{"id":17071,"date":"2018-06-19T14:27:56","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T18:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=17071"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:25:04","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:25:04","slug":"dodge-srt-and-mopar-double-down-at-nhra-thunder-valley-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/racing\/2018\/06\/dodge-srt-and-mopar-double-down-at-nhra-thunder-valley-nationals.html","title":{"rendered":"Dodge\/\/SRT®<\/sup> and Mopar®<\/sub> Double Down at NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historic Bristol\u00a0Dragway once again roared to the deafening sounds of supercharged HEMI\u00ae<\/sup>-powered Top\u00a0Fuel Dragsters and\u00a0Funny Cars doing battle on this drag strip. Nestled among the green, majestic hills of Tennessee, our Dodge\/Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> DSR drivers doubled-down to claim hard-fought wins in Top Fuel and Funny Car at the legendary NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tony Schumacher, in driving his HEMI-powered U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster, and Ron Capps, in piloting the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R\/T Funny Car, both put their competition on the trailer.<\/p>\n

For Schumacher, it was his first victory of the season but his 84th career win. In the final round,\u00a0Schumacher\u00a0had\u00a0lane choice over his\u00a0opponent\u00a0Mike Salinas. As the\u00a0\u201cChristmas Tree\u201d flashed green, Schumacher left the\u00a0starting line first and never trailed. He wrapped up his Father\u2019s Day with a sub-four second, 3.946-second at 313.58-mph run to seize the first win of the season for the U.S. Army team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been in 150 final rounds, and people are going to win some of those against us,” said Schumacher. “When you race in the final round, you have to be calm, relaxed, do your job and get that win. At the end of the day, what you don\u2019t want to do is say you could\u2019ve had more wins, but you\u2019ve left something on the table. We\u2019ve had times when we\u2019ve lost on a holeshot, times we\u2019ve done different things and got outrun \u2013 there\u2019s always going to be a reason why you didn\u2019t win, but you\u2019ve got to minimize that. We try to be the best we can, try to be a machine and just replicate what we do best. I was definitely prepared to do my best on that last run today because he had run very, very close to us. I didn\u2019t expect it to be an easy round by any means. So, great job for the Army team. It was Father\u2019s Day, which makes it a big moment day and those are the kinds we\u2019ve been the best at over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Capps in Funny Car, it was also a hard-fought battle; and with near 100-degree temps in Thunder Valley, it added more strain among\u00a0the teams and drivers. But for\u00a0Ron Capps and the NAPA AUTO PARTS\/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R\/T, they were like a well-oiled\u00a0machine on race day. Capps picked up his second consecutive NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals Funny Car win and his first trophy of the 2018 season.\u00a0The 2016 NHRA Funny Car world champion defeated John Force, reigning champ Robert Hight, J.R. Todd and Bob Tasca III on his way to becoming the most decorated Funny Car driver in Bristol Dragway history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTobler (crew chief) looked so down on himself (on Saturday morning). We didn\u2019t run well the night before, and he just had that look,” said Capps. “Those are the times you have to play cheerleader, and that\u2019s what I think my job is. I said \u2018Tobler, you\u2019re going to find it today. Today is going to be like tomorrow (Sunday). You were the bar for the last three years. You were the one who went out and made other crew chiefs want to retire in these hot conditions,\u2019 and he did. He found that clutch disc problem and away we went.\u00a0That\u2019s a final round matchup, it\u2019s a matchup for a championship, and it always is. We didn\u2019t have lane choice, we\u2019re running John Force, and someone had just spilled oil in that lane, but typical (crew chief) Rahn Tobler, he put it right down the track, over the bump and it was just on a great run and set the tone for the rest of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the other Pennzoil\/DSR drivers, they also\u00a0struggled with Bristol Dragway\u2019s hot,\u00a0greasy track surface that had the crew\u00a0chiefs trying to figure out the best clutch set-up to get their 11,000-horsepower machines from annihilating the massive Goodyear slicks at the hit of the throttle. To say it was\u00a0a challenge would be an\u00a0understatement, as the teams hadn\u2019t seen conditions like this all season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Our DSR Top Fuel and Funny Car teams, along with the legions of Dodge\/Mopar Sportsman racers, will head to Norwalk, Ohio, this weekend to once again attack the strip at the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historic Bristol\u00a0Dragway once again roared to the deafening sounds of supercharged HEMI\u00ae-powered Top\u00a0Fuel Dragsters and\u00a0Funny Cars doing battle on this drag strip. Nestled among the green, majestic hills of Tennessee, our Dodge\/Mopar\u00ae DSR drivers doubled-down to claim hard-fought wins in Top Fuel and Funny Car at the legendary NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals. Tony Schumacher, in driving his HEMI-powered U.S. Army Top Fuel Dragster, and Ron Capps, in piloting the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R\/T Funny Car, both put their competition on the trailer. For Schumacher, it was his first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":17131,"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-17071","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-18.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\/17071"}],"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=17071"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59119,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17071\/revisions\/59119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}