"I knew what kind of driver and what kind of person Melanie was, because we had her in a car in 2000," Don Schumacher said. "A great person, a great personality. I knew she‚d do a great job here, and Melanie deserved to be back out here."
An interesting note in Troxel's ride through the field was her second-round victory over her teammate, running a 4.524 to Tony's 4.530 and ending Schumacher's run of consecutive round wins at 21.
 Robert Hight
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Hight's weekend was fraught with the kind that would wither even the heartiest of souls. He broke his Auto Club Ford Mustang‚s only 2006-model body during early qualifying rounds after hitting a timing cone, then had to skip Saturday morning‚s qualifying round due to a fuel leak. He busted his way into the field on his final qualifying pass on Saturday evening.
"We had to make it in on that last run, and having to do that just wears you out," Hight said. "Anything can break on these cars, I can make a mistake -- that's a lot of pressure on you."
Once making the field, he suffered a fire due to a valve failure in his second-round win over Del Worsham. In the ensuing period in the pits, the car's fire extinguisher system malfunctioned, spraying the pit area with fire-retardant material. The team got things back together mere seconds before taking the starting line and -- with retardant still dripping out of the car -- Hight beat Phil Burkart to reach the finals. Hight regrouped and beat Ron Capps to the line by .0118 of a second (six feet) for his third career win.
Things got so crazy for the team that, in order to replace the broken Mustang body, the team had to confiscate the body on the display car at the event's VIP Top Eliminator Club.
"The last time that body ran was at Atlanta (in 2005)," Hight said. "It worked good for the next two rounds, and that's all that mattered."
One minor blip in the Team Force camp was the fact that the 13-time champ and team owner didn't officially improve his national elapsed-time record of 4.665 seconds. He qualified No. 1 with a 4.664 on his final pass on Saturday, but wasn't able to reach the 4.711 needed to reach the one percent backup mark; Force's next-best time over the weekend was a 4.712 in his Friday afternoon run.
While Troxel and Hight made news with their wins, things held to form in Pro Stock, as Greg Anderson beat Mike Edwards for his 36th event victory in the last 70 national events.
"I'm sorry if I bore you guys, but it's not as easy as it looks," quipped Anderson, who set track records for elapsed time (6.665) and speed (207.75 mph) over the weekend. "There's so many cars that showed flashes of brilliance this weekend that you never know how it's going to turn out."
The three-time defending champ equaled his top qualifying mark in the finals, running a 6.665 to Edwards‚ losing 6.726. He was also aided by a .036 advantage off the line, .017 to .053.
