Menards NHRA Nationals
Presented by PetArmor
Event No. 11 of 20
Heartland Motorsports Park
Topeka, Kan.
Aug. 13 - 15, 2021
LEAH PRUETT
Driver of the Cookie and Candy Pop Top Fuel Dragster
Qualified: No. 11
The Competition: No. 4 Steve Torrence
The Results:
Q1: 6.412 E.T. at 105.01 MPH
Q2: 3.897 E.T. at 314.31 MPH
Q3: 4.372 E.T. at 193.46 MPH
From Leah:
We’ve got a new, great look this weekend here at Topeka with the Cookie Pop and Candy Pop dragster and Menards. We did not have the best start to qualifying with smoking the tires on Friday night, and that put us in a position to go down the track in the hot conditions in the summer Kansas heat. We were able to run a nice 3.89 and chip away at it for the final qualifying session to get a solid mid-3.70s run, but unfortunately, fuel system issues plagued us. If our Top Fuel dragster ran on all eight cylinders we would have been just fine. Nitro causes this problem at times. The momentum we had from Sonoma and Pomona (Calif.), we will pull that back out tomorrow and we’ll need to with a tough first round opponent in Steve Torrence. They’re the team to beat right now, but we have a great team and we’ll be looking to pop off some win lights one at a time.
The Results:
Q1: 9.737 E.T. at 123.78 MPH
Q2: 8.584 E.T. at 173.41 MPH
Q3: 8.011 E.T. at 175.64 MPH
From Leah:
Coming off of the mountain in Denver we had a really great showing with that final round appearance with this new 2021 Mopar Drag Pak. We obviously had to make some setup changes to come here to Topeka. It was just off the mountain, it was from that altitude to conditions we are more familiar with from earlier in the season. We qualified in the 10th position. We spun the tires in Q1 and I didn’t do a great job of pedaling and getting the car down the track as quick as possible. We had a chance to work on that again in Q2 when it spun the tires in the heat. It was so close to making it, but we were able to pedal and shift and get some data and that helped us run an 8.01 with a smooth, clean pass in Q3. We started a bit behind the eight ball, but we have three cars now and we have to adapt and learn with the data from each car, and that will make us stronger as a team. This Drag Pak team is moving in the right direction and I’m confident we can dip back into the 7s and turn on some win lights.
Source: Don Schumacher Racing
