Ron Capps, who declared he’s got to qualify better at every race this year, drove his Ed McCulloch-tuned Dodge to bracket-racing like numbers of 4.709/331.45, 4.741/327.82, 4.782/323.43 and 4.727/330.55 before losing on a holeshot to Jeff Arend in round two. Capps and McCulloch seemed to have refocused their efforts with an eye clearly on the 2007 Championship fight.
One question repeatedly heard at Pomona was how long it will take Kenny Bernstein to hire more crew chief help for his Monster energy drink-backed flopper’s performance on-track. Ray Alley and assistant crew chief Johnny West seem to have the technical and theoretical ability, but reportedly at Pomona Connie Kalitta was helping the team and Bernstein did run a 4.847 for the 20th qualifying position after the team had parts failure the first two qualifying laps.
Joe Hartley qualifying 16th in Top Fuel was way overshadowed in the ESPN2 account by repeated rehashing of the 2006 Finals and Tony Schumacher’s “miracle” 4.428 final round win, but Hartley defeated a tire smoking Shoe in round one of competition. Upstart Hartley -- one of the few cars without Torco racing fuel sponsorship it seemed- lost to David
Grubnic in round two, but his team’s 4.575 number out-qualified NHRA tour regulars and the much better financed teams of Clay Millican, Morgan Lucas and Doug Foley.
After Doug Foley’s weak performance at the Winters and in off-season testing, he decided to relieve crew chief Rick Cassel of his duties over the weekend. Cassel was hired in early December. Co-crew chiefs Glenn Camp and Scott Morell will tune the Foley & Lewis car while they look for a new crew chief among the few candidates left who are not working for nitro super-teams.
Sunday morning of the Winternationals found rainy skies and a very wet track. To help move the rain-delayed show along, NHRA borrowed a jet track dryer from nearby California Speedway, but nobody noticed that the Speedway’s "official" truck apparently is Toyota. However, a quick check with GM found out that the official can and truck of California Speedway is Chevrolet and their contract runs through December 31, 2009. That didn’t seem to get noticed by or bother the NHRA marketing department until a somewhat miffed General Motors marketing official brought it to Tom Compton and Gary Darcy’s attention that GM was the official sponsor and supplier of trucks for the NHRA Safety Safari as well as other vehicles.
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