Don Schumacher team comes to Las Vegas on a roll
Eight-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher is the face of his dad’s Don Schumacher Racing team.
If anyone would figure to be loyal to the team, it would be Tony Schumacher.
Loyalty, though, goes only so far, and Schumacher ultimately doesn’t race for the team. He races for himself and his crew members.
As much as he might personally like the other team members and their drivers, no victory is sweeter than one over another DSR car.
“It’s great that DSR has won with other cars, but we’re not teammates,” Schumacher said. “Antron (Brown) and Spencer (Massey) are owned by my dad, great guys, we’ll work together, but when Antron wins, he doesn’t pay my mortgage. We’re not teammates. It’s a battle.
“Our worst and our most difficult competition will occur on our own team. We’ve trained our own adversaries.”
No team is hotter than DSR’s, which has claimed victories in three of the four Top Fuel competitions this season and all four Funny Car events. Schumacher is the defending Top Fuel champion, and Matt Hagan won his second Funny Car title last season.
Both drivers will try to continue their success in the SummitRacing.com Nationals, scheduled for today through Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Today’s qualifying in the three major classes begins at 1:30 p.m.
Schumacher, 45, has experienced more than his share of success at The Strip, winning a track-record eight times. His spring victory in 2014 turned around a season that began slowly and helped set him on the course for the series championship.
“Last year winning this race, we weren’t the car we are now,” Schumacher said. “We won it with a decent car.”
Now Schumacher is much happier with his car, and he won this season’s second event in Chandler, Ariz. He also is second in the points standings to Brown, the 2012 Top Fuel champion.
Both drivers have access to the top equipment in NHRA and a Hall of Fame owner who knows how to get the best out of his organization.
“Our shop in Indy is second to none,” Schumacher said. “They’re outstanding — their commitment, the hours they work. The discipline and level of excitement they bring to our chassis and car is fantastic. When we get in our car, we don’t want to be the weak link. I think it makes the drivers step up.”
Hagan, 32, is building his own impressive resume at DSR and is second in the points standings this season.
He won the season’s first two events, but then ran into trouble in the next two. Hagan said he chose the wrong lane in Gainesville, Fla., costing him the race in the first round of eliminations against Alexis DeJoria.
Then in Concord, N.C., he didn’t get lined up in time during staging and lost in the first round of eliminations. That event is the only one in the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series that is four-wide. The others are direct head-to-head competitions.
“It’s been human error, really,” Hagan said. “It’s not been the racecar’s fault by any way, shape or form, so to roll in here to Vegas, to get back into our normal two-lane racing, I feel very, very confident about it out here. I think we’re going to have a great racecar, and it’s going to qualify well. It’s anybody’s ballgame on Sunday.”
Las Vegas has been an odd place for Hagan.
He set the fastest Funny Car time at The Strip in last year’s fall race, finishing in 4.006 seconds. Hagan also has twice made the finals there, but is still looking for his first victory at the track.
Schumacher couldn’t help but rib Hagan about the 8-0 advantage he has over his DSR teammate in Las Vegas, but Hagan figures he’s been close here enough that it’s a matter of time before he records his first victory at the track.
There is one topic they agree upon.
“Honestly, I love beating my teammates more than I love beating anybody else,” Hagan said. “Me and John Force have a great rival, and he’s a 16-time world champion and he’s done it all, but when I beat my teammates, I know we’ve done something because it’s the same parts and pieces, the same stuff out there.
“When you put them on the trailer, it makes your day.”
Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65.
