ROUGH RIDES
Rookie Top Fuel drivers Scotty Lumbert and Joe Reinhardt probably would like to forget Saturday's qualifying rounds. Lumbert's "Public Nuisance" crashed as it crossed the finish line in his last pass of the day and ended his weekend prematurely.

"It started picking the right sponson up and kept carrying it higher and bouncing it harder, so I started getting out of the throttle at about three-quarters track," the Batavia, IL-based driver said. "It went through the lights pretty smooth, I thought, but all of a sudden it dropped, caught the water and spun around with a couple of 360s out there. It broke the capsule loose and threw it out, but it stayed right with the boat." Lumbert said the boat suffered some rear transom damage and the tops of the sponsons cracked in a couple of places, "but all of that can be fixed." More importantly, he said the protective driver capsule did its job.

"The capsule can float by itself and it has its own air supply, so there was no problem at all. I didn't even get wet until they got me out of there. I'm just kind of sore all over," he said Sunday afternoon.

Only Reinhardt's pride and pocketbook were hurting after "Whad-a-Hoot" suffered a spectacular fire in qualifying. Flames trailed 50 feet behind the boat as Reinhardt wrestled it to a stop. "That was bad, real bad. You can feel those inside," he said.

With Lumbert's exit, only four boats remained in the field, so Reinhradt still was guaranteed a spot in eliminations, but lost to Andreae when his engine let go at the first hit of the throttle. Regardless, Reinhardt's Charlotte, NC-based team redeemed their weekend with a late-afternoon exhibition pass at more than 210 mph.

"We've been leaning it out and we've been hurting parts, so we really backed it off this time," the transplanted New Englander explained. "It left pretty good on that last pass, but fell off quite a bit around half track. I expected that, though. At least it didn't hurt anything that time."

RECORD SETTERS
In winning the Augusta Southern Nationals with a 5.616-second pass at 205.68 mph in "Skywalker," Sam Shaffer also bettered the national Blown Alcohol Hydro ET record. Class runner-up Andy Reynolds also shattered the long-standing 5.72-seconds mark (set in 1990), with a 5.624 at 210.23 mph before his "Parental Discretion Advised" craft almost sunk when a steering seal broke loose.

Kentucky's Jon Wright made the world's fastest quarter-mile pass in an outboard-driven boat during Saturday's qualifying. His bright red "Tinker Toy" went 156.26 mph in qualifying to crush the previous 149.75 mph record, but parts breakage on raceday prevented Wright from backing it up within one percent for the official record.

The six-cylinder, 131 c.i. Mercury outboard faded to 150.64 mph in a bye run on Sunday after springing a leak in its nitrous system just before the finish. The 7.521 elimination effort actually was quicker than the record speed pass, though, so Wright was sure the boat was capable of carding the official mark.

"It's just a matter of time," he said. And then came the rain.

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