Title pictures stay muddled after Maple Grove
By Bill Stephens
NHRA Shake Ups from Reading, PA
READING, Pa. -- Following Sunday's final eliminations of the Toyo Tires Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, the title pictures in Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock Motorcycle continue to resist any finality or even clarity. However, the Pro Stock chase might be the first of the four professional categories to approach closure.
How many monumental matchups occurred at this historic event on Sunday? You'd have a hard time counting them all, and the list of remarkable twists of fate that highlighted the race was overloaded with the kinds of entertaining story lines drag racing fans can't get enough of.
Want a few examples? Let's start with Top Fuel.
The dramatic pedaling match that featured Brandon Bernstein and David Baca in Round 1 was fun to watch and fired up memories of the 2003 season. It was that year Bernstein and Baca were both rookies. Bernstein was injured in Englishtown in May and was sidelined for the rest of the campaign after winning three national events.
Baca raced the entire season and was hoping to capture Rookie of the Year honors, but was outpolled by Bernstein -- a decision Baca accepted graciously but with deep disappointment.
In Round 2 at Reading, defending series and event champion Tony Schumacher drew J.R. Todd, this year's ROY front-runner, and the driver who tripped up Schumacher twice during this year's Western Swing, as each driver prevented the other from sweeping the three-race marathon. Todd beat Schumacher again on Sunday in a crucial confrontation that prevented Schumacher from taking a shot at the points lead. These two already have a history.
Todd went on to win the race, beating Melanie Troxel in the final. What's the hook? Troxel is Schumacher's teammate, meaning the talented youngster single-handedly erased Schumacher Racing in one day.
"The car's performance stepped up after the first round," said Todd. "I knew that Jimmy [Walsh, team crew chief] had a good handle on the tune-up last weekend at Dallas and he showed it Sunday. We beat good cars today and we earned the win."
When the dust had cleared, Doug Kalitta maintained a narrow lead of 52 points over Schumacher and 62 over Bernstein with three races left to go in '06.
The story in Funny Car was equally compelling.
On Sunday, Phil Burkart, whose last win came over two years ago in Denver, beat the reigning POWERade champion, Gary Scelzi, and the three drivers at the top of the 2006 championship standings, John Force, Ron Capps and Robert Hight, to win his fourth career national event.
Burkart has been a particular obstacle to Force in the past -- including in the second round of this year's very first event in Pomona, Calif. -- and Sunday was no exception as the decided underdog bit the 13-time champion in the semifinals.
"That Burkart kid has given me fits before," said Force. "He's got a good team and maybe they don't win a lot of races, but he always seems to save his best game for me. We took the points lead back today [by one point over Capps] and Robert [Hight] is in the hunt [35 points behind Force], so now we'll just go to Richmond next week and try to win this thing."
And the fact that Burkart was the only non-John Force Racing driver on the semifinals eliminations ladder adds even more improbability to his victory.
"The way the ladder lined up, I knew we'd have to wade through some of the best teams in the sport, maybe even in the history of the sport, if we wanted to go rounds today," Burkart said. "But the way I saw it, I'd rather have to face all the big hitters than waltz through on fluke wins against guys who had been lucky to advance. I mean, any round win is a good one, but when you outrun Capps, or Scelzi, or any of these guys, you know you earned it. It feels a little extra special when you beat those guys."
Pro Stock's points leader, Jason Line, didn't win the race, but took a major step in ending Dave Connolly's last gasp at catching him when he beat Connolly in the second round with the quickest elapsed time in NHRA Pro Stock history. Line's 6.609-second masterpiece against Connolly set a national record, good for an additional 20 points and gave Line a 56-point advantage over his teammate and race winner Greg Anderson and a 183-point cushion over Connolly.
Greg Stanfield, one of the category's most accomplished holeshot artists, added his own twist to race day. In the semifinals, he used a brilliant .020-second reaction time (.000 is perfect) to defeat Line on a holeshot, only to foul out in the final to Line's teammate Anderson. Reaction times can often be a double-edged sword.
"It seems like I say this with every win, but I really needed that win," said Anderson after his victory over Greg Stanfield in the final round of the NHRA Toyo Tires Nationals. "This points battle is going to go down to the last race and I need to continue to try to get every point that is available. If I didn't win this today, it would have meant I didn't gain a point on Jason. That's how tight this chase is."
In 1999, Matt Hines won his third Pro Stock Motorcycle championship by squeaking past Angelle Sampey (at the time, Angelle Seeling) in the waning rounds of the NHRA season. On Sunday, Sampey's current teammate Antron Brown made a move to do the same thing to Matt's younger brother, Andrew Hines.
In a matchup that will have fans muttering for weeks, Hines lost in the first round on Sunday to teammate GT Tonglet -- on a holeshot -- in the middle of a razor-close points race that has been sizzling all season. Brown then scored a semifinal finish, gathering enough points to take the lead away from Hines with two bike races remaining on the slate, thus setting up a three-racer battle for the 2006 title. Brown now leads Hines by 27 points and Sampey by 64.
But it was Karen Stoffer who went the distance on Sunday, making Maple Grove a memorable event in her career scrapbook for the second time. In 2002, Stoffer raced Sampey in the Maple Grove final, the first all-female PSM final round in NHRA history. Stoffer lost that race (riding one of Sampey's former Suzukis) but prevailed over Sampey in this year's semifinals before dropping Geno Scali in the final.
"What a great weekend for us," said Stoffer following her third career victory. "The only thing we didn't do was set the ET record."
An oddity? A new national elapsed time record was set this weekend -- by Angelle Sampey.
Bill Stephens covers NHRA for ESPN.com.