Two-time world champion Brittany Force drove her Chevrolet Accessories Top Fuel dragster to the top of the provisional qualifying order Friday on the first day of the 70th annual U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.<\/p>\n
Although she was a tenth of a second off her own track record, Force\u2019s 3.740 at 334.32 miles per hour was a good start toward locking the 16-time Mission Foods tour winner into the upcoming Countdown to the Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, we never thought we\u2019d be (in this position),\u201d said NHRA national record holder.\u00a0\u201cWe didn\u2019t qualify at Chicago and we sat out at Norwalk (Ohio) to be with family (during dad John\u2019s hospitalization following a June 23 crash in Richmond, Va.) so we came into this weekend tenth in points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a tough position to be in but we need to stay in there for Chevrolet, Monster and all of our other sponsors.\u00a0That .74 put us No. 1 with four (qualifying) bonus points.\u00a0It\u2019s everything we could ask for on day one.\u201c<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, John Force Racing Funny Cars occupied the number three and four positions in the provisional order Friday.<\/p>\n
In just his second tour appearance in relief of Force, \u201cFast Jack\u201d Beckman put the PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant Camaro in the No. 3 spot with a solid 3.903 second, 322.81 mph performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got some bonus points out of it,\u201d Beckman said.\u00a0\u201cThe numbers all look good.\u00a0We have a backup supercharger on the car so we know it goes back into our inventory.\u00a0If we need to go back to it during the Countdown, we know have good data on it.<\/p>\n
\u201c(It) dropped a cylinder at 700 feet or it would have been a lot quicker,\u201d said the 2016 World Champion, \u201cbut, again, we\u2019re starting to figure out what the car wants with my driving style and the added weight in there and we\u2019re picking away at it and looking great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Funny Car point leader Austin Prock, who already has clinched the No. 1 starting spot in the Countdown, was just behind Beckman in the order after stopping the timers in 3.926 seconds at 320.36 mph in the Cornwell Tools Camaro in which he has qualified No. 1 nine times this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a bad start to the weekend,\u201d Prock said. \u201cObviously, we wanted a little more than\u00a0that but the car ran on seven cylinders for most of the run.\u00a0But good start and good to be back in this Cornwell Tools Camaro.\u00a0Happy to be at \u2018The Big Go\u2019 and looking forward to an awesome and consistent weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pro drivers will have four more opportunities to improve their performance and position before the start of eliminations on Monday.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on August 30, 2024. <\/p>\n
The post Brittany Force Leads Top Fuel Qualifying at U.S. Nationals<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two-time world champion Brittany Force drove her Chevrolet Accessories Top Fuel dragster to the top of the provisional qualifying order Friday on the first day of the 70th annual U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. Although she was a tenth of a second off her own track record, Force\u2019s 3.740 at 334.32 miles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}