ESPN NHRA

ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. -- Think of "The Tortoise and the Hare."

In that ageless fable by Aesop, the lightning-fast hare and the dreadfully slow tortoise square off in a race. The hare gives the tortoise a big head start, but in the end, the tortoise wins the race thanks to his starting-line advantage. Did the hare actually cover the race course at a quicker clip?

Yes.

Did the tortoise reach the finish line first?

Yes.

And thus, the first holeshot win in racing history was recorded.

At the 39th Lucas Oil SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park this past weekend -- where the drag-racing fraternity was still reeling from the death of Funny Car driver Scott Kalitta on Saturday -- holeshots played a measurable role in determining the four professional winners in the Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle divisions. In a number of critical rounds, the driver with the quicker elapsed time fell to an opponent who grabbed an advantage with a shorter reaction time at the Christmas Tree and held on for the victory.

The most reverberating holeshot win of the weekend was scored by five-time Top Fuel POWERade champion Tony Schumacher, who had advanced to his first career final at this event. He faced Brandon Bernstein, whose racing career nearly came to an end at the 2003 SuperNationals when he crashed hard in the first-round eliminations.

Schumacher's .034-second reaction time (.000 is perfect) and 4.589-second elapsed time were enough to overcome Bernstein's quicker 4.562 elapsed time but slower .081 reaction time. It was Schumacher's fifth win of 2008, and he now has taken sole possession of the POWERade points lead after 11 national events. Bernstein remains winless in two final-round appearances this year -- both versus Schumacher.

After his victory, Schumacher couldn't help but reflect on the feelings of loss and remorse rippling through the sport in the aftermath of Kalitta's fatal accident during qualifying on Saturday.

"With the passing of Scott Kalitta yesterday, today's race was extremely tough to get through from an emotional standpoint," said Schumacher. "But we managed to take care of business like Scott would have wanted us to."

Meanwhile, Funny Car wasn't immune to the holeshot high jinks.

In fact, in the opening round of eliminations, three consecutive matchups were decided by the reaction time/elapsed time anomaly. Reigning POWERade champion Tony Pedregon used a two-hundredths-of-a-second advantage at the starting line to beat Ashley Force, his 4.939 elapsed time/306.19 mph to her quicker 4.927/302.35. In the next pair, Del Worsham was a full five-hundredths of a second better than Gary Scelzi's .105 reaction time and beat the four-time POWERade champion, 4.946/313.95 to 4.933/309.34. Then Melanie Troxel left on Jerry Toliver by three-hundredths of a second and turned on the win light with a 4.935/317.70 to Toliver's 4.914/308.92.

At the end of the day, however, points leader Tim Wilkerson rang up victory No. 3 for 2008 when he beat Mike Neff -- appearing in his third career final in his rookie season -- with a better reaction time (.070 to .081), quicker elapsed time (4.877 to 4.883), and faster top speed (319.29 to 316.75).

The win increased Wilkerson's lead over Ashley Force to a generous 132 points in the Countdown to 10 standings.

"We had a good car today," Wilkerson said. "We were the quickest car in every round, except the first one, and there we were the second-quickest. Actually, the car has made me look good all year long. Everybody asks me what I attribute our good year to, and my answer is that it's just a lot of hard work.

"We've been lucky enough this year to make calls at the right time that actually had some validity to them, and the car shows it. It runs well, and I've been fortunate enough to do OK driving the thing. But it's a team effort, believe me -- a serious team effort. My guys do a tremendous job. I can't say enough about them."

In Pro Stock, only one matchup was decided via the holeshot, but it had a significant impact on how the category results might have looked. In Round 1, six-time POWERade champion Warren Johnson, the No. 3 qualifier and a four-time winner at Englishtown, faced V. Gaines, who has but three career national-event wins and had qualified a distant 14th. Gaines' exceptional .014 reaction time gave him a sizable .08 second head start over WJ and used it to beat "The Professor" 6.674/206.42 to 6.658/207.88.

Gaines advanced to the semifinals but was stopped by Dave Connolly, who earned the right to face three-time Pro Stock champion and defending Englishtown champ Greg Anderson in the final. That decisive round was anything but an artistic success when both drivers shook the tires hard after launch. Anderson regained enough traction to coast to his third win of the year.

"It was a tough deal to come out and race today, without a doubt," said Anderson. "I don't really know how you really do it, how you really concentrate, and we probably didn't very well, to be honest with you. You think about [Scott] all the time and you think, 'I know I'm going to wake up from this dream in a while.'"

It wasn't a case of leaving the line late that ended the hopes of Chris Rivas in landing his second consecutive national-event win in Pro Stock Motorcycle.

It was leaving too early.

The winner of the previous race in Joliet, Ill., and the No. 1 qualifier in Englishtown left a scant .014 seconds too soon in his final-round meeting with Chip Ellis and fouled away his chances, giving Ellis and Suzuki their first victories of 2008. Ellis also received top-speed-of-the-race honors with his 192.88 mph time slip.

"To be perfectly honest, the win was awesome," said Ellis. "I know what George Smith [Chris Rivas' crew chief] is capable of doing. I rode his bike all last year and he's a great tuner, and Chris is doing a great job riding for him. But on the other hand, I think I'm with the best tuner, and the man I'm talking about is Steve Tartaglia."

And that's no fable.

Bill Stephens covers the NHRA for ESPN.com.