Schumacher, Hight And Johnson... Who's quickest?

by Motor Sports Unplugged | January 23, 2012 at 01:07 pm

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The aroma of fresh nitro burning and the first roar of 2012 tell me that in 17 days from now, Pomona will be up and running and the Full Throttle season will be back full-bore.

For the fuel divisions, the PRO Winter Testing for the Funny Car and Top Fuel classes concluded on Saturday at Palm Beach International Raceway with Robert Hight leading the way in Funny Car with his best time of 4.034 seconds. Seven-time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher had the best elapsed time in Top Fuel with his run of 3.761 seconds.

However, some of the biggest drag racing news came out of Bradenton with Allen Johnson’s Mopar Dodge with Richie Stephens behind the wheel unofficially recorded the quickest Pro Stock ET in history, surpassing current champ Jason Line’s astonishing 6.477 lowering to mark to 6.466 seconds.

Hight and his Auto Club Ford Mustang was also the quickest Funny Car in the first Saturday session posting a 4.071 second run at 315.49 mph.

“I know we have at least one more day, but I’m hoping maybe two more days that we can play around. We’re really learning a lot,” said Hight. “We have Ron Armstrong here helping us; kind of a new addition to our brain trust and when you’re not tuning a car, you look at things a little differently. He really looked at some things and brought them to Jimmy’s (Prock, crew chief) attention and man, it’s fixed this thing. So along with some of the new things that we haven’t run yet, I’m excited. “

“And no matter what anybody out here tells you, you know, this is still a race. OK, yeah, there isn’t a trophy and there’s no money, but you still want to beat those guys. Right now pretty much everybody’s done testing and we’re leaving here with low ET (at 4.034) and top speed (316.67 mph) and that goes along way for our confidence moving into Pomona.”

Jack Beckman was a close second in the ET department recording a time of 4.037 seconds in testing.

His crew chief, Rahn Tobler, was delighted after Saturday's final run by the Valvoline NextGen Dodge, and part of that was because of mechanical failure. He said the engine dropped a cylinder 200 feet into Beckman's last run.

"We went 4.09 and went 305 on seven cylinders," Tobler said. "We're very encouraged after the whole week. In the daytime, we ran well and we ran well at night. We're very happy."

And the work is just beginning.

"We changed a lot of things when we came here so we need to get more spares of that and configure our spare car to match this car,” said Tobler.

chumacher and crew chief Mike Green won the Top Fuel championship in 2009, but are coming off a season when they made the championship round seven times but did not win an event. Schumacher’s 3.76 says he is definitely back into championship contention for 2012.

"That certainly motivates us more. We have something to prove," Green said. "It wouldn't matter if we didn't win any races as long as we win the championship. That's our goal. But winning races is part of it, and we plan to win a lot of races this year.

"The team made all runs using the new enclosed driver capsule built by Aerodine Composites in Indianapolis. The capsule has worked perfectly. Tony really likes it. We haven't had one issue with it.

We're poised to run it at Pomona if we can get the OK (from NHRA) to do it.

"We've run pretty good," Green added. "We've tested everything on our list and most of it worked. Things look really good."

In other Top Fuel testing news, the Al-Anabi teams tested earlier in the weekend. Rookie Top Fuel pilot Khalid alBalooshi ran a best of 3.794 at an incredible 324.20 mph in the Al-Anabi gold entry while Langdon’s silver ride ran 3.784 at 322 mph. Langdon also ran 3.817, 3.822, and 3.823.

Doug Kalitta ran 3.82, 3.83, and 3.84 before turning his Jim Oberhofer-tuned car over to Kalitta Racing teammate Dave Grubnic, who powered it to an impressive 3.78. Bob Vandergriff Jr. made a nice set of passes in his C&J Energy Services entry, including a pair of 3.8s and a pair of 3.83s, all at more than 322 mph. Also on hand Saturday were Terry McMillen, Hillary Will and Clay Millican.

The Morgan Lucas driven GEICO/Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster made 15 passes and a number of runs between 3.79 to a 3.82 under the guidance of crew chief Aaron Brooks, while new teammate Brandon Bernstein ran a 3.83 four times during the test as well as 3.84 and a 3.86 with new crew chief Joe Barlam wrenching the MavTV/Lucas Oil Top Fuel dragster.

Last Thursday at Bradenton Motorsports Park, Johnson’s Mopar Dodge broke the Pro Stock ET barrier with his unofficial time of 6.466 seconds with Richie Stevens driving while Johnson continues to recover healing from off-season surgery to repair his right bicep.

“We’ve really worked hard on the car during both test sessions this off-season,” said Johnson. “We have the car working really good down low and it turned into a spectacular run. We learned a lot during the test this week that we will work on in the shop before we head west.”

Stevens also turned in a 6.48-second pass earlier in the week. The test session was the second of the off-season for the team, with plans for more test runs at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Feb. 3–5, with Johnson back behind the wheel.

“I’m very excited to get back in our Mopar Dodge Avenger in Las Vegas,” said Johnson. “It will be good to get the feel of the car again and get into a rhythm and get honed in to go to Pomona. We want to make sure we come out of the box strong this year.”

The PRO Winter Warm-Up got off to a rousing start Saturday evening with John Force squaring off with his youngest daughter Courtney Force for the first time. The standing room only crowd at Palm Beach International Raceway was eager to see one of the future stars of the sports race the winningest driver in history.

They were not disappointed as both Forces launched hard but smoked the tires. In a dramatic pedal fest, the elder Force got to the finish line first as both Ford Mustangs were on and off the throttle going down the track.

“That was pretty exciting, getting ready to race side by side with her and watching her learn. I was learning too. Her Traxxas Mustang Funny Car and my car, we’re both struggling. We have complete new combinations and some new crew players, but we’ll work it out,” said Force. “She got some night racing in, more of it, more side by side and that’s experience that she needs. We’re going to keep testing here for the next couple of days. We may even go to Vegas with one or two cars if we don’t get these straightened out.

“Mike Neff and Robert Hight- they were flying. Robert won last night for Auto Club- with a .05 (4.056 ET) and a .03 (4.034 ET) tonight so can’t complain about that.”

“For our sponsors, Castrol, Ford Racing, Mac Tools, BrandSource, Auto Club, and Traxxas, the fans were loving the show tonight. This was quite a show that Pro put on at Palm Beach International Raceway.

“They (the track) packed them in here. I’m excited about it and I have no complaints. We’ll figure it out and we’ll get ready to take these guys on in Pomona.”

Courtney raced Beckman in the second round of the Winter Warm-Ups without incident as Beckman cruised to the finish line with a 4.096 second run at 305.70 mph while Courtney once again got valuable experience handling some tire smoke early in her run.

Championship contender Neff and his Mustang took advantage of the hot and cool temperatures today to test a number of different parts and combinations. The driver and tuner gained valuable information that he believes will give his car the consistency it needs to contend for the championship.

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