Schumacher Team Makes Crew Changes After Neff’s Announcement

BRAINERD, Minn. — National Hot Rod Ass’n Top Fuel headliner Brandon Bernstein just turned 35 years old Aug. 2. So, he and his dad, the young-at-heart six-time champion Kenny Bernstein, can’t both be 35.
But after John Force edged Bernstein by about two feet in a spectacular final-round duel with the man who has combined with him for 16 Brainerd Int’l Raceway victories, he discounted age. Force is 58, Bernstein coming up on 63 with his Sept. 6 birthday.
“(Bernstein) is showing everybody that age isn’t that big a factor in this game, which is good for me, because I’ve got contracts with most of my sponsors that run for four or five more years. So, I’m not going anywhere,” Force said. “I’m four years younger than him, and that means that if he can continue stepping on the gas like he is, so can I.”
With his 125th career victory, Force locked up a spot in the Countdown’s Great Eight.
“In the championship, we’ll just have to see what happens now that we’re in the Countdown,” Force said. “Just to leave with a win for Eric Medlen means everything to me and to this team.”
Medlen, who died in March from injuries suffered in a testing accident at Gainesville, Fla., earned his first victory for John Force Racing at Brainerd in 2004.

• For the first time this season, U.S. Army-sponsored competitors Tony Schumacher in Top Fuel and Angelle Sampey and Antron Brown in Pro Stock Motorcycle all lost in the first round of eliminations.
Sampey wasted low elapsed time of the first round, a 6.959-second pass, by jumping the starting line by four-thousandths of a second.
“I really have to stop making mistakes at the start if I want to win another championship,” the three-time titlist said after her fourth foul start.
Brown’s chances of making the Countdown took a serious hit after he lost to Matt Smith in the first round, despite his best pass of the weekend at 7.099 seconds and 186.23 miles per hour.
“I can assure you that we’re not going to quit,” he said.
After earning his seventh No. 1 qualifying position of the year, Schumacher smoked the tires for his eighth first-round exit in 16 races.
“I certainly didn’t think we would go out and smoke the tires after how we got down the track the last couple of days,” he said. “But things happen and you just have to move on.
“We’ll continue to sort out our new car next weekend and we’ll be ready by the time we get to Indy. Failure is never an option with this U.S. Army team.”

• Much was made of the crew chief shuffle this past week at Don Schumacher Racing. After Mike Neff, Gary Scelzi’s crew chief, announced that he would join John Force’s team in 2008 as a driver of a fourth Ford Mustang, the team owner moved him from the job that produced the 2005 championship to an advisory role. Schumacher then moved Jack Beckman’s crew chief, Todd Okuhara, to Scelzi’s car along with Phil Schuler. Okuhara and Schuler oversee the operations of both Beckman’s and Scelzi’s Dodge Chargers.

• Scelzi, who had a semifinal finish and fell to seventh in the standings but clinched a spot in the Countdown nevertheless, said, “I’m telling you, there was a lot of drama here. My God. Honestly, I tried to prepare myself for the worst, and that would have been not qualifying, and then it almost happened.
“Todd and Phil changed this car from front bumper to rear bumper and everything in between and put it exactly like Beckman’s car. And there were a lot of differences, which I was surprised at. The hard parts are the same, but they’re doing some things differently. And they really had to do that, so the cars would be similar. I can’t say enough about them.”

• Pro Stock’s Dave Connolly beat first-round opponent Tom Hammonds in the former NBA star’s return to the track. But a clutch problem forced he and his Torco Chevy Cobalt out in the quarterfinals. His father, Ray, though, won in sportsman competition.

• Clay Millican, in the Ratt — Back for More Tour Dragster, broke a streak of seven opening-round losses in eliminating point-leader “Hot Rod” Fuller. He threw a scare into eventual winner Brandon Bernstein in the quarterfinals, bowing out by only 0.0071 of a second, or about a yard.
“The car did what we asked it to do,” Millican, who last October recorded his sixth consecutive International Hot Rod Ass’n Top Fuel championship. “We just happened to run up against the best car here in the second round.”
 
• In the Countdown to the Championship, Pro Stock dominator Greg Anderson not only clinched a spot in the second segment but has secured the No. 1 spot.
“That’s cool,” said Anderson. “That means I go into the Countdown with a lead, no matter the amount. It means that the other guys have to do better than you. It’s worth something, and we’ll just have to make it pay off.”