Lucas Oil Nationals Qualifying Is Over:

Saturday qualifying is over at the Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota. Here is how the Mopar-sponsored teams did.

“We’ll be running an excellent guy, excellent crew, part of that Capco bunch, and Sunday’s going to be totally different. Our Q4 wasn’t exactly what we were looking for. We wanted to push, and we ended up pushing it a little bit too hard. We’re finding that right balance. I think we’ve been on the spectrum. I think Sunday will be an entirely perfect day to land it right in the middle where we want it. It’s been shown that you can win from any position. I’ve always loved racing at Brainerd. Tomorrow’s the day to bump it up.” – Leah Pritchett

“I like this racetrack. We were pushing it there a little bit that last run. When you see someone put up a big number ahead of you and go No. 1, you don’t want to be out there just being average. Mike (Neff, crew chief) originally wanted to just slide it down there and make sure we have a good race-day tuneup, but after seeing the numbers ahead of us, we wanted to go quicker. We were right there. It almost made it. We’ve almost made it a lot of times. We tried a lot of different things these last two days and we definitely learned a lot. Conditions are going to be cooler tomorrow so we’ll see who can come out and get it figured out soon enough.” – Tony Schumacher

“It’s not like we’re running terrible. We missed it on one run in Q2 when we pushed it hard, but that was the session where most of the cars ran their hero shots. We made three good laps and we find ourselves qualified fourteenth. I wouldn’t want to be the car with lane choice against us first round.” – Jack Beckman

“From the outside of the ropes, you would look at Friday’s qualifying and see that we ran the 05 and the 03. I had a lot of people make comments saying ‘man, you’ve got a great, consistent car,’ but to be honest, we had a pretty good mechanical issue pop-up yesterday that actually shut the car off on me at 900-feet on the first run, and then it did it again in the second run on Friday night. But that’s what’s great about this team, we weren’t even close to being our best and it still went 03 and 05. Then today, we just needed to go to the finish line so we made a conservative Q3 run so we could check all of the parts. Everything lookd good on that run, we knew we had fixed the mechanical issue so we could get back to it on Q4, and sure enough a 3.96 popped up. That’s the NAPA Know How I brag about. Not a lot of teams would have caught some of these issues like an old-school crew chief like Rahn Tobler. It makes it a pleasure to be able to work with this team and watch them attack something gone wrong and then come out Q4 and make a run like that. Nothing is a given, it’s going to be a tough day tomorrow, but it was a nice way to end. I take Tobler out to ‘the Zoo’ every Saturday night here in Brainerd, and he was joking earlier saying ‘we need to step it up, we’re not going to the Zoo if we’re not qualified well,’ and he was half joking, half not. Kudos to Tobler and the team.” – Ron Capps

“It was a weird qualifying weekend, we went down the track once, smoked the tires three times. We’re still trying to get a handle on things and figure things out, but (crew chief) Dickie (Venables) is a smart dude. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but I think we’ll be alright. We’re facing a teammate tomorrow and we’re going to bring our A-game and do the best job we can.” – Matt Hagan

“We’ve got a really good, consistent race car. We’re right in the hunt. Made really nice solid runs in three out of four qualifying rounds. We were right up there in the top four every session, so I think that’s favorable for a good day on Sunday. Coming off of a runner-up here last year and I’d like to do it one round better.” – Tommy Johnson, Jr.

Below are the brackets and first-round pairings for the Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock (we included Pro Stock because Alex Laughlin is running a Dodge Dart chassis this weekend)…

***5th Spot in Funny Car Goes To Tommy Johnson Jr.

Top Fuel Standings:

POSITION	DRIVER	POINTS	POINTS BEHIND LEADER	VEHICLE
01	Steve Torrence	1251	0	Capco Racing/Torrence Motorsports
02	Tony Schumacher	1090	-161	U.S. Army Dragster
03	Clay Millican	1084	-167	Parts Plus/ Great Clips/ UNOH dragster
04	Leah Pritchett	1083	-168	Papa John’s Dragster
05	Doug Kalitta	995	-256	Mac Tools Dragster
06	Antron Brown	927	-324	Matco Tools Dragster
07	Terry McMillen	759	-492	Amalie Motor Oil Dragster
08	Brittany Force	731	-520	Monster Energy Top Fuel Dragster
09	Richie Crampton	660	-591	Kalitta Air/DHL dragster
10	Scott Palmer	649	-602	CatSpot/Tommy Thompson Motorsports

Funny Car Standings:

POSITION	DRIVER	POINTS	POINTS BEHIND LEADER	VEHICLE
01	Courtney Force	1300	0	Advance Auto Parts Chevy Camaro SS
02	Ron Capps	1146	-154	NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R/T
03	Robert Hight	1085	-215	Auto Club Chevy Camaro SS
04	Matt Hagan	1064	-236	Mopar Express Lane Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat
05	Jack Beckman	999	-301	Infinite Hero Foundation Dodge Charger R/T
06	J R Todd	914	-386	DHL Toyota Camry
07	Tommy Johnson Jr	892	-408	Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger R/T
08	John Force	824	-476	PEAK Chevrolet Camaro SS
09	Shawn Langdon	736	-564	Global Electronic Technology Toyota
10	Bob Tasca III	691	-609	AutoAlert Shelby Mustang

Clinched playoff berth 

TV Schedule:

You can watch the Lucas Oil Nationals starting at Noon EST on FS1 on Sunday, August 19th. Race will be re-aired at 10:00pm to 1:00am EST on FS1 on Sunday, August 19th.

Sources: Don Schumacher Racing and NHRA