greg Anderson displayed signs of his once-dominant form at Norwalk with a sweep of the Pro Stock action, While Larry Dixon, Tim Wilkerson, and Matt Smith also won their respective categories over the weekend at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals at summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park.

Larry Dixon and Al-Anabi team claimed their seventh victory of the season in Top Fuel, besting Antron brown in the final round with a 3.88 to Brown’s 3.90. Dixon used defeats of Troy Buff, Doug Foley, and rival Tony Schumacher to advance to the final round and claim the 55^th win of his career.

“Seven for seven, I feel fortunate,” said Dixon. “There’s been a lot of tight races (this year). Out of this four race swing, to have three wins out of four that’s huge. That’s the only way you can stay ahead in the points. Nobody can catch you if you’re winning rounds. We got four more races before the Countdown starts, and we’ll go from there.”

Tim Wilkerson grabbed his second win of the season in Funny Car with a defeated of John Force in a rematch of the final last weekend in Bristol. Force got the best of Wilkerson in that pairing, but Wilkerson turned the tables on Force this time, outrunning the points leader 4.19 to 4.27. Wilkerson began the day be besting fellow Ford runner Bob Tasca III, then faced the DHL Toyota of Jeff Arend and Del Worsham in the semifinals.

“It was great to win over John because he’s so good, and he’s coming into his own again. After one bad year, he’s making us all look like we don’t know what we’re doing again, so we’re happy to have that win over John. Last weekend, we let him off the hook. We need to do our deal and keep going down the track run after run after run. There’s still four races left [in the regular season], so we have to keep on our game,” said Wilkerson.

Anderson, already riding high after winning the K&N Horsepower Challenge on Saturday afternoon and pocketing $50,000 for his efforts, set his sights on the sweep and the bonus check for doing so. Anderson opened eliminations by defeating Johnny Gray in a close contest, 6.69 to 6.72 after Gray got a slight lead at the tree. In round 2, he set down Jeg Coughlin Jr. by a 6.71 to 6.74 count, and advanced to the final with a holeshot defeat of Summit teammate Jason Line. With the double-up bonus on the line, Anderson got the advantage out of the gate and drove away from the strong-running Allen Johnson, who encountered trouble and slowed, to grab the big check and the Wally with a 6.722 at 204.54 miles per hour to cap a dominating weekend.

“This is beyond a dream weekend,” said Anderson. “I couldn’t have even have dreamed anything this big before we came here this week. I just hoped and prayed that we came here with a good performance and functioned properly throughout the weekend and just had a slight chance of sneaking a few round-wins and maybe a lucky victory away, and we ended up sweeping the weekend and taking every doggone nickel they had to give. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a weekend like this. I guess I’ve got to go back three or four years when we had a car that could do these things.”

Matt Smith picked up his second win of 2010 in Pro Stock Motorcycle, defeating perennial favorite Hactor Arana in the final, 7.07 to 7.08. Smith also bested Craig Treble, Michael Phillips, and David Hope on his trip to the winners circle.

We came here to run with the best of the best, and we ran with them this weekend,” said Smith. “Our goal is to try and be in the top five come Indy, and that just helped our progress.”

Doorslammer veteran Pat Musi returned to the final round of an NHRA national event for the first time since 1981, winning the GSA Pro Modified Challenge by defeating Brad Personett in the Get Screen American Pro Mod Challenge at Norwalk. Musi parlayed defeats of Troy Coughlin, Ed Hoover, and Raymond Commisso into the final round berth, which he won with a with a close 5.98 to 5.99 defeat of the venerable turbo car.

Saturday

Each of Friday’s qualifying leaders maintained their positions through Saturdays two rounds, as the hot summer conditions proved unfavorable for big improvements.

Larry Dixon grabbed his 4^th pole position of the season with his 3.780-second lap on Friday evening. He will be paired alongside Troy Buff in the opening round of eliminations.

“It’s nice to be no. 1 qualifier out here, and that’s all about hitting it right on Friday night,” said Dixon. “The Friday night session is something like a long ball contest in golf. We made it stick, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of other good cars going in to eliminations tomorrow; we’ll have to be able to putt when we need to.”

Ashley Force Hood will face father John Force in a titanic opening round battle after capturing her third number one qualifying position of the year and 12^th of her career with Fridays track record pass of 4.032 at 311.99. Rain showers cut short the final session of Funny Car qualifying with only seven of the 17 cars on the grounds getting to make a pass.

“I just have a really good running car,” Force Hood stated. “We have had it all weekend long and we are excited to be going into race day feeling this confident. The car doesn’t know who is in the other lane whether it is dad, my brother-in-law, my best friend or someone you don’t like. It just doesn’t know the difference. That is how we race and especially when we race my dad. He talks so much and he is so involved and I have a very different style than him. I do my own thing. I do think he tries to mess with me. I don’t think he does it on purpose but he is constantly talking about everything to do with the runs. I want to tell him, ‘Dad you just do your thing you have been doing it for over 30 years. I’ll do my thing.’ Whoever has the best car will go on to the next round and most importantly whoever wins should go out and win the race.”

Jeg Coughlin earned the 17^th top qualifying spot in Pro Stock with his 6.592 at 208.97 to lead a strong field into Sundays eliminations. He will face Wesley Wells in the opening round on Sunday.

“It’s exciting to qualify No. 1 at any event, and in my career, there’s not been too too many No. 1 qualifying efforts but we’ve had great success. We’ll certainly take this No. 1 effort as it is. It’s a good effort,” said Coughlin.

Steve Johnson remained atop the Pro Stock Motorcycle heap for the first time in 15 years with his track record run of 6.929 at 193.60 from Friday evening.

“We sat out because we were No. 1 qualifier and we have a budge to deal with and we want to save parts,” said Johnson. “We’ve got a Vance & Hines engine that’s extremely strong. It’s a great engine, the best you can buy, but at the end of the day, we’ve only got one of them. The big focus now with the Full Throttle Series is just getting in the Countdown [to 1]. The reality for me is we’re No. 1 and this is so cool for our team.”

Raymond Commisso held on to the spot in Pro Modified with his 5.910 248.20 lap and defeated Rick Stivers in the opening round. Also, nitrous racer Rickie Smith upset the higher qualified points leader Von Smith in round one.

Friday

Top Fuel points leader Larry Dixon continued his stranglehold on the class, posting the quickest lap of the opening day of qualifying with a 3.780 at 320.43 to lead a strong field of cars on the grounds this weekend.

“That was a great run by the Al-Anabi team,” Dixon said. “You have to bring it on Friday night to get the pole or to even get close to it. We looked at the computer data after the run, and we definitely got all of it. There wasn’t much left. I’m still learning to drive this car. That was a really nice run. It’s normally a handful on really good runs. It had a lot of grip tonight, though.”

Ashley Force Hood piloted her Castrol GTX Mustang to the top spot in Funny Car with a track record lap of 4.023 at 311.99 miles per hour. Del Worsham also blasted to a track record speed of 313.15 in his Al-Anabi Toyota.

“The track really was perfect conditions, and everybody knew that going up there,” Force Hood said. “We were really excited that we got to run later in the pack, and we wanted to take advantage of it. It was our best run that we ever made. It felt really good. I am surprised that [Matt] Hagan (second, 4.043) and Robert [Hight] (fourth, 4.067) didn’t go around me. When I saw their flames going right down the track as we were towing back, I was like, ‘If they’re going all the way down, they’re doing it,’ but we managed to hang onto it.”

Ohio’s own Jeg Coughlin leads the Pro Stock contingent going into Saturday’s final qualifying rounds on the heels of a stellar 6.592 at 208.57 in the Jegs.com Chevy Cobalt. Coughlin leads a quick field of Pro Stock cars that could struggle in the warm conditions to unseat him from the top of the charts.

“We made some good runs today,” Coughlin said. “As the track was getting cooler and the sun was going down and that full moon was blaring its head out there, the crew chiefs were back in the pits changing the Pro Stock cars. You could hear the air wrenches flying and just a lot of changes for tonight. The key to tonight was keeping the car in the center of the groove, and really, that’s something we’ve struggled with with the car, but the last four or five races, we’ve got the car running extremely straight and pretty efficient. That was key tonight, and we were able to be the only car in the 6.5s, which was stellar.”

Steve Johnson was the surprise qualifying leader in Pro Stock Motorcycle on Friday with his track record 6.929 at 193.60.

“The conditions are awesome,” said Johnson. “We didn’t want to make another run because we’re on a major budget program and it was going to be hot, but with the situations that had been happening on the track, it got cooler and cooler and cooler, and it was like, ‘Hey, there’s probably going to be a better run,’ plus your first run isn’t going to be your best run. The track’s great, the weather conditions were better, and we had a good tune-up in the motorcycle to make a great run.”

Raymond Commisso charged to the top of the leaderboard in Pro Modified with a stout 5.919 at 248.20 lap in his ’68 Camaro.

I do feel fortunate to be the No. 1 qualifier,” Commisso said. “It will probably stay that way because the final round of qualifying will be in the sunshine so it shouldn’t be as quick. I know every time I step off the clutch in my racecar that I can go to the No. 1 spot. We have the horsepower and the people to get it done.”