{"id":16862,"date":"2018-06-08T14:10:24","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T18:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=16862"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:25:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:25:05","slug":"virginia-nhra-nationals-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/racing\/2018\/06\/virginia-nhra-nationals-preview.html","title":{"rendered":"Virginia NHRA Nationals Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a nine-year hiatus, Virginia Motorsports Park will once again feel the thunder of our 11,000-horsepower HEMI\u00ae<\/sup>-powered Top Fuel Dragsters and Charger Funny Cars during this weekend\u2019s Virginia NHRA Nationals. The last NHRA event at this track was back in 2009, but now with a new track surface and favorable weather conditions, it will be fast. The Virginia NHRA Nationals is also the 10th of 24 events during the 2018 NHRA season and is the second during a stretch of four consecutive race weekends.<\/p>\n

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Back in 2008, Tony Schumacher – in his US Army\/Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> Top Fuel Dragster – raced to victory. Schumacher and his teammate and Dodge Charger Funny Car driver Jack Beckman both hold track records at Virginia Motorsports Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be nice to see some new faces this weekend and bring (the fans) the kind of racing they\u2019ve never seen before,” said Schumacher. “A lot has changed since the last time we were there as far as our series. We\u2019re much quicker, much more powerful than ever before, and it\u2019s been a long time since they\u2019ve seen anything like that. You can appreciate someone buying a racetrack and doing the things that need to be done to give us a safe and competitive place to come back to. The track itself \u2013 all concrete \u2013 is going to be pretty nice and I\u2019m really looking forward to it. It brings us back toward that historic part of the country where the U.S. Army had a lot going on 150, 200 years ago, and it\u2019s just down the road from our nation\u2019s capital. We\u2019ve won there before and it would be a great time and place to put it all together and get another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For Jack Beckman, he\u2019s pumped to return to a track he hasn\u2019t raced at in almost a decade.<\/p>\n

“Transitioning to our new car at Chicago didn\u2019t quite give us the results that we wanted, but we found something in the bellhousing that we feel like is going to give us as quick a car as we\u2019ve had all year,” said Beckman. “The guys were really excited to get back to the shop, replenish the trailers and then head straight out to Richmond, a track we haven\u2019t raced at for almost ten years. It\u2019s going to be doubly exciting; we\u2019ve got a new car, a new track and a fresh new outlook.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Located near Richmond, Virginia Motorsports Park is also a “home track” for lifelong Virginia resident Matt Hagan, who pilots the Mopar Express Lane\u00a0Dodge Charger R\/T Funny Car to consistent sub-four second passes.<\/p>\n

\u201cPretty excited to be back at Richmond,” said the former NHRA world champ Matt Hagan. “We qualified No. 1 at the last race we were at, so we have some momentum working off of that, but we are still trying to figure out this track prep and find out why we\u2019re pulling the tires loose. We\u2019re making slow and steady progress, but we\u2019re running out of races. We need to start winning some more of them; we\u2019re capable of it. Going into Richmond and then Bristol right after, both home tracks for me, is pretty cool. I\u2019m excited to have two races in my backyard.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Leah Pritchett, the last time she raced at Virginia Motorsports Park was in 2011, driving a Pro Mod. But this weekend, she\u2019ll be in her nitro-drinking HEMI Top Fuel Dragster ready to go rounds and hopefully get another win this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (Richmond) is going to go well,” said Pritchett, who\u2019s currently ranked third in points. “We\u2019ll have an even playing field for everyone, not having good track data there. I hear it\u2019s supposed to be fast, and this team, we can go back to some of our ways where we know how to lay down some numbers. We\u2019ve struggled with that this year, getting that power back, and now that we\u2019ve found it in the heat, I\u2019m looking forward to applying it. We\u2019re not going to let (the Chicago) final round stop us at all. Our heads are not hanging low at all. We\u2019ll keep (our heads) grounded and down; hopefully, on this swing, we\u2019ll be raising a Wally.”<\/p>\n

You can catch all the action from this weekend\u2019s inaugural Virginia NHRA Nationals on FS1 beginning this Saturday (June 9) with qualifying starting at 8:00 pm ET. On Sunday (June 10), the final eliminations will also be on FS1 starting at 6:00 pm ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a nine-year hiatus, Virginia Motorsports Park will once again feel the thunder of our 11,000-horsepower HEMI\u00ae-powered Top Fuel Dragsters and Charger Funny Cars during this weekend\u2019s Virginia NHRA Nationals. The last NHRA event at this track was back in 2009, but now with a new track surface and favorable weather conditions, it will be fast. The Virginia NHRA Nationals is also the 10th of 24 events during the 2018 NHRA season and is the second during a stretch of four consecutive race weekends. Back in 2008, Tony Schumacher – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":16904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[575],"tags":[528,849,615],"class_list":["post-16862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-drag-racing","tag-dsr","tag-nhra"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/thumbnail-9.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16862"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59126,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16862\/revisions\/59126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}