Tue, 20 Jul 2010, 10:32 PM There Will Be No Sweeps This Year

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2010 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Tim Wilkerson

Apparently that "sweeping" thing isn't as easy as it looks. In 2009 Antron Brown and his Matco Tools team won Denver, Seattle and Sonoma to sweep the Western Swing and they made it look easy. In 2010, Cory McClenathan, Tim Wilkerson and Greg Anderson all won in Seattle, all looked like they had good cars coming into the race in California and yet none of them won in Sonoma. In fact, none of them even made it to the final round. Cory had the best weekend of the three making it to the semi-finals while Greg lost in round two and Tim didn't make it out of the first round....I hate to say "I told you so" but if you go back and look at my column from last week I mentioned that Tim had never repeated as champion at an event and that Mike Edwards hadn't been past the second round in Sonoma in six years and both of those drivers struggled on Sunday. Still, when it was all over, Mike clinched the top spot in the "Countdown" and Tim locked up a spot in the playoffs, too, while Jack Beckman, Matt Hagan and the winner, Ron Capps, also secured their spots in the "Countdown." It looks like the real battles will be for the final spots in the "Countdown" in almost all of the Full Throttle categories.....Before the racing even began a lot of racers and fans got together for the Eric Medlen Tribute night and it was a rousing success. Almost $30,000 was raised for the Speedway Children's Charities and everyone had a great time. It was a fun night with a lot of great Eric Medlen stories being shared and a lot of money being raised for charity. Melanie Troxel, Shawn Langdon, Morgan Lucas, Karen Stoffer, Ashley Force, Brandon Bernstein and Jack Beckman were all part of the evening and I want to thank them for their time and for adding to the festivities. Morgan Lucas won the charity poker tournament and the River Rock Casino donated $2,500 in Morgan's name to the charity. All of Bruton Smith's tracks do a lot for their communities and a big tip of the cap goes to everyone from Infineon Raceway who helped out.....The weekend then ended with the 4^th annual ice cream social and that attracted over 3,000 fans and raised even more money for charity. All in all it was a great weekend and I hope everyone enjoyed the action both on and off the track.

Dixon celebrates win.

At the end of the day Sunday the final round came down to a battle between Larry Dixon and Tony Schumacher, and taking nothing away from any other Top Fuel teams, I have to say that this is becoming one of the great match-races of all time. First of all you have two great teams and drivers. And then you have the natural rivalry between Alan Johnson and the Al-Anabi team and his former driver, employer and the Army team. When you add the fact that the top spot in the "Countdown" could be in the balance it was easy to see why this was one of the more anticipated final rounds of the day. Did you know that, for their careers, Tony leads in the head-to-head matchups by a 35-33 margin? But going into Sunday's final round he held a commanding 12-5 edge in final round encounters. Well, Larry closed that gap a little when he went 3.879 to handle Tony's 4.006. Did you know that was Tony's slowest run of the day and it was also his second slowest run of the entire weekend (he ran 4.931 in one round of qualifying)? With sixty-eight rounds between them you may be surprised to know that Tony and Larry have only faced each other four times in round one. I guess the fact that they both usually qualify in the top half of the field could account for that....Larry's win was his eighth in as many final round appearances this year and that's very impressive. Did you know that this was Larry's 100^th final

Kalitta vs. David Grubnic Sonoma 2004 final.

round appearance and that's second best in the history of Top Fuel, and that only Tony, who has been to 101 finals, has more? At the post-race press conference, when he was asked about the fact that he has been to that many final rounds and what it meant to him, Larry said, "It means I have lost forty-four finals." I guess that's one way of looking at it....Larry became the first number one qualifier to win the Sonoma race since Doug Kalitta did it back in 2004. I'm starting to think that top qualifying stuff may be overrated.....I always find it interesting when Larry and Steve Chrisman meet like they did in round one on Sunday, especially considering how much their fathers were a big part of the early history of this sport. Did you know that both of their fathers qualified at the 1967 U.S. Nationals? Jack Chrisman was the number one qualifier in Funny Car and the senior Mr. Dixon was number twenty in Top Fuel. Larry lost to James Warren in round one while Jack lost to Joe Lunati in round two. I guess that number one qualifying spot wasn't a guarantee even back then, was it?...Larry won from the top spot and that's the fifth time this year that he has done that. Did you know that the only other Top Fuel driver to win after qualifying number one this year is Cory McClenathan who did it in Charlotte?

Capps celebrates victory.

Ron Capps picked up a much-needed win when he beat his teammate, Jack Beckman, in the final round. Ron, who hadn't won since Denver last year, gets bragging rights in the Team Schumacher camp since he also beat Matt Hagan in the semi-final round. The win was the 30^th for Ron in a Funny Car and that ties him with Kenny Bernstein for fourth place on the FC list.... A quick look at the standings now finds two of the Team Force cars at the top of the pack (John Force is number one and Robert Hight is second), while the three cars from Don Schumacher's camp hold down the next three spots. Other than the fact that Robert beat Ashley in round one, it was the Team Schumacher cars that eliminated the Team Force cars, with Matt beating John and Jack beating Robert in round two. Did you know that this was the first time that Matt beat John in their five head-to-head races?...As the teams head to Denver this week there will be eight former Mile-High winners competing in the Funny Car class. John leads the pack with five wins so we'll see if all the experience can help propel him to another win....Jack Beckman was the number one qualifier in Sonoma and that's only the third time that he has done that in his career. Jack became the latest FC driver to discover that qualifying at the top of the pack in Sonoma doesn't mean anything once you get to Sunday. Did you know that in the twenty-three years of this race, the top qualifier has only won four times? Don Prudhomme did it

Whit Bazemore celebrates 1999 Sonoma win with crew.

back in 1989, John did it twice, in 1994 & 2002 and Whit Bazemore did it in 1999, but other than that, the top guys have been shut out on Sunday in Sonoma...The final round was the 20^th of his Funny Car career for Jack and that ties him with Gary Scelzi and Gary Densham for 17^th place on the all-time Funny Car list....Speaking of Gary Densham, he probably deserved a better fate than what he got in Sonoma. Making only his fifth appearance of the year, the former Indy champ made a great run on Friday night, a 4.103 at 300.26 miles per hour, that put him in the second spot. Unfortunately, at the end of the run, something went wrong and Gary's Chevrolet body was destroyed. He did make it back but he lost in round one to Melanie Troxel. This was Gary's best start since he was number one in Denver back in 2006 and it just goes to show how really good he can be....This was the second consecutive race that featured three of Don Schumacher's cars in the semi-finals and it looks like all three will be legitimate title contenders once the "Countdown" begins.

Coughlin celebrates win.

Jeg Coughlin, like Larry Dixon, was appearing in his 100^th final round, although, unlike Larry, Jeg's final rounds have come in a variety of classes. Did you know that Jeg has won races in five different classes and that he is one of only four drivers to ever do that? Scotty Richardson, David Rampy and Greg Stanfield are the others. Jeg has 51 wins in Pro Stock and that's the fourth most in the history of the class. He also has picked up national event wins in Comp, Super Stock, Super Gas and Top Dragster and his total of sixty-five wins ties him with Tony Schumacher for ninth on the all-time win list...It shouldn't come as a real surprise that Larry and Jeg, who have both won a lot of races, often win at the same event, but did you know that this was the 13^th time that the two have shared the winner's circle? I don't know about you but I think that's a lot....Like the Funny Car class, the top qualifier didn't win in Pro Stock. Allen Johnson, who led qualifying with a solid 6.545, went out in the second round when he lost to Kurt Johnson. For Allen, who has now been the top qualifier ten times, it was the ninth time that he was unable to cash in. It was also the tenth time in the past twelve years that the top qualifier in Pro Stock didn't win in Sonoma. I know the competition is very good, but you would expect the number one guy to win more often than that, wouldn't you?....Allen, whose car has run very well all year, will now head to Denver

A. Johnson vs. K. Johnson

and his sponsor's race, the Mopar Mile-High Nationals, and if history is any indication you can expect his Mopar to do well there. Did you know that, coming into the 2010 season, Allen had won more rounds at Denver then he had at any other event? Plus, he has been to the final round in each of the past three years and don't be surprised if he does it again this week....The Mopar fans will be out in force in Denver and so will the company. Mopar has a lot of really neat things planned for the weekend and we might even get to see that new Mopar-branded Challenger that they will release soon...Kurt Johnson has run better in the past two races than he has in a long time. His semi-final appearance in Sonoma came on the heels of a semi-final a week earlier at Seattle. Did you know that this was the first time KJ has gone to consecutive semi-finals since he did it at Indy and Charlotte in 2008? Still, he has a long way to go and a lot of work to do if he wants to make the top ten and continue a streak of being on stage at the end of the year for seventeen consecutive years. In other words, Kurt has been a top ten finisher every year since he joined the class in 1993 and that's amazing....Jason Line, the runner-up to Jeg, was making his 47^th final round appearance and that moves him past one of the greats, Lee Shepherd, and into ninth on the Pro Stock list. Jason's final also marked the third consecutive race that one of the Summit Racing cars was in the money round.

Phillips celebrates win.

One of the real surprises this year has been the performance of Michael Phillips in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class. Michael, who had participated in 153 races coming into the 2010 season, had won exactly three of them. Now, in the span of nine races this year Michael has won three times. Michael's three wins are the most in the class this year and that's the main reason why he is just five points out of second place. Did you know that since the Memphis race last year Michael has four wins and that's more than any other rider in the class? His win at Infineon Raceway may have been his most dominating ever. Michael made the fastest run in motorcycle history and he left town with the national speed record in the bike class and that's a pretty good weekend's work, don't you think? His 197.65 record eclipses the mark of 197.45 that was set by Andrew Hines in 2005. That's a long time for a record to stand, isn't it? Since Karen Stoffer set the elapsed time mark earlier this year and Michael set the speed mark, that makes 2010 the first year since 2005 that both ends of the motorcycle record have fallen in the same calendar year....Obviously Michael set top speed and that makes the nineteenth time in his career that he has done that and that's the fifth most in the history of the class (Matt Hines leads with an incredible 45).....The Denver race is always interesting, if for no other reason than the challenges it poses for the tuners, and the motorcycles are no exception. Going into the weekend there will be four previous winners in the bike class competing and, of them, only Matt Smith has won more than once. Shawn Gann, Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec are the other three. For his part, Michael has been to the "mountain" ten times and he has only gone past the second round once, and that was in 1993 his first year at Bandimere Speedway. Maybe he can turn that around this year. Maybe.

Like Sonoma there will be lots going on even before the race gets started. The annual Mopar block party will take place in Golden on Thursday night, and if you've never been to it you should. It's a lot of fun, there are great cars on display and lots, and I mean lots of NHRA stars are roaming the streets. Oh yeah, and it's all free. See you there.

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