Going into the annual Night of Fire special event at Iowa’s Cedar Falls Raceway on July 22-24, the DRO/Mickey Thompson points lead was a virtual three-way tie with just five points separating three racers: Minnesota’s Doc Halladay, Indiana’s Paul Romine and Texas racer John Hale. After the Cedar Falls race was over, two-time champion Romine had put some distance between himself and his two closest rivals for the championship.

For the third consecutive time this season Romine and his team qualified in the number one slot. At this race they didn’t falter as Romine’s “Man O’ War” Mustang ran the quickest ET in the Series’ history, 5.827, to qualify and then bettered that mark two more times. Romine eventually set the new Series ET mark at 5.806, when he ran that number to beat series regular Randy Baker, who went to his first final round in the series’ three-year history. Romine had held the series’ previous ET record of 5.835 since September 2009.

For the second consecutive event there were six AA Funny Cars on hand for what is usually an eight-car field. But, also for the second consecutive race, the six teams that were on hand provided their fans with some outstanding qualifying and racing.

Monsoon rains on Friday night wiped out the first round of qualifying so the already tired teams were forced to both qualify and complete the race on Saturday.

This is where is gets a little weird for those of you keeping score at home. At 1 p.m. the floppers went down the track. Since there were just six cars, the qualifying was done to set the ladder. As fate would have it, two of the qualifying drivers managed to disqualify themselves on their passes. John Hale got his Mustang completely sideways and took out a cone and Brian Stewart in the Tom Hoover tribute ‘Vette left before the tree was activated and received no time.

Series administrator Jeff Burk, who was faced with a four-car field, consulted with the racers and decided the fairest thing to do for the ticket-buying fans was to reinstate both Hale and Stewart. Neither man, however, would receive any qualifying points.