NHRA rookie Matt Hagan reached his fifth Funny Car quarterfinal round today of the 2009 NHRA Full
Throttle Drag Racing Series at the Mopar Mile-High Nationals at Bandimere Speedway.
Driving the all-new red shelor.com Dodge featuring Denver-based Gates Belts and Hose in its design,
Hagan defeated Grant Downing in the opening round with a 4.227-second elapsed time at 293.41 mph,
then faced John Force Racing's Robert Hight in the quarterfinal.
Hagan shot off the starting line with a stellar .035 reaction time (.000 is perfect), crossing the
finish line in 4.346 seconds at 275.96 mph, but it wasn't enough to hold off Hight's winning
4.243/285.59.
With today's results, Hagan moved into the No. 9 position in the class standings.
"It just went out there and spun the tires and tried to knock a belt off of it," explained Hagan, a
26-year-old Angus Cattle farmer in Christiansburg, Va. "I wanted to leave on Robert because he left
on me last time. It was kind of, 'All right, now we're even; now, let's see who wins the next one.'
"I've been steadily working on my lights out here trying to get better, focus more, and it seems to
be working. So hopefully today's good reaction time wasn't just a fluke and we can roll right into
the next race and do that.
"I've been talking to people like Frank Hawley, Tony Schumacher, Ron Capps and Cory Mac. I've been
bouncing around everywhere this weekend trying to get little hints. I even talked to Del Worsham a
little bit. I feel pretty good about my lights. I'm not guessing up there.
"I really want to thank our chassis builders at DSR. They put this new front half on this chassis
and they're working hard back at home. I wish I could have gotten a plug in for them on ESPN, but
unfortunately we went out before I could."
Next up is the NHRA Northwest Nationals in Kent, Wash., July 17-19.
