Motor Sports Weekly News

By: Drew Hierwarter

Tony Schumacher rolled over the Top Fuel field at the NHRA Mac Tools US Nationals at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, breaking records as he went. He broke his own personal record for most consecutive wins and most wins in a single season. This was his sixth straight victory, his eighth of the last nine events, and eleventh win of the season. He now has 52 career wins which ties him with legendary Top Fuel racer, Joe Amato.  And with five top fuel championships already under his belt, Schumacher goes into the “Countdown to One” as not only the top seed in the field, but as the odds on favorite to win it all again. 

Schumacher reached the final round at Indy for the seventh straight year. It was the 83^rd final round of his career and he simply broke everybody’s back by setting low E.T. in every round of eliminations. In the second round, Hillary Will was the victim of another Schumacher record, his 22^nd straight round win.

“We knew we had a car that could go down a hot racetrack, and so it puts a lot of pressure on the driver, but you just have to suck it up. Then you get down to the final, and it’s down to where you’re one four-second push of the throttle away from setting all those  records, and you’ve only got one shot to do it; it’s very intense. To set all of those records and do it while winning Indy is almost too much; you tend to lose track of the fact that you just won Indy. We struggled the first two days but there was no doubt Alan [Johnson, crew chief] was going to figure it out. We’ve done that a lot when we come to Indy; we struggle at the beginning, and then the track comes around. But we weren’t a tenth of a second ahead of anybody today, so we had to limit our mistakes and make it difficult on those guys.”  And make it difficult they did.

Robert Hight won the Funny Car portion of the US Nationals for the second time in three years, defeating Jack Beckman in the final. And Dave Connelly won his second US Nationals title in the Pro Stock division. The NHRA racers now get a weekend off before meeting in Charlotte for the first race of the “Countdown to One” to see who will be the NHRA Powerade champions for 2008.

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If it’s Labor Day it means the annual running of the Bobby Isaac Memorial 200 at Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina. Every year some of the best late model stock car drivers in the Southeast gather at the legendary short track for a 200 lap event in honor of the 1970 NASCAR champion, Bobby Isaac.

This year’s race was the 32nd edition and once again the field was heavy with stars. Coleman Pressley, son of Robert Pressley, Kyle Grissom, son of Steve Grissom, Jarit Johnson, brother of Jimmie Johnson, Chase Austin, development driver for Rusty Wallace Racing, and former UARA champion Matt McCall, and up and coming late model drivers like Matt DiBenedetto, who won at Bristol Motor Speedway earlier this year, and Jamie Yelton, multi-time UARA main event winner.

The race was won by Coleman Pressley but not without spending a good part of the 200 laps fending off repeated challenges from Matt McCall. The two traded the lead back and forth for much of the second 100 laps until Pressley finally gained enough of an advantage to pull away from McCall and beat him to the checkered flag by the length of the front straight.

Hickory Motor Speedway has the reputation of being the “Birthplace of NASCAR Stars” and the Bobby Isaac Memorial 200 is the perfect showcase for some of the brightest future stars of the sport.