{"id":65090,"date":"2022-09-26T07:14:21","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=65090"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:20:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:20:17","slug":"second-consecutive-semifinal-performance-for-hagan-and-dodge-charger-srt-hellcat-funny-car-in-nhra-countdown-to-the-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/racing\/2022\/09\/second-consecutive-semifinal-performance-for-hagan-and-dodge-charger-srt-hellcat-funny-car-in-nhra-countdown-to-the-championship.html","title":{"rendered":"Second Consecutive Semifinal Performance for Hagan and Dodge Charger SRT<sup>&reg;<\/sup> Hellcat Funny Car in NHRA \u2018Countdown to the Championship\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Funny Car driver Matt Hagan drove his Tony Stewart Racing (TSR)\nDodge Charger SRT<sup>\u00ae<\/sup> Hellcat from the No. 2 qualifier position to his second\nstraight semifinal performance in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA)\n\u201cCountdown to the Championship\u201d at the Betway NHRA Carolina Nationals at zMAX\nDragway, the second of six playoff series events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sporting the colors of Shelor Motor Mile, his family-owned car dealership, Hagan, a two-time winner (2011,2014) at the Carolina Nationals, earned the second spot on the eliminations ladder with a 3.861-second elapsed time run at 329.99 mph and earned two valuable bonus points for his efforts. He drove his HEMI<sup>\u00ae<\/sup>-powered Dodge to a first round win against No. 13 seed John Smith and then had a second round bye-run to advance to a semifinal match-up against No. 9 seed Alexis DeJoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hagan had the quicker launch with a 0.068-second reaction time to\nDeJoria\u2019s 0.072-second start and the lead past the 330-foot mark before seeing\nhis opponent next to him at the 600-foot marker. While Hagan drove his Dodge\nCharger SRT Hellcat to a solid 3.893 sec.\/334.07 mph run, DeJoria was able to\nedge him at the stripe recording a 3.887\/332.02 pass to steal the round win\nwith a margin of victory of 0.0028 seconds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The pair of semifinal performances to start the playoffs put Hagan\nwithin 60 points of the category leader Robert Hight, and while he drops to\nthird place in the standings behind Carolina Nationals winner Ron Capps, only\n33 markers separate them as the battle for top spot tightens up with four\nevents remaining in the fight for the Funny Car crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TSR Top Fuel driver Leah Pruett had her Dodge\/\/SRT dragster\ndressed up in the Code 3 Associates paint scheme in support of the organization\nspecializing in animal rescue and recovery in disaster areas and started off\nthe Carolina Nationals weekend with a good run at 3.758 seconds at 316.82 mph,\ntheeighth quickest pass of Friday\u2019s qualifying session. That elapsed\ntime run ultimately put her 13th on the eliminations ladder and paired her with\nNo. 4 seed Mike Salinas for Sunday\u2019s opening round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pruett\u2019s\n11-thousand horsepower Dodge\/\/SRT dragster had a clean elapsed time run at\n3.796-second, but at 314 mph, she didn\u2019t quite have the speed to beat Salinas\u2019\n3.696 sec.\/331.20 mph pass. With back-to-back first round exits, Pruett drops\ntwo positions in the Top Fuel championship standings to find herself battling\nfor the championship from tenth place, 178 points behind leader Justin Ashley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Funny Car driver Cruz Pedregon, qualified his Snap-on Tools Dodge\nCharger SRT Hellcat 10th for Sunday\u2019s eliminations with a best run of 3.903 seconds\nat 326.00 mph to draw No. 5 seed Bob Tasca III for his first round opponent.\nPedregon made a good pass with a 3.945-second\/ 320.05 mph effort but it wasn\u2019t\nquite enough to challenge Tasca\u2019s 3.882\/330.80 pass and advance further.\nUnfortunately, the first round loss drops Pedregon to ninth place in the Funny\nCar playoff rankings, 178 markers behind the category leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The NHRA \u201cCountdown to the Championship\u201d moves on to St. Louis\nnext weekend for the Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway, Sept.\n30- Oct. 2, for the third of six playoff series events. FS1 will present qualifying\nhighlights on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 12:30 p.m. ET with race day coverage beginning\nat 2 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Funny Car driver Matt Hagan drove his Tony Stewart Racing (TSR) Dodge Charger SRT\u00ae Hellcat from the No. 2 qualifier position to his second straight semifinal performance in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) \u201cCountdown to the Championship\u201d at the Betway NHRA Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway, the second of six playoff series events. Sporting the colors of Shelor Motor Mile, his family-owned car dealership, Hagan, a two-time winner (2011,2014) at the Carolina Nationals, earned the second spot on the eliminations ladder with a 3.861-second elapsed time run at 329.99 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":65092,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[575],"tags":[528,615,2992],"class_list":["post-65090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-drag-racing","tag-nhra","tag-tony-stewart-racing"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/NHRACarolinaNationals_Feature.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\/65090"}],"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\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65090"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65095,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65090\/revisions\/65095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}