11/8/07
Oh, what a season it has been!
Some people resist change. Some people embrace it. Some people this NHRA season became just plain confused when trying to calculate the myriad scenarios with the Countdown to the Championship.
Never mind the ethics of throwing the performers who weren't in the top tier with those who were most consistent all season long. Never mind the fairness of "grading on the curve" or impeding the progress of the leaders so the non-dominant drivers would have a chance to win a prize. The everybody-wins-a-prize mentality should've gone out of style with third-grade birthday parties.
But it's a nation of manipulation these days. So no use bucking the trend here. By the time the tour returned to the Auto Club Raceway for the season finale, the issue was not justice but just get it finished.
They did, with Tony Schumacher tying Joe Amato for most Top Fuel championships (5), breaking his tie with Amato for four straight titles, and tying Larry Dixon for second place on the class's career-victories list at 41. Tony Pedregon pretty much locked in his second Funny Car title and first as a car owner at Las Vegas, but he added a touch of drama by qualifying 16th and losing in the first round but holding off Robert Hight.
In the Pro Stock ranks, Jeg Coughlin ended the KB Racing/Summit Pontiac team's reign by denying Greg Anderson his fourth championship. And Matt Smith halted the Hines dynasty in the motorcycle class.
For Schumacher, the Countdown played into his hands. He had said at the August 2006 announcement of the format that he thought it would, but he was referring to the fact that his is a second-half-of-the-season kind of team.
In a tirade at Las Vegas, following an incident that had nothing whatsoever to do with Countdown implications, the U.S. Army Dragster driver complained, "We're saying the Countdown's the greatest thing in the world. Are you kidding me? They can decide when they want, whenever they want that's not a good run. Whoa -- that's kind of brutal, isn't it? Graham [Light, NHRA Senior V.P.] said, 'You know the rules.' What rules? No, I don't -- not in any way, shape, or form do I know the rules. They make them up as they go along. Who gets to decide who's your champion? It's apparently not the points system. Ain't that a you-know-what?"
He sloughed off his comments a week later (while still arguing that the sanctioning body needs to be consistent in its policies), saying "I get heated up. Anyone would get heated up with that stuff. Sometimes you feel like you're getting something thrown at you
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"You learn lessons. Sometimes it's a hard lesson," Schumacher said. "Sometimes, and more often than not, when we get one stuck to us like that, we come out real strong. [ESPN commentator] Mike Dunn said it:' Man, I'm not sure you want to heat Alan up.' "
In the end, Schumacher said the Countdown format helped him win the championship by 19 points over Hot Rod Fuller, the driver who led the Top Fuel standings after 14 of the 23 races and had regained the lead heading into Pomona.
"This Countdown has allowed us to test, and we spent a lot of time preparing for that run," he said, emphasizing the final two words. He said crew chief Alan Johnson's strategy was "to make sure that the stuff that goes on those particular runs is perfect. We tested parts that we'll be using halfway through next year."
The difference, he indicated, was in the application. "Alan can give a tune-up into a car that's perfect. The eight guys who build it are flawless. They give me a car that's so perfect that I don't want to be the weak link," he said.
"My guys are so good at crunch time, when we absolutely need to do it," Schumacher said. "It was a stunning day."
It was stunningly terrific for him, for as the No. 4 driver in the Countdown to One at the start of race day, he said, "I didn’t think we would win."
It was just stunning for Rod Fuller. In one tire-smoking first-round flash, he became the poster boy for the Countdown's most glaring weakness: the two-race final stage of the playoff.