Hot Rod Fuller raced his David Powers-owned Caterpillar dragster to a quarterfinal finish Sunday afternoon at zMax Dragway at Concord. The seven-time Top Fuel winner now ranks sixth in the Countdown to 1 standings.
After qualifying his Caterpillar dragster in the No. 11 position at 3.889-seconds on Friday evening at the spectacular new Concord, N.C. facility, Fuller defeated 30-time NHRA winner Doug Kalitta in the opening round before falling to teammate Antron Brown in the second round of eliminations.
The popular Las Vegas racer was matched-up against Kalitta for the fifth time this season. Fuller used one of the better reaction times of the round (.045 of-a-second) to race to the wire-to-wire victory and a second-round match against his teammate. The Rob Flynn-tuned Caterpillar car clocked a performance of 3.942 seconds at 308.35 mph to hold off Kalitta’s hard-charging run of 3.965 at 307.58. Fuller is now 5-0 against Kalitta this season.
Squaring off against his teammate for the third time this season, the Caterpillar dragster hazed the tires as soon as Fuller hit the throttle pedal. Brown cruised to a run of 4.071 at 274.00 to advance the Matco Tools rail to the semifinals, while Fuller coasted to a lap of 10.057 at 70.68. Fuller now has a record of 23-18 this season, including a win at the St. Louis race in May.
“It was a tough weekend for me all around,” Fuller said. “This is when the driver needs to step up and I didn’t do it today. I made a mistake. My foot was ready to go and the light wasn’t and that caused the Caterpillar car to smoke the tires. I feel really bad for Rob Flynn and all my guys. The best way for me to fix it is to go to Dallas and win the race.”
The next NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series event is the 23rd annual O’Reilly Fall Nationals, Sept. 18-21, at Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas near Dallas. Fuller posted a runner-up finish at the Dallas NHRA race in 2006.
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