Larry Dixon tallied his 12th Top Fuel victory of the year Sunday when he won in the finals of the Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway.
Joining Dixon in Victory Lane as class winners were Cruz Pedregon, Dave Connolly and Andrew Hines at the fourth of six playoff races in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Countdown to the Championship.
The Top Fuel final didn’t lack for adventure as both dragsters loss traction, but Dixon outlasted Cory McClenathan for the title.
Dixon’s dragster lost traction first, and McClenathan pulled away as his blower belt broke, enabling Dixon to cruise by for the photo-finish win. AHN | All Headline News
“Our car just hooked up,” Dixon said. “I had such a run on him, and I blew by him so fast. When I saw the win light come on, I was laughing and couldn’t believe it all at the same time because that’s a race you shouldn’t win, and I just won. It was a huge (day in the points).
I mean, you’re racing the No. 2 guy, and you could tighten it right up or spread it out. With two to go and over a four-round lead with eight rounds left, I’d rather be 90 up than 90 down.”
With the win, which also included round victories over Terry McMillen, Doug Foley and David Grubnic, Dixon increased his series lead to 89 points over McClenathan with two races remaining. The Associated Press
Despite failing to make the playoffs, Pedregon has been a thorn in the side of those who did as he reached his second final of the postseason and took down four playoff runners Sunday, including new points leader Hagan in the final, 4.13 to 4.24.
“Hagan had a little bit on everybody,” said Pedregon. “I’ll be honest with you, if you had said a 4.13 was going to win that, I would have said no way. We tried getting after it. We were kind of going for broke. We thought unless we could run a mid-4.0 this guy was going to send us packing. He must have had problems, but it was just a good win for us. Hagan’s going to be tough. I told Matt and his dad, ‘You guys are on the green. You just need to putt it in.’
“Friday if you had told me we would be here, I wouldn’t have believed it because we just didn’t have it together. We were doing things we were doing earlier in the year, and I thought, ‘Man, we’re really going to look like slouches,’ but we got it together Saturday. The car made two great runs Saturday, and we were just picking them off one at a time today. Other than the first round, we were flawless. We adjusted the car properly, and that’s just a credit to the team.”
It didn’t take Connolly long to get back to a winner’s circle after sitting out the better part of the last two seasons, and he scored his first win since the 2008 Virginia event and the 22nd of his Pro Stock career by besting Anderson.
“It was just an incredible weekend all together,” said Connolly. “Just to be out here is a lot of fun. I’ve definitely learned over the last couple of years that you don’t take anything for granted and just enjoy the weekends you do have out here because there’s a lot who are less fortunate than what I have. My dad was here. Unfortunately, it’s my mom’s birthday, and she wasn’t able to make it, but she told me to bring back a trophy for her when I left the house. I’m glad we were able to do that, so happy birthday Mom.
“Our goal was to kind of make it interesting, and we definitely have. Going into it when we started this program with IDG and everyone involved, there was only one place for us to go for technical support, and that was Cagnazzi. We’ve had a lot of success in the past, and that’s where we went and hit the ground running pretty hard. We had a fresh group of guys come in that had never turned a wrench on a Pro Stock car. They might be rookies, but they didn’t show it today. We were well-prepared every run, and when you have confidence in the run, that makes my job easier.” NHRA.com
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