{"id":23029,"date":"2008-07-23T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/schumacher-wins-at-schucks-auto-supply-nationals-again\/"},"modified":"2008-07-23T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T23:00:00","slug":"schumacher-wins-at-schucks-auto-supply-nationals-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/sports\/schumacher-wins-at-schucks-auto-supply-nationals-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Schumacher wins at Schuck\u2019s Auto Supply Nationals \u2014 again"},"content":{"rendered":"
Top Fuel star is becoming a legend in Kent with his third straight victory <\/b><\/p>\n
Boeing, Microsoft, Starbuck\u2019s, grunge rock, and the Space Needle got some fast company this past weekend. National Hot Rod Association headliner Tony Schumacher painted himself into the Puget Sound mural along with those local icons.<\/p>\n
The Top Fuel star won for the third straight time and fourth time in five straight final-round appearances at Pacific Raceways in Sunday\u2019s conclusion to the Schuck\u2019s Auto Supply Nationals.<\/p>\n
Schumacher had made the finals in nine of this season\u2019s 14 events. He has won seven, with the Kent stop now being added to his collection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been a pressure team for years. Right now, we\u2019re just having a great time, and the car\u2019s running great. It\u2019s going right down the track, doing exactly what (crew chief) Alan Johnson tells it to do,\u201d Schumacher said after earning another $40,000 and positioning himself to become possibly just the sixth pro driver to sweep the three-race Western Swing. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem to matter where we go, at altitude or sea level, we run strong,\u201d Schumacher said.<\/p>\n
Right now, Schumacher said he\u2019s thinking of the Kent track as a second home, after sharing the winner\u2019s circle with first-time Funny Car winner Tony Bartone and Pro Stock\u2019s Jason Line.<\/p>\n
Other winners in Sunday\u2019s final included Auburn\u2019s Curt Geise in the sportsman-level Super Gas class. He used a 9.880-second elapsed time at 161.50 mph in his \u201802 Pontiac Trans Am to defeat final-round opponent Gene Heaton, of Vancouver, Wash., who had a 9.950-second, 146.30-mph effort in his \u201827 Roadster. Tacoma\u2019s Mark Faul (Super Stock), Bonney Lake\u2019s Mike Lewis (Stock Eliminator), and Bremerton\u2019s Don Sefton (Super Comp) also earned trophies.<\/p>\n
The Denver-Seattle-Sonoma, Calif. stretch is a test of endurance and tuning skills in consecutive weekends that feature far-flung destinations and wildly different atmospheric conditions. Top Fuel driver J.R. Todd called the trees that surround picturesque Pacific Raceways \u201cNature\u2019s Turbochargers, offering up probably the best conditions we\u2019ve seen since early spring.\u201d Funny Car driver Del Worsham calls the facility \u201ca health spa for race cars.\u201d<\/p>\n
With only four races remaining in the NHRA\u2019s regular season before the Countdown to the Championship, Schumacher had a warning for his rivals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get on a roll like this, watch out. When we\u2019re playing together as a team, we\u2019re hard to beat,\u201d he said of his U.S. Army Dragster crew.<\/p>\n
And though with 48 victories he\u2019s just four behind legend Joe Amato for career Top Fuel triumphs (as he tries this year to break his tie with Amato for a sixth series title), Schumacher credits his support system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just an outstanding team. It\u2019s a group of guys who are the best,\u201d he said. \u201cI could\u2019ve been the same exact guy, the same exact driver, driving for a different team and not be winning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schumacher, the top qualifier and points leader, defeated Brandon Bernstein in a rematch of the 2005 and 2007 final rounds here. This time, he took the $40,000 payout with a 3.902-second elapsed time at 309.98 mph to Bernstein\u2019s 4.056\/291.19 in the Budweiser\/Lucas Oil Dragster.<\/p>\n
Surprise champion<\/b><\/p>\n
Funny Car\u2019s Bartone, with his six failures to qualify (including at three of the previous four races) and his 2-7 record in rounds that put him in 17th place in the standings, was an unlikely $40,000 winner Sunday. Then again, drag-racing legend John Force, who has won seven times at Pacific Raceways on the way to 14 series championships, missed the cut \u2013 the only one of 17 Funny Car drivers not to make the 16-car field.<\/p>\n
So Bartone defied the odds and drove the Canidae Pet Food Chevy Monte Carlo to victory for gritty, old-school, low-budgeted team owner Jim Dunn. In the process, he eliminated No. 1 qualifier Robert Hight and multiple-time NHRA champions Gary Scelzi and Tony Pedregon to advance to the final round.<\/p>\n
Once Bartone got there, he beat Ron Capps in the NAPA Dodge Charger after they both lost traction near halftrack. Bartone recovered first and sped to the 1,000-foot victory with a 4.454-second run at 238.17 mph. Capps clocked a pass of 4.708 seconds at 227.46 mph. (Nitro-class drivers are racing to a 1,000-foot finish line following the June 21 death of Funny Car Scott Kalitta, as NHRA is making an effort to slow down the cars or at least give them more room to stop. Pacific Raceways\u2019 shutdown area, however, poses no danger, for it includes the tour\u2019s third-longest runoff area.)<\/p>\n
With a tune-up that Bartone said \u201cwasn\u2019t perfect but it went rounds,\u201d he said six previous DNQs and seven first-round losses in the previous 13 races weren\u2019t all that daunting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about two crashed race cars and a whole bunch of fires?\u201d he quipped. \u201cYou never say die. You never give up. You keep plugging, and days like this happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably won\u2019t sleep for three or four days,\u201d said Bartone, a construction-industry executive who divides his time between New York and Florida. \u201cThen we\u2019ll try to do this again next week in Sonoma. They say the first one is the toughest. Maybe we have the monkey off our back. We\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Pro Stock, Line denied Allen Johnson a second Seattle victory in three years. He used a 6.659-second E.T. at 208.10 mph in the Summit Racing Pontiac GXP to defeat Johnson\u2019s 6.664-second, 207.78-mph effort in his Team Mopar\/J&J Racing Dodge Stratus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels great to win, especially here in Seattle,\u201d Line said after his $25,000 victory, his second this season. \u201cI\u2019ve been out here I don\u2019t know how many times, and never had any success whatsoever, even when I raced in Stock eliminator. It feels really good to win here, and it felt really good to drive well today.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have the greatest car in qualifying \u2013 we had some issues,\u201d Line added. \u201cWe tested some parts along the way, which is kind of cool, although you don\u2019t want to be testing at national events. But it all worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boeing, Microsoft, Starbuck\u2019s, grunge rock, and the Space Needle got some fast company this past weekend. National Hot Rod Association headliner Tony Schumacher painted himself into the Puget Sound mural along with those local icons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":23030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23029"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}