Larry Dixon has taken the Top-Fuel trophy at the 11th annual SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at ‘The Strip’ at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Dixon, who collected his milestone 50th career win in Top Fuel last weekend in Houston, defeated Cory McClenathan in a final-round battle with the points lead in the balance.
The Al-Anabi driver took the win, his third of the season, and the championship lead by one point! Dixon’s win puts him 13th place on NHRA’s list of all-time winners.
“We had a great car all weekend,” said Dixon.
“The car was unbelievable all through qualifying, just very strong. We qualified second and made up a bunch of points on Cory in qualifying. Then, we knew that if we could make it to the final round, if we beat him we’d get the points lead, and we got both. ”
The sport’s two most successful Funny Car drivers, John Force (128 wins) and Tony Pedregon (43 victories) faced off in the final round. Force took the victory after Pedregon went up in smoke. Force now has a 120-point advantage over Matt Hagan. Force was pleased to win in the heat of Las Vegas.
“My Mustang knows how to run at night,” said Force. “It doesn’t like the heat. We started at Pomona, and everywhere it ran good, and we ran good at Houston and then the sun came out, and we were just toast. So we came in here with the attitude of start slow and make it go A to B, and you notice that we were fumbling just to get in the show. We got ‘er in”
Mike Edwards extended his lead in Pro Stock with a win over Greg Stanfield in the final. The victory was the 24th of Pro Stock career and now has a healthy 216-point lead on Allen Johnson.
The next event on the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series is the AAA Insurance NHRA Midwest Nationals in Madison, Illinois April 30 – May 2
