His unique partnership with the U.S. Army is more than one of NHRA Top Fuel dragster driver and sponsor. The Chicago resident has parachuted with the Golden Knights, gone through the paces of a boot-camp shift, mingled with generals and rank-and-file G.I.s alike, spent New Year's Eve with troops in cold and desolate Afghanistan and paid respects at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

So he knows what these soldiers think, what they endure, what they do in the name of liberty. They are brave souls such as his friend Matthew, the young man from New Jersey who hung out in his Top Fuel pits at Englishtown last spring, then just months later died half a world away, a casualty in the war on terrorism.

It was with thoughts of Matthew last Sunday that Schumacher put his Mac Tools Gatornationals victory in perspective. "We're asking them to put themselves in harm's way so that we can have the freedom to come out here and do what we do," Schumacher said.

Schumacher has matured as the driver of the U.S. Army Dragster. The father of two small boys and a gung-ho trouper at and away from the track, he also has matured personally from the wild teenager whose own parents enrolled him in a military academy because they feared he would become a juvenile delinquent.

ADVERTISEMENT

Still, he showed a healthy dose of defiance Sunday in beating not only his four elimination-round opponents but also the tricky Gainesville Raceway conditions and psychological pitfalls in this 35th annual Gatornationals edition.

Schumacher said, "The first round was wild. Coming in, everybody knew it was going to be wild" because of the combination of new asphalt and sunshine. We were one of the teams behind the eight-ball this weekend."

He might have been during qualifying (although he was third in the order), but he wasn't Sunday. He beat John Smith, last year's Gatornationals finalist, along with upset-minded Tim Cullinan and Scott Weis, both of whom defied their bottom-half qualifying order to advance.

Schumacher said he took all the Round 1 surprises as exciting yet potentially dangerous to his own chances. Low-budget driver Bruce Litton upset Scott Kalitta, Doug Herbert fell to part-time entry Cullinan, and Larry Dixon lost to Doug Kalitta.

Schumacher said however satisfying it was to watch the exit of some of his keenest competition, he had to be careful to stay focused and not figure anything was a certainty. Then in the very next pairing after he dispatched Smith, Brandon Bernstein startled the considerable crowd with his career-first red-light disqualification, handing Weis the round-win. "It's so early in the season," Schumacher said, recognizing 20 more races remain. "Someone told me, 'You're leading by 66 points,' and I said, 'That's not enough.' "