Sunday's Report
The view from the cheapest seat - Day Three
What a difference a day makes as the hot sunny weather of the past few days has been replaced with the cool, cloudy and threatening-rain weather that we've seen so many times at the Northwest and Fall Nationals in Seattle. As long as the conditions hold as they are we're going to see a completely different race track today and the racers are going to have to make some big changes to their cars to take advantage of it. Should be very interesting, to say the least.
As we arrived at the track early, like 8:30 early, the spectator parking lots were already well stocked with cars and it appeared as if everyone was ready to see a race today. The manufacturers midway was very busy, and the pro pits were absolutely packed by the time the mass fireup of the fuel cars started at the appointed hour of 9:00 am.
I've got to say that the rearrangement of the pro pits into a virtual nitro alley of fuel cars (and the pro stock cars at one end) really works for the racers and fans. The sea of spectators able to flow back and forth and side to side along the 1/8-th mile long roadway makes for an impressive sight, especially when a car fires up and the crowd surges in the direction of the thundering noise and clouds of noxious nitro fumes.
Making our way back to the media centre before the pre-race ceremonies started at 10:00 am, the crowds definitely appeared to be larger earlier than yesterday, despite the still threatening weather with occasional spits of rain coming down. That didn't stop the driver introductions, anthems, and ultimately, the "fire the first pair" order at the conclusion of the Star Spangled Banner.
Now on to the first round of eliminations for the pro cars and the second round of Top Alcohol. Right on time at 11:00 am and under radically changed conditions from what we've seen all weekend. Corrected altitude of just 1600 feet, a cool track at 87 F and air temp of only 69 F, with 70% humidity. Very, very different indeed.
Come back boys: all is forgiven. The first round of Top Fuel eliminations definitely restored my faith in these rampaging beasts as the tire-smoking, cylinder-dropping, early shutoff runs of the previous two days were almost completely erased in a round that saw nine 3-second runs. Inlcuded in that total were a side-by-side 3.90 race, and four nearly identical passes of 3.819, 3.820, 3.821 and 3.829. Speeds? A top of 322.19 by Tony Schumacher and five more in the 310's.
It was an incredible difference compared to qualifying but with radically different weather conditions, the crew chiefs were able to throw nearly everything at the track in hopes of big performance improvements. With almost every higher qualified car picking the left lane, the other side saw a few tire smokers and early shutoffs, with only one winlight coming on the right side, that being David Grubnic over a tire-smoking Brandon Bernstein.
With only one car advancing from the bottom half of the field, lane choice in the second round appears to be critical with Cory Mac holding favour over Grubnic, Dixon over Langdon, Schumacher over teammate Brown and low qualifier Kalitta over Lucas. That's going to be one tough round of racing.
The carbon-fibre hot rods followed and the first driver across the finish line served notice that today was a totally different animal. Ashley Force Hood cut a full tenth off her qualifying time with a 4.12 and the first 300-plus speed of the weekend for the funny cars, at 301.60. Could the brothers Pedregon keep up the pace? Nope, as they traded the lead and both pedalled their way to 5-second times, with Cruz pulling out the amazingly close win by less than half a car length over Tony.
The next pair saw Del Worsham nearly match Force Hood's e.t. and eclipsed her top end with a new top speed of 304.12 moh against Brian Thiel's tire-churning effort. And the games continued with Hight winning another pedal-fest over Jeff "Silver Surfer" Diehl, before Ron Capps blew away a very good effort from Jeff Lee with a new low e.t of 4.098. Three pairs to go in the first round and we've already seen a bunch of great efforts, but Tim Wilkerson's excellent 4.14 easily outdistanced Bob Tasca and Matt Hagan's 4.17 covered Jeff Arend before Jack Beckman and John Force closed out the round with a classic funny car matchup.
Both drivers cut excellent (.048 to .054) lights, then Beckman took an early lead, smoked the tires, pedaled, hit the gas again, smoked 'em again and finally gave up, coasting through the 1000 ft. lights at 82 mph. Barely enough speed to pique the interest of a quota-driven highway patrolman. What happened to Force though? He took a big lead until he too chowdered the hides, and not seeing Beckman out in front assumed he needed to get on it, and on it and on it once more until he crossed the centerline at half track, ending his day in a streak of black rubber over the freshly repainted white centerline.
Man what an opening round, with only six of the eight favoured cars escaping unscathed. Pairings for the second round pit Hight with lane choice over "Not so Fast" Jack Beckman, Worsham over Hagan, Wilkerson over C. Pedregon and Capps over Ashley Force Hood. After the first round of the fuel cars how could you push the excitement meter any higher? Bring out the Pro Stocks? Not a likely candidate to pump up the volume as the grandstands started to empty with many of the fans feeling an urgent to grab a beer or a hot dog or use the facilities or walk the dog or... or....
However, the first round or at least the first two pairs of the first round of Pro Stock had more than enough thrills and chills for the participants. Maybe it wasn't visible to the fans, or the NHRA officials, but the drivers sure found themselves fighting for control of their suddenly uncontrollable cars. As the round started, the altitude and temperature readings hadn't changed from the 11:00 numbers and the track appeared ready to handle any amount of horsepower thrown at it.
The first pair out, V. Gaines and Shane Gray encountered problems as Gaines got loose and shutoff, but the next duo of Warren Johnson and Ron Krisher both ran virtually identical passes to their best qualifying numbers. Considering the atmospheric conditions they could/should have expected more, but they both got to the finish line under power and apparently under control.
Then the proverbial stuff hit the blades and the racing ground to a halt as the complaining started. Apparently the first four drivers to run were raising all sorts of heck with NHRA and the third pair of Kurt Johnson and Jason Line were shut off while the arguments raged. With no quick resolution at hand, the decision was made, presumably by director of competition Graham Light, to have the remaining cars go back to the pits and come out after the Top Alcohol cars completed their second round of eliminations. The "or else" part of that dictum was left unsaid, but the message to the pro stockers was clear: race or go home.
Next out of the lanes, a little earlier than planned, were the short wheelbase Top Alcohol Funny Cars. The question on everyone's mind was, "could they get down the track when similarly wheelbased cars with less than half the horsepower were unable to?". The answer to that burning inquiry took just 5.64 seconds as Doug Gordon defeated a slightly slower (5.73) John Evanchuk in the first pairing of the round.
The round continued with the only traction issues being experienced by Steve Gasparelli when he got out of the groove early, luckily on a solo, as the scoreboard kept lighting up with great numbers. Sean O'Bannon's 5.575 in the last pair of the round set a new low e.t. for the meet by a full five hundredths of a second. Up next: Top Alcohol Dragster.
The long skinny cars showed there were some real teeth in the track as the 5.30's kept coming with regularity, starting with Mark Niver's very close 5.33 to 5.39 victory over Kyle Rizzoli. Young Rizzoli left first by a bunch and only lost by a foot at the stripe as Niver pounded out a big 271 mph speed in the lights. The next pair saw Shawn Cowie up the ante even more with the first 5.2 of the weekend, laying down a 5.297 at just under 270 mph to eliminate a very good 5.35 by Brittany Force.
The hits just kept on coming as Chris Demke trumped Cowie's pass by the slimmest of margins, with a 5.296 at 270.48 to oust Mike Austin's near-perfect (.004) light and take a six foot victory over Austin's very good 5.38 - 265 mph, earning himself a bye into the final in the process. All in all, one of the best rounds of Top Alcohol Dragster racing seen this season.
While the Pro Stock cars and drivers cooled off in the pits before continuing with their first round of eliminations, the real pros were ready for their second round, having turned around their fuel cars in the requisite 75 minutes between rounds. Up first again were the Top Fuel cars.
With lane choice being a factor in the first round, it would be interesting to see if the left lane was the first pick in this round. And it appeared to be as the first two winners both chose that side. Only the first race was one-sided though, as Morgan Lucas lit 'em up before half track as Kalitta blew by with another solid 3.88, but in the second pairing, Cory Mac's very good 4.85 wasn't that much better than Grubnic's very competitive 3.91 pass.
Then the tide turned as #7 qualifier Shawn Langdon defeated #2 Larry Dixon in a very close race, with both cars clocking in at 3.89, with the victory margin of less than 10 feet being mostly from an earlier launch for Langdon. Closing out the quarter-final round, Schumacher teammates Brown and Schumacher did battle, and with no team orders, Brown took the win in a battle of hazing tires from half track to the (1000 ft.) finish line.
Funny Car round two saw some mixed results as there were two close races and two runaways. In the closest match, Ron Capps carded the best e.t. of the second round, using a 4.177 to eliminate Ms. Force's 4.203, while Matt Hagan's 4.20 dropped Del Worsham's close 4.24. In the other two races, Tim Wilkerson's good 4.19 took out a tire-smoking Cruz Pedregon and the last Force car was eliminated as Jack Beckman's so-so 4.34 wasily outdistanced a smoked-in Robert Hight. Lane choices for the semi-finals were set as Capps over fellow DSR racer Beckman and Wilkerson over the third DSR car of Matt Hagan.
With no alternative now, as everyone else was cooling and prepping their cars in the pits, the Pro Stocks made their mandatory appearance to complete their first round. With the first two pairs already run, 12 cars were in the lanes and no one was back in the pits waiting for track conditions to improve.
Things got somewhat strange quickly as Jason Line redlighted to give the win to Kurt Johnson's medicore 6.71 lap, and the weirdness continued as three of the next five races were also decided by the red light. Almost unheard of in current pro racing. Showing that the track seemed to be holding up, almost all the winners nearly equalled their best qualifying times, but only four drivers improved on their best efforts of Friday and Saturday. It looked like the protest was more of a tempest in a Starbucks cup than something of real substance.
With the Pro Stocks out of step with the rest of the eliminators, the sportsman cars came out to fill in the gap in the show, and following them it was time for the semi-finals of Top Alcohol, leading off as usual with the Funny Cars. With the top two and #5 and #6 cars still in the field, it promised to be some good racing. Leading off, Steve Gasparelli took a holeshot 5.66 to 5.64 win over the Canadian car of Ken Webster, using a .069 second advantage at the green to take a more than car length win.
The other pair saw an all-California battle as Sean O'Bannon overcame Doug Gordon's excellent .006 light and made a 5.61 pass the winner over Gordon's slowing 5.73 clocking. The margin at the finish was closer to two car lengths and put O'Bannon into the final with lane choice. The difference between the lanes was not nearly as pronounced for the alky cars and even seemed to be evening up for the fuelers in the second round.
With only three cars left out of the 12 starters in the Top Alcohol dragster field, there was only one race scheduled for this round, between Mark Niver and Shawn Cowie, with Chris Demke slated to take a bye run into the finals. The pairing of Cowie and Niver promised a good race, with only a few hundredths advantage for Cowie in the lane choice depratment, but the big top end speed of Niver's injected car made a close race a real possibility. Cowie left first by nearly three hundredths and pulled away until the engine went flat around 1000 ft., dropping cylinders and slowing dramatically. Niver sailed by and lit the winlight with his third 5.30 of the weekend, at a top speed of the meet 271.79 mph.
Then it all went wrong. So very, very wrong. Crossing the finish line, Niver deployed the chutes, only to have them instantly fly off the car without offering any resistance or slowing the car at all. Even with the fairly long braking area and the slight uphill slope, Niver's car didn't slow to a stop and entered the sand trap at what appeared to be around 100 mph. It sailed through the trap and went head-on into the catch net (I hesitate to use the term safety net) where the front half of the chassis folded up and bent backwards almost on top of the roll cage.
I watched the sequence of events unfold through the TV monitor in the media centre and after a few seconds of video showing the first responder from the NHRA safety crew frantically trying to bend metal away from the cockpit, the video feed went blank and the entire facility became very, almost ominously, quiet. Everyone knew that this wasn't going to be the sort of crash where the driver hops out of his (or her) destroyed car, waves to the crowd and laments his bad luck at wrecking a race car.
As the clock ticked on and a complete lack of concrete news from the top end was forthcoming it slowly dawned on everyone that the outcome was of the worst possible sort. No one wanted to think of it, or dare say it, but deep in our hearts we knew what had happened. At one point there was a posting on Drag Race Central that went as follows: "The word from the top end is they have Niver out of the car and are transporting him to a local hospital." It was optimistic, but (intentionally?) vague.
With time passing and no word coming, I left the media centre to see what was happening in the pits. With Niver's pit area barely 100 feet from the media trailer, I was able to reach it quickly and in a few chilling seconds saw what confirmed my own feelings. A couple of very close racer friends were leaving the pit, holding each other and trying to keep the tears from falling, and behind them, huddled with Niver's crew and family members were the Racers for Christ chaplains and some paramedics. No questions needed to be asked, no answers needed to be given.
Approximately an hour after the accident, racing resumed with the semi-finals of Comp eliminator, but my mind was already miles and miles away from Pacific Raceway and thinking about anything and everything but drag racing at this point. I'd witnessed one of the things that really sucks about drag racing, one of the things that really makes you question why you're involved in the "sport" and makes you wish that it just wasn't so damn dangerous at times.
However, the race continued, as they almost always do, and the racers got in their cars and went down the track. Many with very heavy hearts as Mark Niver was a friend to so many people, racers in almost every class, the entire NHRA family and every single fan that stopped by his pit area for a word, an autograph, a smile and a "good luck" greeting.
With plenty of time to cool off their engines and their tempers, the Pro Stock cars came out for their second round and managed to get through it with no redlights and no incidents. In the interim since their first round a little over an hour ago, the adjusted altitude had climbed nearly 1000 feet, the air temp had risen more than 10 degrees and the track was nearly 120 F. Not the best conditions but they all managed to turn mid 6.6 times and put most of the usual suspects into the semi-finals.
With the Top Fuel cars out next, it immediately became apparent that adjustments hadn't been made, as the 3-second passes of the first two rounds were history and dropped cylinder 4-teens became the norm. Best e.t. of the round was Cory Mac's 4.13 and the best speed was a very (less than) ordinary 256 mph. My how the mighty fell, or at least slowed down, in the semifinal. The end result was McClenathan with lane choice over Antron Brown in all-Schumacher final round.
Could the funny cars do better or were they also going to become victims of the conditions? Well, they weren't much slower than the fuelers, and in relative terms, were substantially better, with Ron Capps and Tim Wilkerson punching out winning and nearly identical 4.24's to down Beckman and Hagan, respectively. With three cars in the semis, Don Schumacher must have been mildly disappointed to have only one going to the finals, but Capps went there with lane choice. Interestingly, Wilkerson turned top speed of the round for all the fuel cars, at 290 mph.
The event continued with more sportsman eliminations until the official announcement that everyone had been dreading for so long was made. It was short, in fact, so short that it almost seemed like an afterthought until an expanded version was posted shortly after on the NHRA website. Here's the bare bones version as posted on Drag Race Central, courtesy of NHRA, at 5:12 pm: Top Alcohol dragster racer Mark Niver, 60, from Phoenix, was involved in a fatal incident today when his dragster crashed in the shutdown area during eliminations at the NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways. NHRA officials are investigating the accident. NHRA and Pacific Raceways officials extend their deepest sympathies to the entire Niver family.
After those brief words, it was time to get back to racing with the semi-finals of Pro Stock. In a slight upset, Mike Edwards lost on a holeshot to Greg Anderson. Edwards came within one thousandth of a second of matching his low e.t. of the meet clocking from qualifying, but his .041 light and 6.59 pass wasn't enough to overcome Greg Anderson's .025 light and 6.60 pass. The margin of victory was barely two feet but it was enough to put Anderson into the final with lane choice over fellow finalist Johnny Gray.
More sportsman eliminations continued until the Top Alcohol Funny Cars were ready, and in a great race, Sean O'Bannon cranked out an excellent 5.58 to cover Steve Gasparelli's close 5.65. The race was made that much closer by the five hundredths holeshot of Gasparelli and the gap at the finish line was less than half a car length. A fitting end to a hard fought and very difficult weekend.
With just three more finals to run, the order was as follows: Funny Car, Top Fuel, and in a bit of a twist, Pro Stock last. The first final saw a great battle, with side-by-side 4.20's from Wilkerson and Capps and close launches also, with a margin of victory of just six feet with Wilkerson first across the stripe.
Next out of the lanes were the Top Fuel cars of Cory McClenathan and Antron Brown, ready to fight it out under much better conditions than in the previous round. The air had improved by 500 feet, the air temperature was down nearly 10 degrees and the track had dropped similarly. No one came away disappointed in the race as, after nearly identical leaves, Cory Mac outran Brown by 22 thousandths to take a half car length win, with both cars well into the 3's again and well over 300 mph in a fitting finale to a race that needed more than a bit of a lift at the end.
In keeping with the very somber mood of everyone in attendance, the winner's circle activities were kept short and basic with nothing more than trophy presentations and photographs. No one was in the mood to celebrate, and anything more would have been simply "out-of-bounds" in the circumstances. It was a credit to all the pro racers who, without exception, focused on the loss of Mark Niver more than their victories and had nothing but the kindest and most heartfelt words to say about him after the race.
It's hard to sum up the event after the tragedy of Sunday afternoon, but we'll try to filter through our thoughts and put something together over the next few days. In all, my impressions were that the event was far from a success, even before the crash, and the number of racers and spectators in attendance has to be worrying to Pacific Raceways, NHRA, and drag racing in general. And the fallout from Niver's death will have an effect on the sport sooner and later, possibly in more ways than we can imagine.
That's it from the NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways. Next stop: the Canadian National Open at Mission Raceway Park in two weeks time.