Matt Hagan needed a big weekend at Brainerd. He got one. The four-time NHRA Funny Car champion drove his Tony Stewart Racing Dodge//SRT Hellcat to a win at the Brainerd Nationals on Sunday, claiming his 58th career victory and moving from fifth place to the top of the Funny Car points standings in a single afternoon.
Hagan ran low elapsed time in every round, a standard almost impossible to maintain across a 16-car field. He opened with a 3.897 against Jim Campbell, backed that with a 3.944 against Chad Green, then posted a 3.942 to beat reigning world champion Austin Prock in the semis. The final matched him against Jordan Vandergriff, the driver he needed to beat most. Hagan’s 3.946 against Vandergriff’s 4.038 wasn’t close. He enters the U.S. Nationals with a seven-point lead, the Funny Car regular-season championship effectively at stake when eliminations run on Sept. 7 at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.
“At the end of the day, we definitely could have bracket raced this car,” Hagan said, crediting crew chief Mike Knudsen and a team he noted has been together long enough to dial in confidence round after round. Hagan has raced with Dodge for 19 years. He knows the rhythm.
The more unexpected story from Brainerd came out of the Top Fuel lane. TSR teammate Leah Pruett had an erratic qualifying weekend, ending up sixth at 3.756 despite briefly sitting second overall. In round one of eliminations, she delivered the quickest pass of the entire Top Fuel field: a 3.702 at 341.08 mph against Will Smith. It was the first time in her 13-win Top Fuel career that Pruett had cracked 340 mph, a milestone that landed in front of a full house at Brainerd International Raceway.
Her quarterfinal against Shawn Langdon showed both ends of what Top Fuel can be. The car lifted its front wheels at the 330-foot mark, forcing Pruett to lift and coast. She still beat Langdon, 4.158 to 4.247, because Langdon couldn’t close what Pruett had built at the hit.
Going into the semifinals against rookie Maddi Gordon, the TSR crew added weight to the front of the car and bolted on side spoilers to address the handling. It wasn’t enough at the stripe. Gordon edged Pruett, 3.770 to 3.776, in a race that was effectively even through the first half of the track. Pruett stays third in Top Fuel points and is locked into the top-ten Countdown field for the six-race championship run that begins after Indianapolis.
Team owner Tony Stewart, the Winternationals Top Fuel winner who campaigns his own R+L Carriers/Elite Motorsports dragster, went to the quarterfinals with a 3.726 in round one over Josh Hart, then lost to Gordon, 3.740 to 3.751, in what was becoming a pattern for TSR’s weekend: close losses to the same rookie.
The NHRA U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, scheduled for Sept. 4–7, is the last regular-season event before the Countdown begins. Nitro qualifying opens Friday, Sept. 5, at 7:30 p.m. EDT. Final eliminations run Monday, Sept. 7, with Fox Sports 1 carrying coverage at noon EDT and the FOX broadcast network picking up at 2 p.m. EDT. For Hagan, seven points is a slim cushion. For Pruett, third place and a Countdown berth is a strong return in a season she described as a learning process at every track. Gordon, meanwhile, has given both of them something to think about before Indianapolis.
Source: Dodge. Images courtesy of Dodge.
