Rod Fuller on Brainerd
“My knee is better, so I’m excited to go on the water slides. It should be cooler and the track is usually good at Brainerd. We want to get some momentum going at these last three races into the Countdown (to the Championship). We want to be second or third and that’s attainable.”
Rob Flynn (crew chief) on Brainerd
“The track should be pretty good. We haven’t had a lot of success at Brainerd, so we’re looking forward to turning that around. We want to zero in on the setup for the Countdown so we can make a run at the championship at the last six races.”
Rod Fuller Brainerd NHRA Notebook
Two weeks ago in Sonoma, Calif., Fuller qualified his Caterpillar dragster in the No. 7 position with an elapsed time of 3.860-seconds. He advanced to the second round of eliminations before falling to five-time champion Tony Schumacher. Fuller remains the last driver to defeat the U.S. Army dragster in the second round at the Norwalk, Ohio, race in June, 4.541 to 4.574.
Fuller enters the 16th race on the 2008 NHRA schedule ranked fourth in the NHRA Top Fuel standings. The popular racer from Las Vegas has one win (St. Louis) and one pole (Norwalk) this season. The Caterpillar dragster also has recorded low E.T. of the meet honors three times and top speed of the meet twice. Fuller has an elimination mark of 20-14 this season with 106 career round wins.
Last summer at the Brainerd NHRA race, Fuller qualified seventh with a lap of 4.605 seconds at 322.58 mph. He was defeated in the opening round of eliminations by Clay Milican after his white dragster smoked the tires.
Fuller has qualified for 76 consecutive NHRA Top Fuel events. The last time he failed to make the cut was at the Houston race in 1996. Fuller has the second longest qualifying streak in Top Fuel (Tony Schumacher). He has an average qualifying position of 7.13 in 15 races this season and has an average starting position of nine at B.I.R.
Fuller has 13 career NHRA sportsmen victories in the Super Comp (seven) and Super Gas (six) categories. He has 20 career NHRA national event victories, seven coming in Top Fuel.
