QUALIFYING

There were eight DRO-legal Funny Cars on hand to qualify for the eight-car field at the Funny Car Nationals. Normally this might lead to the teams just easing down the track knowing they would be in the field no matter what, but that wasn’t the case at this penultimate event for the DRO series. With five teams in the hunt for the championship, getting every point available -- from single digit qualifying points to 30 points for setting either a new ET or Speed record -- was critical.

Defending series Champion, Texan John Hale, was on a mission after he failed to qualify for the World Series of Drag Racing and fell from the points lead to fifth place in one race. He and tuner Guy Tipton came to the race with the intent of dominating.

Hale was in the second pairing for qualifying Friday night and he made the kind of dominating lap that he must have if he was going to make up ground on point leader Shawn Bowen. He ran the second fastest speed ever for a AA/FC, a mind blowing 261.14 mph with a 5.73 ET. That pass gave him the back-up numbers he would need to re-set both the Series Speed and ET records and the 60 bonus points that would put the defending champ back in the points lead. After the first round of qualifying Hale and his team had the rest of the field covered by a tenth of a second and 15 mph.

The Chi-Town team had a little issue in the first round of qualifying when the chute deployed as soon as owner and driver Troy Martin stepped on the throttle. He came back to easily qualify.

Pennsylvania racer Peter Gallen, who was still stinging from his lack of success at the last two DRO events, was the number-two qualifier at 5.845/246.39. Ronny Young and the “Blue Max” was the only other car to make a 5-second effort in the first round.

The second of three rounds of qualifying was as spectacular as the first. Troy Martin, Shawn Bowen, and Brian Stewart all stepped up and ran fives but their efforts were somewhat ignored by the crowd that was buzzed up by Hale’s 261-mph first qualifying blast. Hale didn’t disappoint and ripped off another historic lap, this time a 5.61/259.03 that re-set the DRO and National AA/FC Speed Record at 261.14 and retained his number-one qualifying spot.