NHRA at Norwalk
It’s not often the NHRA visits a new track these days, but the dawn of a new era emerged this past weekend at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, OH, where more than $6 million was spent over the last year on improvements that included sponsor suites, a state-of-the-art media center, extensive paving in the pro pit area, and tower renovations.
The 44-year-old facility hosted the inaugural Summit Racing Equipment Nationals June 29-July 1, where Tony Schumacher collected his second Top Fuel title this year, Mike Ashley joined him as a two-time winner this season in Funny Car, Dave Connolly also scored his second Pro Stock win of the year, and Andrew Hines completed the trend with his second Pro Stock Motorcycle win in 2007. But new or not, the racers still told the whole story of the event through quotes included in NHRA and team press releases.
TOP FUEL
(Steve Embling photo)
“That was certainly a great way to end the afternoon." — Tony Schumacher on going 4.537 seconds at 322.04 mph in the final to set low E.T. of eliminations and take the win over Rod Fuller
“They said that's a new track record, so that's cool.” — Fuller on the 4.533 he ran on Friday night to secure his fifth career number-one start
""It was just like being at home. It felt good coming back and going down the track again.”
— Clay Millican, who won at Norwalk four times while winning six IHRA championships, after qualifying second behind Fuller
“Anytime you run in the top five in a session is good and in conditions that we'll be racing in shows promise. There's no doubt we've been battling some demons with the car, but hopefully we're starting to overcome those."
— Whit Bazemore on jumping from 12th to 10th in Saturday’s two qualifying sessions
“Perhaps we got all of our struggles out of the way the last couple of days and we can now go out and put it all together for the race. For some reason, we're still not getting from point A to point B with any consistency. We need to start doing that real soon.” — Schumacher after qualifying 14th
