Matt Hagan and the DieHard Dodge Charger Funny Car team made a stab in the final qualifying session at improving their No. 1 pole-position time of 4.068 seconds at 311.34 mph he set on Friday.
But, when one run today was cancelled because of rain, and the second delayed because of another shower, Hagan smoked the tires in his final attempt, relinquishing the top spot to John Force. Hagan will start No. 2 in Sunday’s eliminations and will face Paul Lee in the opening round.
Force charged to a 4.063/308.78 to grab the pole, while Hagan, alongside him, crossed the finish line with a 7.608/85.75. He did hold on to his track-record speed of 311.34 mph, recorded on Friday.
“We’re not bummed out that we lost the pole,” said Hagan, in only his second full season of Funny Car competition. “After the rain delays, the sun came out and the track got hot. Obviously, we would have loved to have kept the pole, but we didn’t. We’ll just go racing now.
“When it smokes the tires that early, you know that Tommy (DeLago, crew chief) was trying to lay some power down. The track conditions just weren’t there for us to try to run what we were looking for.
“We’ll keep our head up about that. We got the DieHard car qualified really well and we’ll put the day behind us. I know we have a good, fast race car and I think we’re going to go some rounds tomorrow.”
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