NHRA NEWSMAKERS: Johnson Jr. tops field, Carlson faces rookie tension

NHRA Newsmakers
Your inside glimpse at the world's fastest motorsport

NEWS NUGGETS
*	WHIRLWIND MONTH FOR FASTEST COUPLE: NHRA First Lady of Top Fuel
Melanie Troxel (Avon, Ind.) made headlines around the nation when she
earned her first professional win at Pomona - but this weekend it was
her husband Tommy Johnson Jr. at the center of attention. Indeed, the
early season has proved to bring more "better" than "worse" for
motorsport's fastest couple. Johnson earned his seventh career NHRA
victory behind the wheel of his Skoal Funny Car at the expense of none
other than 13-time champ John Force (Yorba Linda, Calif.) at the 22nd
annual Checker Schuck's Kragen NHRA Nationals presented by Castrol at
Phoenix' Firebird International Raceway.
		No one was happier for him than Troxel, who narrowly
missed her second win in a row with a runner-up finish to Rod Fuller
(Las Vegas).
		If Troxel had won, the two would have been the first
married couple to ever win and stand in the POWERade Winner's Circle at
the same event.

*	VP RACING FUELS EXTENDS OFFICIAL SPONSORSHIP: While much recent
chatting has centered on the new, "non-traditional" sponsors now
becoming a common site at NHRA POWERade events (like Von Dutch with
Frank Pedregon, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. and Serta with Andrew Cowin,
Wilmington, N.C.), one mainstay recently announced a continuation to its
support of motorsport's largest sanctioning body. NHRA officials
announced this week that VP Racing Fuels, a long-time supplier of fuel
to participating racers, has extended its status as the Official Racing
Fuel of NHRA through 2009.
		VP Racing Fuels will continue to be the exclusive
on-site racing gasoline supplier at all NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series
events.
		"We couldn't be happier about continuing our
relationship with NHRA," said Fred Morrison, president and CEO of VP
Racing Fuels. "VP has always been solely focused on racing. Our mission
is to help build racing to be bigger and better. Our association with
the industry's preeminent sanctioning body makes us very proud and it's
a responsibility we take very seriously."

*	NEW MEXICO STATE STUDENT WINS AT FIRST EVENT: Eighteen-year-old
Lyndy Bush (Las Cruces, N.M.), probably didn't expect to compete when
she walked through the gates of Firebird Raceway for the first time. But
talent overcame lack of experience when Bush, a student at New Mexico
State University, won the second round of the NHRA POWERade Fan
Nationals, at Firebird Raceway.
		Bush defeated hundreds of other local fans in
ultra-realistic Funny Car simulators designed to mimic the shakes and
sounds of NHRA's fastest dragsters. Fans at each national event battle
to qualify and race in a 16-person bracket elimination, just like the
pros. Each event winner earns a "POWERade Wally" trophy, stands in the
Winner's Circle with the POWERade Series' event winners and earns a trip
to the 42nd annual Automobile Club of Southern California NHRA Finals to
compete against the Series' other fan champs for the 2006 POWERade Fan
Nationals Series championship title.

*	NITRO HARLEYS FEATURED AT THREE EVENTS: Think a six-second trip
down the quarter-mile is intense? Add nitro to the equation and you've
got the Screamin' Eagle NHRA Nitro Harley-Davidson exhibition tour. The
tour features the top Nitro Harley-Davidson teams from the All Harley
Drag Racing Association, who compete to qualify for an eight-bike
elimination field. The teams, already featured in Phoenix, will compete
at the O'Reilly Thunder Valley NHRA Nationals at Bristol (Tenn.) Dragway
(April 28-30) and the Virginia NHRA Nationals at Virginia Motorsports
Park near Richmond, Va. (Oct. 6-8).

INSIDE THE NUMBERS
*	96: Warren Johnson (Buford, Ga.) may be the second winningest
driver on the NHRA circuit (after Force, at 119), but "The Professor"
has had a rough time of it since Denver 2005. Johnson snapped an 11-race
winless skid with a victory over his former crew chief (and, incidently,
three-time and defending Pro Stock world champion) Greg Anderson
(Concord, N.C.) at Firebird International Raceway on Sunday.
		The win marked the 62-year-old's 96th trip to the
Winner's Circle in his GM Performance Parts Pontiac GTO.

HE SAID, SHE SAID
*	CAPPS IN SCHUMACHER FUNNY CAR SPOTLIGHT: The Don
Schumacher-owned Funny Car trio faced a tough reality in Phoenix: Whit
Bazemore (Indianapolis) fouled out in the first round. Defending
POWERade world champion Gary Scelzi (Fresno, Calif.) lost to Phil
Burkart Jr. in the first round. Only Ron Capps (Carlsbad, Calif.) turned
in a decent day with a semifinal finish in a camp that was glowing after
last season's 1-2 finish in the point standings for Scelzi and Capps. In
fact, Capps is now leading the point standings for the first time since
2003 (he finished second without ever leading in 2005). He had this to
say after a pedalfest defeat to Force, who lost to Johnson Jr. in the
final round: "It was a good weekend, but it hurts right now. I got back
from the run (against Force) and told (crew chief Ed McCulloch) right
off the bat, look at the computer. You always learn something from
everything that happens on these runs. Never two runs are the same
there's no time to think during the run ... I was worried for a minute
that he might come into my lane and hit me but I would've been happier
because he would've crossed the center line and we would have gone to
the final ... But leaving here leading the points, I'm ecstatic."

WHO'S HOT!
*	ANDERSON EARNS SECOND NO. 1 QUALIFER IN AS MANY EVENTS: Anderson
may not have been the one celebrating in the Winner's Circle at Phoenix,
but he was definitely a happy man on Saturday after earning his
second-consecutive No. 1 qualifying position in as many events this
season. Anderson raced to a track record time of 6.671 seconds to earn
the position. Warren Johnson earned the track record speed of 207.08
mph.

DRIVERS TELL ALL
*	ROUGH ROAD HAS ROOKIE LOOKING FORWARD: Shaun Carlson (Alta Loma,
Calif.), the 31-year-old rookie Pro Stock driver for Don Schumacher
Racing, had finally started to feel comfortable in his Team Mopar/SRT
Dodge Stratus when a Friday afternoon qualifying error in Phoenix shook
him up again. He wrote about the experience in teammate Richie Stevens'
blog at www.nhra.com: "The burnout was fine. I didn't get crooked, and I
didn't rev the RPM up too high or too low. I actually wasn't shaking - I
was excited. Then, after the burnout, as the car starts to slow down you
have to shut the fuel pump off or else the engine will flood and stall.
I went back in reverse and got back to the line, then I went to turn the
parachutes on and totally forgot to turn the fuel pump on. I guess I was
too worried about the parachutes. I didn't know what I had done (or
didn't do) because the car will still run until the fuel in the
carburetors empties out. By the time I had backed up and started to
stage it felt like it was flooding. What it was actually doing was
running out of fuel. When I let the clutch out it shut off because there
was no fuel there." Find out how crew chief Bob Glidden responded to the
run on Richie Stevens' blog at www.nhra.com.

For more information, contact NHRA Media Relations at (626)914-4761.



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