Four-wide or two-wide, drag racing doesn’t work in the rain.
Final judgment of the inaugural Four-Wide Nationals will have to wait until Monday. The first four-wide racing event in NHRA history made it halfway through the semifinals Sunday before rain halted the show at zMax Dragway.
For racing fans, tomorrow is Big Monday. All three major events—Sprint Cup, IndyCar and the NHRA—were rained out, but the NHRA was the only one that got some racing action in before the deluge came.
The Top Fuel and Funny Car final four are set for eight seconds of racing Monday starting at 11 a.m. ET.
Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycles still have to run the semifinals, which will start after the nitro cars finish. The stockers will have 75 minutes afterward before racing the finals in those two categories.
So what did we see? Exhilarating? Confusing? Unusual? Sensory overload? Breathtaking? Surprising?
Yes. It was all those things, almost more than a person could take in and absorb at one time.
For now, the grade is incomplete, but I’m giving the new format a big thumbs-up.
Through three days of racing, with more to come Monday, fans have seen a little bit of everything, from car bodies exploding off two Funny Cars on the same pass to four Top Fuel dragsters crossing the finish line at more than 300 mph only inches apart. ESPN
Don Schumacher Racing will be represented twice in the Top Fuel final with low qualifier Cory McClenathan and Antron Brown going off against a pair of Dougs, Kalitta and Herbert, for the first four-wide win.
The Funny Car final, appropriately enough in the class balance of power, will feature two cars from John Force Racing (John Force and Ashley Force Hood) and two from Don Schumacher Racing (Ron Capps and Matt Hagan).
McClenathan won his first-round foursome with Rhonda Hartman-Smith, Morgan Lucas, and Brandon Bernstein with a 3.799 that was punctuated by a blown left-rear slick just past the finish line. The team repaired damage to the chassis and body panels to get him to round two, where he finished second to Doug Kalitta after both ran 3.809.
Kalitta finished second to Tony Schumacher in round one, 3.81 to 4.02, ahead of Doug Foley and Pat Dakin; even though Foley’s 4.00 was quicker, Kalitta got the ticket to round two thanks to a .064 to .117 holeshot on Foley.
When eliminations have concluded, Brown and Herbert will have raced each other three times on race day, including both of the first two rounds. Brown won their first-round go, 3.85 to 3.96 (Terry McMillen and Dave Grubnic made up the rest of that foursome) and again in round two, where Brown’s 3.84 and Herbert’s 3.85 both beat Larry Dixon’s 3.81 on a holeshot. Langdon and Dixon, in that order, had advanced to round two over Steve Torrence and Bobby Lagana Jr. NHRA.com
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