July 25, 2021
, Sonoma, California
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Exciting final round showdowns for two Mopar Dodge//SRT Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) pilots, Matt Hagan in Funny Car and Leah Pruett in Top Fuel, at the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Sonoma Nationals resulted in runner-up finishes for both drivers with margins of victory in each race of just two-thousandths of a second.
Coming off his first event win of the 2021 NHRA Camping World series season last weekend at Denver’s Dodge//SRT Mile-High Nationals Presented by Pennzoil, Hagan began his race day from the No. 3 position on the Funny Car eliminations ladder and battled through a competitive field to advance to his second consecutive Sonoma Nationals final round appearance. Hagan drove his Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Redeye to wins against Jeff Diehl and Blake Alexander to advance to the semifinal round for a rematch of the Denver final versus Alexis DeJoria. Hagan powered his way to the win over DeJoria to send his Mopar machine to his second straight final round, a third this season and the 68th of his career.
The final round showcased a meeting between two three-time Funny Car NHRA world champions with Hagan going toe-to-toe with Robert Hight for the Sonoma trophy. Hagan stepped on the throttle first and held the lead to the halfway mark before Hight was able to overtake and turn on the win lights just 0.0026 seconds ahead of him. The runner-up finish, Hagan’s second this season and 31st of his career, helped move him up to second place in the Funny Car points standings and within two round wins of reaching the current point leader.
DSR teammate Ron Capps, a four-time winner at Sonoma, began the day from the top rung of the Funny Car eliminations ladder for the 28th time in his career. Capps earned his third pole position in nine races with the quickest runs of Q1 and Q2, extending his streak of qualifying in the top-five at every event this season. For the opening round, the DSR Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat driver lined up against No. 16 qualifier and rookie Tony Jurado and drove to a 3.924-second win. In his quarterfinal matchup with Paul Lee, Capps grabbed an early lead and wheeled his way to a 3.965-second run and another round win to advance to a semifinal battle against No. 4 seed Hight.
While Capps hit the throttle first and gave it a good solid effort by posting a 3.979-second elapsed time run, it wasn’t quite enough to catch Hight after he took over the lead by the 60-foot marker. With the result, Capps and his team’s consistent performance has seen them advance to the semifinals or better at four out of the last five events, putting him fifth in the Funny Car standings.
For Cruz Pedregon, who is seeking a second win this season, his No. 15 qualifying position wasn’t indicative of the progress he felt his team has been making this season or even through the weekend with the Snap-on Tools Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car. He just never got a nice clean run in before lining up against his first round opponent, No. 2 seed DeJoria. The Cruz Pedregon Racing machine had a good launch with its driver’s 0.057-second reaction time to DeJoria’s 0.115-second start but Pedregon’s ride lost a cylinder early in the run, which hampered any hopes on advancing further.
In Top Fuel action at the Sonoma dragstrip, Pruett qualified her DSR Okuma Dodge//SRT dragster sixth for an opening round pairing with No. 7 seed Justin Ashley. Pruett was quicker off the start and never looked back with a 3.739-second run at 327.51 mph run to defeat her opponent’s 3.758/323.04 pass and move on to battle Brittany Force in the quarterfinals for their first match-up since 2018.
Force had a slight starting advantage for the quarterfinal battle but when mid-track traction issues affected them both, it was Pruett who pedaled it and recovered quickly to cross the finish line first and earn a bye-run. In that solo semifinal run the Dodge//SRT dragster recorded its best pass of the weekend with a 3.726 sec./325.53 mph to see Pruett advance to her 17th career Top Fuel final round appearance to face the category’s points leader and five-time event winner this season, Steve Torrence.
The Sonoma raceway fans were treated to an exciting side-by-side final showdown that saw Pruett with the quicker start and a solid 3.768-second pass at 323.04 mph that was just two-thousands of a second (0.0027 seconds) behind Torrence’s 3.757/327.98 at the finish line.
The runner-up finish is Pruett’s first of the season and the ninth of her Top Fuel career. With the result, she moves into fifth place in the standings with four national events remaining before points reset for the NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship, the seven-race playoff series that begins Sept. 9 at the Mopar Express Lane NHRA Nationals Presented By Pennzoil in Reading, Pennsylvania, and concludes with the NHRA finals in November in Pomona, California.
The NHRA now heads to Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, California, for the final event of the three-race western swing that will wrap up three consecutive weeks of racing next weekend.
“The race weekend was challenging. We had what was the beginning of two really spectacular runs in Q1 and Q2 with the Snap-on Tools Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat but unfortunately the track didn’t cooperate and we spun the tires down the track in those two (qualifying) passes. We dropped a cylinder in the first round which was out of the blue. We had no warning that it was going to do that. We’ll regroup. It’s not the weekend we wanted but overall we’re encouraged by the runs I was starting to make. Those runs were actually better than some of the runs that my team made last year which would have put us in the mid-3.80s (second passes), so the potential is there.
“We’re going to go to Pomona now and it’s going to be a home game for us. I love Pomona and always have but it’s going to be unusual to race there in late July (as a result of rescheduling due to pandemic restrictions) with the heat but we’ll be ready for it. Our setup, our guys, our team loves the hotter conditions so we’re looking forward to that event. Once we get on a roll, we’ll feel like we’ll be a lot better and more consistent. We’re still tweaking it a little bit and looking forward to it.”
DodgeGarage: Digital Hub for Drag Racing News
Fans can follow all the NHRA action this season at DodgeGarage, the one-stop portal for Dodge//SRT and Mopar drag-racing news. The site includes daily updates and access to an online racing HQ, news, events, galleries, available downloads and merchandise. For more information, visit www.dodgegarage.com.
@DodgeMoparMotorsports on Instagram
The @DodgeMoparMotorsports Instagram channel continues to share content capturing Dodge//SRT Mopar drivers on the track. Fans can see action from the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series and NHRA Sportsman grassroots racers, competing in classes such as Factory Stock Showdown, Stock and Super Stock, as well as additional motorsports series.
Mopar
Mopar (a simple contraction of the words MOtor and PARts) offers exceptional service, parts and customer care. Born in 1937 as the name of a line of antifreeze products, the Mopar brand has evolved over more than 80 years to represent both complete vehicle care and authentic performance for owners and enthusiasts worldwide.
Mopar made its mark in the 1960s during the muscle-car era with performance parts to enhance speed and handling for both on-road and racing use. Later, the brand expanded to include technical service and customer support. Today, Mopar integrates service, parts and customer-care operations in order to enhance customer and dealer support worldwide.
Mopar is part of the portfolio of brands offered by leading global automaker and mobility provider Stellantis. For more information regarding Stellantis (NYSE: STLA), please visit www.stellantis.com.
Follow Mopar and company news and video on:
Company blog: blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com
Media website: media.stellantisnorthamerica.com
Mopar brand: www.mopar.com
Mopar blog: blog.mopar.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mopar
Instagram: www.instagram.com/officialmopar
Twitter: @OfficialMOPAR
YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/mopar and www.youtube.com/StellantisNA
Dodge//SRT
For more than 100 years, the Dodge brand has carried on the spirit of brothers John and Horace Dodge. Their influence continues today as Dodge shifts into high gear with muscle cars and SUVs that deliver unrivaled performance in each of the segments where they compete.
2021 marks the year that Dodge is distilled into a pure performance brand, offering Hellcat-powered, 700-plus-horsepower SRT versions of every model across the lineup. For the 2021 model year, Dodge delivers the drag-strip dominating 807-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Super Stock, the new 797-horsepower Dodge Charger SRT Redeye, the most powerful and fastest mass-produced sedan in the world, and the new 710-horsepower Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat, the most powerful SUV ever. Combined, these three muscle cars make Dodge the industry’s most powerful brand, offering more horsepower than any other American brand across its entire lineup.
In 2020, Dodge was named the “#1 Brand in Initial Quality,” making it the first domestic brand ever to rank No. 1 in the J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS). The Dodge brand also ranked No. 1 in the J.D. Power APEAL Study (mass market). These results are historic because it marks the first time a domestic brand has earned top spots in both J.D. Power studies in the same year.
Dodge is part of the portfolio of brands offered by leading global automaker and mobility provider Stellantis. For more information regarding Stellantis (NYSE: STLA), please visit www.stellantis.com.
Follow Dodge and company news and video on:
Company blog: blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com
Media website: media.stellantisnorthamerica.com
Dodge brand: www.dodge.com
DodgeGarage: www.dodgegarage.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dodge
Instagram: www.instagram.com/dodgeofficial
Twitter: @Dodge and @StellantisNA
YouTube: www.youtube.com/dodge and www.youtube.com/StellantisNA