Two major racing circuits will compete in the Southeast this weekend when NASCAR runs at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the Sprint All-Star weekend races and the NHRA’s Mellow Yellow Drag Racing Series runs at Atlanta Dragway in Commerce Friday through Sunday in the 34th annual Summit Southern Nationals.
The Southern Nationals includes races for Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle on the professional side and other races for Sportsman and Pro-Mod drivers.
In Top Fuel, defending Atlanta champion Antron Brown is on a hot streak. He and his Don Schumacher Racing teammate, Tony Schumacher, have combined to win the three most recent races and four of the past six.
Schumacher, a seven-time Top Fuel season champion and winner of a record 73 event titles, has one big trophy missing from his case — a Top Fuel victory at Atlanta, the only track on the current schedule where he hasn’t won. He does have runner-up finishes in 2000, 2008, 2011 and 2012.
Brown, the points leader, has five Atlanta victories, three in Top Fuel and two in Pro Stock Motorcycle. He recently got his 28th Top Fuel victory and holds a 37-point lead over Doug Kalitta.
Brown already has three victories this season. He said in a team release that he likes the Atlanta track.
“It reminds me of one of the old-school race tracks that I grew up on around New Jersey,” he said. “When you go there, it’s the history and environment that brings you back to when you were a little kid. The stands are really close to the drag strip, and the old-school drag-racers come there. It makes me feel like where it all started for me, and I just think about going fast and going faster.”
Force team favored: Any time the Funny Cars run at Atlanta, the cars from John Force Racing are among the ones to beat. JFR driver Robert Hight will ride a streak of making five final rounds into Atlanta, where the division points leader will be seeking his third consecutive race victory this season and his 300th career-round victory.
“Atlanta Dragway is a track where I have had a lot of success,” he said. “The first three years of my career I was in the final there.”
Hight’s boss, John Force, is the all-time Funny Car victory leader at Atlanta with seven, but he hasn’t won in Commerce since 2005.
Another change at Charlotte: Sprint Cup drivers are set to run in an All-Star race with a new format. The main change is to the Sprint Showdown, a "last-chance" race for drivers not already qualified for the main event. As in previous years, winners of races dating back to the 2013 Daytona 500 are locked into the starting field for the 90-lap, $1 million All-Star race. They'll be joined by the top two finishers in the Showdown and another driver voted in by fans.
The Showdown, which has been held just prior to the All-Star race on Saturday night in previous years, will be run Friday night. The winner of the fan vote also will be announced on Friday, giving all three a chance to run for the pole on Saturday.
Among the Showdown favorites is Danica Patrick, who had a career-best seventh-place run at Kansas Speedway. Patrick’s crew chief Tony Gibson said after Kansas that he believes his team and Patrick are on the upswing.
“This is probably one of our best-ever weekends, and hopefully, this will be something that we can build on,” he said. “We have two big weeks coming up at Charlotte with the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600, and I think she showed what she’s capable of [at Kansas].”
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