Illegal Nitromethane Found In Schumacher Pit Area

LAS VEGAS — Call it miscommunication.
Call it a fuelish mistake.
Call it Nitrogate.
The National Hot Rod Ass’n has imposed a $100,000 fine — perhaps the harshest ever — against Don Schumacher, owner of drag racing’s largest multi-car operation, for possession of illegal fuel.
Graham Light, NHRA’s senior vice president of racing operations, said the sanctioning body discovered during last weekend’s SummitRacing.com Nationals that Don Schumacher Racing had several barrels of nitromethane that was not from official supplier VP Fuels in its pit area at The Strip @ Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
On the face of it, that appears to be a violation of NHRA’s rule that “only nitromethane from an NHRA-accepted supplier may be brought on the site or used on site at any NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series event…To be eligible for competition, fuel teams must use nitro methane from one of the accepted suppliers…Any participant who violates any rule regarding nitromethane shall be banned from competition at the applicable event or shall be subject to such other penalty deemed appropriate by NHRA.”
Schumacher, like NHRA, does import nitromethane from China, but his brand is not the sanctioning body’s approved supplier. However, he claims that Light and NHRA President Tom Compton told him last month that he may use Pro Nitro, his brand of the fuel, after all.
“Based on verbal conversation between Tom Compton and myself and Graham Light and myself,” Schumacher said, his brand of nitro “is accepted nitro to be utilized at NHRA events.” He said VP, the official supplier, even had distributed a container of his brand to racers at an NHRA national event earlier this season.
Light maintained that Schumacher is, indeed, in violation of the rule.
“Our officials detected four drums of nitromethane in possession of Don Schumacher Racing that were clearly not from the official supplier,” Light said. “Given the nature of this product, serious fines had to be levied for such a violation.”
The NHRA Media Relations Department issued a statement that said, in full, “NHRA determined that Don Schumacher Racing committed a fuel violation prior to eliminations on Sunday. Schumacher Racing has been fined $100,000 for possessing nitromethane fuel in its professional pit, clearly in violation of the fuel regulations as detailed on Pg. 64 of the 2008 NHRA Rule Book. NHRA has a strict policy regarding possession of nitromethane at events and takes its responsibility as stewards of this fuel and the sport very seriously. We will not tolerate inappropriate possession of this fuel and will take swift and significant action with teams that don’t comply with the rules.”
Schumacher said he will appeal the decision.
At issue are four barrels of nitro that the team left behind from testing last fall. DSR teams planned to remain at Las Vegas following the event to test and wanted to use the remaining nitromethane.
“We had brought nitro to test with last October. That’s where this fuel has come from. We brought it back to the pit so we can test with it,” Schumacher said.
Light said he had no evidence that any of DSR’s two dragsters and/or four Funny Cars actually used the nitro from the drums in question. He said he spoke with several DSR employees about the subject but, received a variety of answers.