Arana wins first championship; Brown, Neff, Anderson and Krawiec collect race-wins

POMONA, Calif. – Tony Schumacher and the U.S. Army team won their sixth straight and seventh overall NHRA Full Throttle Series championship on Sunday by two points, the narrowest margin in NHRA history.

Schumacher’s team was on deck, sitting on a two-point lead over Larry Dixon, when Dixon was upset in the semifinals by Auto Club Road to the Future Award favorite Spencer Massey, thus clinching the title for the Army team.

“This trophy will go to Fort Hood; I don’t think there’s any question in the world where it belongs,” said Schumacher, alluding to the recent shootings at the Texas Army base. “We’ll present it to the family, the friends, everyone at that base.”

The win capped an intense week – and year – between rivals Schumacher and Dixon as Schumacher had to completely rebuild his team this past offseason after former crew chief Alan Johnson left to form his own team with Sheikh Khalid bin Hamed Al-Thani and hired Dixon as his driver.

POMONA, Calif. – The Auto Club NHRA Finals, the last race of the 24-event NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series, is all about tradition.

And drama.

And excitement.

Each November, the world’s best drag racers gather at the historic Auto Club Raceway at Pomona to put the finishing touches on a season that began in the same location in drag racing crazy Southern California nine months earlier.

John Force talks about staying neutral with teammates in the Championship Hunt.

LAS VEGAS – As the Countdown to 1, NHRA’s championship playoffs, comes to the season’s penultimate race in Las Vegas, each professional category in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series features its own dramatic storyline.

In Top Fuel, every championship contender is gunning to remove a category dominator from the throne he has held for the past five seasons.
In Funny Car, a female driver is trying to make history and become the first of her gender to win a world championship crown in the wildly unpredictable category which her father has dominated for most of two decades. In order to do it, she’ll need to stop five other men who are also in contention, including one multi-time champ, her former driving instructor, a teammate, last season’s series runner-up, and a driver who’s finished second in the championship standings three times.

by Phil Burgess, National DRAGSTER Editor
On a record-setting final day of the Virginia NHRA Nationals. Brandon Bernstein, Del Worsham, and Mike Edwards enjoyed much-needed get-well moments at Virginia Motorsports Park, at the fourth event of the six-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Countdown to 1 playoffs.

Both ends of the Pro Stock national record were reset and the points scenarios in the nitro classes got a shake up as there wasn’t a top-two car in the semifinals of either Top Fuel or Funny Car and Funny Car’s final four was staked out by drivers in positions five through 10. Top Fuel’s top two, Tony Schumacher and Larry Dixon, went to the trailer in back to back races in round two while Funny Car points leader Ashley Force Hood was a first-round casualty to red-hot Jeff Arend, who beat her for the third time in their last four meetings over the past events, and her teammate, second-place Robert Hight, fell in round two but nonetheless passed Force Hood for the points lead.

Brandon Bernstein

By NHRA Media
Robert Hight, left, and teammate Mike Neff are joined in the Countdown to 1 playoffs by fellow John Force Racing drivers John Force and Ashley Force Hood.
In the sport of NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing, every racer knows that in less than the blink of an eye, a racer can go from being a hero to a zero and vice versa.

Nobody knows that better than Robert Hight.

Highly touted as a preseason favorite to win the Funny Car championship, many expected to see Hight visit every winner’s circle on the circuit. However, he and his Auto Club Ford Mustang team encountered one of the worst slumps in recent memory and had a horrible regular-season performance. They barely squeaked into the Countdown to 1 playoffs in dramatic fashion at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil in Indianapolis.

At the time, he said he believed that if his team got in the Countdown, they could win it. Now he’s proving it.

After winning the first two playoff events, in Charlotte and Dallas, the team has regained its swagger and is focusing on finishing the deal. They have moved from ninth to first in the standings and hold a 13-point lead over second-place Ashley Force Hood.

by Phil Burgess, National DRAGSTER Editor
Tony Schumacher, Robert Hight, Greg Anderson, and Hector Arana scored huge playoffs victories at the 24th annual O'Reilly Super Start Batteries NHRA Fall Nationals presented by Castrol Syntec at Texas Motorplex, wins with huge points implications for all.

Schumacher and Hight used their wins at Texas Motorplex in Top Fuel and Funny Car, respectively, to springboard into the Full Throttle Drag Racing Series points lead as the Countdown to 1 playoffs hit the one-third mark with race two of six. Arana's win in Pro Stock Motorcycle kept him ahead of the two-wheeled pack, while former world champ Anderson moved from sixth up to third with his victory in Pro Stock.

The Top Fuel final was a continuation of the ongoing power struggle between the decade's only two world champs and a rematch of their Mac Tools U.S. Nationals final. The result turned out the same, with Schumacher leading Larry Dixon across the stripe, which was most unexpected here as no Top Fuel driver before Schumacher had won in the right lane all day. Schumacher got the win, the 60th of his career, 3.944, 312.86 to 4.23, 225.18.

ENNIS, Texas – Every time Tony Schumacher enters the gates of the famed Texas Motorplex a bit of a nostalgic feeling must sweep over his body.
All of the great drivers vividly remember their first time.

For Schumacher, his first career NHRA victory came at the sport’s first super track, during a wild and wacky 1999 season. After four runner-up finishes in ’99, and four straight runner-up finishes spread out over the three previous seasons, Schumacher must’ve been wondering if he was ever going to break through and finally get the job done.

But that lone victory in ’99, a gritty win over two-time Top Fuel world champ Scott Kalitta, provided all the momentum that the second-generation racer needed to go on and close the doors on his first series championship crown.

He had one race victory and one world championship trophy. Life was good.

At the time, he probably didn’t realize that his ’99 season was actually the launching pad for what has turned out to be a very special drag racing career. Since then, his trophy collection has grown. A lot.

by Candida Benson, National DRAGSTER Associate Editor
Cory McClenathan (Top Fuel), Mike Edwards (Pro Stock), and Hector Arana (Pro Stock Motorcycle) jumped to the points lead in their respective classes with victories at the NHRA Carolinas Nationals at zMax Dragway. Robert Hight also made a big points move, vaulting from 10th to third when he won in Funny Car.

NHRA Media Photoby Phil Burgess, National DRAGSTER Editor
Tony Schumacher won Top Fuel at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals for a class-record-tying eighth time, Ashley Force Hood became just the third female Pro winner at Indy by scoring in Funny Car, Pro Stock victor Jeg Coughlin won The Big Go for the fourth time, and Hector Arana scored his first Indy win by capturing Pro Stock Motorcycle to seal an amazing day of racing at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis.

With all of the last-second Countdown to 1 shuffling – which extended all the way into the semifinals – heated emotions, and renewed rivalries, this year's 55th annual Big Go will go into the history books as one of the most dramatic in history, going into the history books with the likes of the legendary 1967, 1982, 1996, and 2004 events. The world's oldest, biggest, richest, and most prestigious drag race lived up to its reputation in spades, and then some. It was that good.