TOP FUEL

No surprise here; defending IHRA Top Fuel champion Clay Millican qualified on top with a 4.697-second pass at 295.79 mph in Friday night's opening round.

There were 12 fuel cars on the Rockingham grounds, but little drama was offered in the second round of qualifying, as not one of them made it cleanly down the track and little shuffling of position occurred. Roger Dean's 5.431 at 267.32 was the quickest and fastest pass of the afternoon.

The final qualifying session for Top Fuel was a weird one, coming as it did after a lengthy delay for track prep when pine pollen was suspected as the culprit behind a suddenly slippery Rockingham race surface. The decision was made to run Top Fuel first instead of last, since with their superior downforce, the dragsters were reasoned to be the least likely to experience high-speed traction troubles.

It looked like the parting of the Red Sea when Millican and his Werner crew pulled their machine to the line, as they had to fight their way through throngs of Pro Stock, Funny Car, and Pro Mod teams that were already in the staging lanes. In an anticlimactic start to the nighttime nitro show, Millican barely got off the starting line before going
up in smoke.

John Smith and his wife, Rhonda Hartman-Smith, made decent passes in the final fuel qualifier. Smith bumped Bruce Litton from the eight-car field with a 5.230-second pass at 278.06 mph, and Hartman-Smith improved to second on the ladder when she went an impressive 4.772 at 308.07 mph to set top speed in qualifying. Tim Cullinan also bumped his way into the field with a 5.501/216.34 combo that sent Bobby Lagana packing.

As an interesting sidenote, five of the eight qualified Top Fuel cars at Rockingham were either piloted or tuned by a Hartman, Smith, or Hartman-Smith. In addition to the husband-and-wife driving team, there was Hartman Motorsports team owner and tuner Virgil Hartman, Rhonda's brother and Top Fuel crew chief for Colhart Motorsports, Richard Hartman, and John Smith's father and Top Fuel tuner, Paul Smith.

Rhonda Hartman-Smith proved it could be done Saturday night at Rockingham
when she ran low ET of the round and set top speed in qualifying with a
4.772-second pass at 308.07 mph.

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