Tue, 10 Jun 2008, 11:36 PM Great Team Efforts this Weekend

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2008 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Pedregon and team celebrate win.

This past weekend really proved what a team sport this is. Sure, the drivers get a lot of the attention, good or bad, for their performances on the starting line and on the track, but without a good team behind them the drivers wouldn't be able to do much by themselves. From the Jegs All Stars on Saturday to the remarkable recovery for Tony Pedregon's team on Sunday to the versatility displayed by Mike Ashley's team, the 11^th Annual Torco Racing Fuels Nationals was a perfect display of team work. Even Kurt Johnson, working with his dad's team, showed the importance of team work as he rolled to his second win of the year.

Schumacher vs. Fuller

When you think about the most successful teams in our sport, the Army team of Tony Schumacher has to come to mind. Over the past few years they have proven to be one of the best teams in history. Sure, Alan Johnson gets and deserves a lot of credit, as does Tony, but when you think about it, they have a lot of the same people on that team who were there when Alan came on board back in 2003. "We have five or six guys on this team who have been with us for a long time," Tony said after his 45^th national event win. "Guys who work well together, don't point fingers or yell. They just work well together. It's a great team." Yes it is, and with that team Tony is running away with the points lead in Top Fuel, and right now I'm sure all the other TF teams love the "Countdown" system. With the win, and with Antron Brown's stunning first round loss, Tony is now 190 points ahead of Antron and he's 192 up on Larry Dixon who is in third place, but with the "Countdown" he will come back to the pack when they adjust the points after Indy. Still, the other teams will have to step up at that point if they want to keep Tony and his team from winning a sixth POWERade championship. Tony put a punctuation mark on the race by beating his arch rival, Rod Fuller, in the final round and by running low elapsed time of the meet in the final. Did you know that Tony's 4.499 was the 57^th time of his career that he has

Joe Amato

recorded low elapsed time and that's second best in the history of the class? Only the great Hall of Fame member Joe Amato has more with fifty-nine low elapsed time marks to his credit. At this time Joe still holds all of the performance marks in Top Fuel but the "Sarge" is closing in on them one at a time. The combination of his final round time, his number one qualifying spot and a booming 331.69 mph run in qualifying gave Tony a sweep of the event and that's the eighth time in his career that he has done that. And he'll be the first one to tell you that he couldn't have done any of that without the help of his team and, of course, Alan Johnson. Every time Tony wins a race I think back to his first final round at the 1996 U.S. Nationals when he lost to Cory McClenathan. That's because it was at that race where he qualified sixteenth and was to have been paired up with Blaine Johnson and his brother, Alan, in round one. By the way, does anyone remember who Tony's crew chief was at that race? It was Dale Adams who was working with the Peek brothers on their Top Fuel car. Today Dale is working on one of the best nostalgia Top Fuel cars in the country, the Cheetah car that is driven by Terry Cox. The rest, as they say, is

TJ Zizzo

history, or at least history in the making....TJ Zizzo pulled the biggest upset of the weekend and he has his team to credit for that. TJ qualified fifteenth after a long week where they worked hard just to put his car back together after a mishap a week earlier. They actually went to Jack Ostrander's shop to get some pieces in order to get the car ready for the race in Joliet. Even before the first round the team had to change motors on Sunday morning just to make it to the line against Antron Brown. There, with the help of sponsors like HTP Welders and 426 Team, TJ and his family ran well, like a 4.668 in that round one win. They also went 4.647 in round two but that wasn't good enough to get by Rod Fuller. It was, though, one of the better weekends for TJ and his team and I hope they make some more appearances on the NHRA tour..Morgan Lucas and his team continue to show improvement and the big question is, do they have enough time to make the top ten? For the second straight week Morgan made it past round one and this time he advanced to the semi-finals before losing to Tony. Right now he is twenty-six points behind Dave Grubnic who is in tenth place and he's only twenty-nine back of Doug Herbert who is in ninth. Should be some fun watching these teams as the race for the top ten spots goes down to the wire later this summer.

Pedregon vs. Kalitta

Nobody has more to thank their team for than Tony Pedregon does. After his second nasty fire of the season, this one during qualifying, Tony and his Q-Horsepower team came back to win the race. It reminded a lot of people of the great comeback that Tommy Johnson made after his fire in Englishtown last year. And just who did Tommy beat in that final round? You guessed it, Tony Pedregon. Led by Dickie Venables and Kurt Elliott, Tony's team did a magnificent job just to get the new car ready and back on track, let alone go the distance and win the race. I asked Kurt before round one how everything was with the car and he just smiled and said, "It's all new." Since going on his own after his 2003 championship as part of Team Force, Tony has done very well and he's done most of it with the same team members who joined him to start the 2004 season. Especially Dickie and Kurt who have led Tony to the 2007 championship and who have helped him rebound from two nasty fires this year while becoming one of the most competitive teams in the class. Nice job...Melanie Troxel added her name to two distinct lists this week. She

Melanie Troxel

became the first woman to qualify number one in the Funny Car class, and I only mention that because everyone else has. But more impressive was the fact that she became only the sixteenth person to ever qualify number one in both fuel classes. Three of those people are part of the same team that helped Melanie zoom to the top of the pack this week. Mark Oswald, who returned to driving action after an eleven year absence, and Frank Hawley, who drove last week in Kansas, both work on the teams that Mike Ashley has put together and that's a real testament to Mike and his selection process. The fact that both of Mike's cars qualified at the top of the pack should not be lost in all the excitement of the weekend either. Frank drove Mike's car last week and Mark drove it in Chicago and both guys did a wonderful job. Mike Ashley is a very successful business man and he has carried the traits that made his successful in the business world to his drag racing efforts. Along with Roger Burgess, his partner in the Funny Cars, Mike has put together

Mark Oswald

one of the more impressive teams in the Funny Car class and their performance the past two weeks proves the point. Melanie didn't get out of the first round but she did gain a few points and she is now sixty-three points out of tenth place and a spot in the "Countdown."....Mark Oswald's return surprised a lot of people, maybe even Mark. When Mike Ashley couldn't make the race, and when Frank Hawley was attending a family function, Mark got the call and he responded in true, championship fashion. He qualified second behind Melanie and beat Jack Beckman in round one in a great race. Mark, who won the 1984 Funny Car championship, and who has a 290 - 206 record over the course of his career, last raced at the World Finals in 1997. He has always been described as one of the best, pure drivers in the class and he showed that this weekend. Now, the big question is, who will drive the car in Englishtown next week? Whoever it is, they know they'll have a good car because of the team that Mike has put together....Scott Kalitta had his best showing in a Funny Car in a long time.

Kalitta at Houston '89.

The DHL car qualified 13^th and then beat Ron Capps, Cruz Pedregon and Gary Densham before losing to Tony in the final round. Scott qualified in the thirteenth spot and that's a tough spot from which to win in the Funny Car class. Five times in the last two years the number thirteen driver has made it to the final round in FC but none of them have been able to close the deal, and it's the first time in his career that Scott has advanced to the final round after being lucky number thirteen. Did you know that this was Scott's 135^th race in a Funny Car and it's only the second time that he has gone to a final round? The other time, of course, was when he won in Houston back in1989....Gary Scelzi is eleventh in points, just eight behind Bob Tasca, while Jack Beckman is four points behind Gary and Del Worsham is thirty-six behind Jack. Those are pretty good teams to be outside of the top ten and it will be interesting to see who gets in to the "Countdown" and who doesn't.

Johnson vs. Coughlin

I've said for some time now that Johnson has the best Pro Stock car in the class. The only thing is that I meant Warren Johnson, not Kurt. Well, guess what? Kurt Johnson has the best car and he's showing it right now. KJ picked up his second win of the season and that helped him solidify his hold on first place in the points. Did you know that this is the eleventh season in which Kurt has won two or more races in the same season? He is often mentioned as the best, or certainly one of the best, Pro Stock drivers who has never won the POWERade championship and it looks like he is out to change that this year. Right now he has a thirty-four point lead over Jeg Coughlin, the man he beat in the final round. If you watched the ESPN show you know that Kurt and Jeg have met seven times in the final round and that Kurt has won all seven of them. Now that's simply amazing. What's even more amazing is the fact that they haven't met in a final round since this very same race in 2003. Overall, Jeg leads their head-to-head match-ups by a 29-23 total but Kurt has pitched a shutout against the reigning champ in the final rounds. That means that Jeggie is 29-16 against Kurt on all other rounds but that he hasn't been able to beat him in a final and that is just weird. Did you know that the only other drivers whom Jeg has faced in a final round and not beaten are Dave Connolly (once) and Richie Stevens (twice)? Jeg's team gave him a pretty good race car and it showed when they won the Full Throttle award

Jeg Coughlin

for their consistency in qualifying. In the second round of qualifying Jeg and Greg Anderson were part of one of the stranger runs we've seen in a while in Pro Stock. On that pass they both had the exact same reaction time, the same elapsed time (6.726) and the same speed (205.10) to the last digit. That's something you don't see very often. Something that didn't show up on the scoreboards on that run was the fact that both drivers also had identical elapsed time numbers at the half-track and at the thousand foot mark. And that came after Jeg ran a 6.733 in the first round of qualifying which was exactly what Warren Johnson had run. Like I said, weird!!...Jeg qualified at the top for only the thirteenth time in his career, and we all know how lucky number thirteen is, don't we? Maybe that's why he had trouble in the final round. Then again .If you think those numbers were bizarre, how about the fact that four drivers who all just missed making the field, all ran the exact same time of 6.763?... Dave Connolly went out in round one when he shook the tires against Greg Stanfield. Since he joined the tour late and is trying to make up ground in order to get in the top ten by the time we leave Indy, a round one loss is not what Dave was hoping for. As it stands, he is 130 points out of tenth place and that means he needs to go about a round further than the tenth place guy at almost every event from now through Indy. And since that tenth place guy is Warren Johnson, it won't be easy.

Rivas vs. Treble

Chris Rivas added his name to a very short list of national event winners in the Pro Stock Motorcycle class when he took the G2 Motorsports, Drag Specialties, S & S Cycle V-Twin to the win in Joliet. Did you know that in the 261 races in which the bikes have competed since 1987 when they started running regularly for points and NHRA championships, only thirty-five people have ever won a race? And did you know that of that total a dozen have only won once? Among that group is George Bryce, one half of the G2 team, who won in Dallas back in 1988. Chris, who was only in his second final round, had the best bike on race day and he showed that by making four passes in the 7.0 range and that was more than good enough to get the win. If you look at what his opponents did, Chris was never really threatened on Sunday, and the closest race he had was the final round against Craig Treble (7.051 - 7.134). Chris also qualified number one for the first time and, unlike

Shawn Gann

some of the other pro classes, being at the top in the bike class is a good thing. Did you know that four of the five motorcycle winners this year won from the number one qualifying position? Chris, who is a certifiably nice guy, credited his team with the win and that includes George Smith and Ken Johnson who head up the operation..Shawn Gann, who took a header into the sand after his opening round win over Matt Smith, is in eleventh place juts two points out of a playoff spot, while Steve Johnson is twelfth, a dozen points out of the "Countdown" and Junior Pippin, who failed to make the show this weekend, is in thirteenth place..Craig Treble's runner-up spot moved him back into the top ten where he now is in eighth place in the standings. And even though his team consists of him, Harry and Joann Lartigue, they have a very fast bike and an excellent rider and they should be a factor the rest of the year. To show you how good Craig is, did you know that his worst reaction time all day was the .028 that he had in the final round?...The motorcycles are making a concerted effort to be extremely fan friendly this year. If it weren't for the bad weather, the bikes, riders and teams were all going to be open to the public after the last round of qualifying on Saturday. I hope they do that at Englishtown and Norwalk because I know the fans will love it. Plus, it will give them a chance to go see the chandelier in Angelle Sampey's pit area.

D 1 Allstar team.

Nowhere was there more team work than in the sportsman pits this weekend. That's where the Division 1 team took the Jegs All Star team championship for the third consecutive year and for the sixth time overall. And that's where Frank Manzo's team gave him a car that has now won forty-six consecutive rounds as well as his 75^th national event. And it's where Ron Erks and Anthony Bertozzi won both the All Star show and the national event which means they won a whole pile of cash. A whole pile..We had a few first time winners in the sportsman ranks including Tim Mosbek in Stock Eliminator and Regan Wilson in Super Street..I'd also like to say congratulations to Bill Reichert who won in Top Alcohol Dragster and, in the process, went over 200 round wins in his national event career as well as Doug Gordon who beat Frank Manzo for the Top Alcohol Funny Car title in the all star show.