Matt Hagan drove the shelor.com Dodge Funny Car into No. 3 in qualifying for the NHRA Northwest
Nationals, in his first visit to Pacific Raceways, the 14th round of 24 in the 2009 NHRA Full
Throttle Drag Racing Series.
Posting three out of four consistent passes, missing one because of an early deployment of the
parachutes at the starting line in Friday's second round, NHRA rookie-of-the-year contender Hagan's
best lap of 4.216 seconds at 286.32 mph was the second quickest of today's third session and good
for No. 2 at the end of that round. He followed that with another stout 4.235/286.25 in his final
attempt, which was the third quickest of the round. Hagan held the No. 2 spot until Mike Neff
pulled out a matching 4.216-second run at 290.26 mph in the final session to move around him
because of speed.
His initial Friday run produced a 4.312/276.18 for third place at the time.
"You know what, I'm really happy right now," said the 26-year-old Angus Cattle farmer from
Christiansburg, Va. "I've said this before, when we start qualifying well again we'll do well. We
just have to keep it up. To have the no. 3 spot is awesome. We would have liked to have had held on
to that No. 2, but it's drag racing. Sometimes it's up, sometimes its down."
He will face his Don Schumacher Racing teammate Jack Beckman in the opening round of Sunday's
eliminations. "We're really excited about going into first round tomorrow," he said. "Hate that we
have to run Beckman, but as many cars as there are out here, you're going to run each other a time
or two; that's just part of the deal.
"The shelor.com crew is working hard. They're on their toes, they're catching stuff here and there,
and they're just doing a good job. (Crew chief) Tommy DeLago is doing a terrific job and I have a
lot of confidence that we'll go down the race track tomorrow."
