Red Lights the Story at NHRA’s Spring Nationals
Monday, May 2nd, 2011By: Drew Hierwarter
The real story coming out of Houston after the NHRA O’Reilly Auto Parts Spring Nationals has to be about reaction times. Call it the good the bad and the ugly.
The good has to be rookie Vincent Nobile’s holeshot win in the Pro Stock final against Roger Brogdon. Nobile’s .007 reaction time in the final was a tie for the quickest reaction time of the meet in Pro Stock. Who was he tied with? Roger Brogdon, who recorded his .007 in the semi-final against Mike Edwards.
In the final, Brogdon was “late” with a .009 reaction time that would’ve beaten any other car in any previous round. The win was Nobile’s first and, at the ripe old age of 19, makes him the youngest winner in the history of Pro Stock.
The bad has to be the sheer number of red lights throughout the professional categories. A total of eight races were decided by foul starts including two in the first rounds of Top Fuel and Pro Stock Motorcycle. It’s open for speculation whether or not the new staging light system put in to service for the previous race at Zmax Dragway was the cause of this, but it was also surprising just who got caught by the red.
And that’s the ugly. No less than teammates Jason Line and Greg Anderson both fell victim to leaving early. In Anderson’s case, his -.005 red light in the first round against Larry Morgan was just a matter of trying hard against a tough competitor. But Jason Line’s -.154 against Nobile in the second round was simply driver error.
The same thing happened to T.J. Zizzo in the first round of Top Fuel. His -.163 red light against Doug Kalitta was not close.
But the ugliest of all has to be Mike Neff’s goof in the final against Jeff Arend. Neff had been quicker and faster than Arend in every round, turning in consistent times of 4.13, 4.12, and 4.13, and going 308 to 310 mph. While on the other side of the ladder, Arend had times of 5.60, 4.31, and 4.30, none of them over 296 mph, on his way to the final.
All Mike Neff had to do was go from A to B just as he had done in each preceding round and the Wally would be his. But, in what he later admitted was driver error, he burped the throttle twice and left the line a horrendous .213 seconds before the green light came on handing the win to Arend.
Neff’s reactions times in the previous rounds were .070, .090, and .070 and in a post race interview he blamed only himself for the final round loss saying that; “. . . the driver went brain dead.”
In spite of that, Neff’s runner up was good enough to take over the series points lead and place him 18 markers in front of teammate Robert Hight.
Del Worsham was the winner in Top Fuel, beating teammate Larry Dixon in an all Al-Anabi final round. Andrew Hines was the winner in Pro Stock Motorcycle, beating Michael Phillips 6.90 to Phillips losing 6.94 elapsed time.