Robert Hight earned a very timely victory during a super speedy edition of the Lucas Oil Nationals held at scenic Brainerd International Raceway.

Hight earned his first Funny Car victory in more than a year and the 35th of his career by defeating Tommy Johnson Jr. in the final round. Hight powered his Auto Club Chevy Camaro to a 3.956 at 323.58 to finish in front of Johnson’s Make-A-Wish Dodge Charger, which was making its third consecutive final round appearance.

“We had a real good car,” said Hight, who defeated Ron Capps, Brian Stewart and Tim Wilkerson in earlier rounds. “It was running good, but you never know what you’re going to get in these kinds of conditions. This thing was a handful to drive today. We changed a bunch of things on the car, and it’s carrying the front end. It’s tough. I’m not going to get cocky. The DSR cars have been dominant. We closed the gap a bunch this weekend, and I know we have a lot of work to do. We’re going to keep it up and test in Indy.”

It was Hight’s first Brainerd win and the victory put him into the $100,000 Traxxas Nitro Shootout all-star bonus race at Indy. His win also ties him for fourth in all-time NHRA Funny Car wins with Don Prudhomme and Cruz Pedregon.

“This was a timely win,” Hight said. “I didn’t want to go up against Courtney [Force] in a fan vote. Are you kidding me? We got in the Traxxas Shootout. I wasn’t in it last year. To be mentioned with Don Prudhomme and Cruz, that’s pretty impressive.”

Attending NHRA Funny Car teams took advantage of the cool overcast weather conditions at Brainerd International Raceway to reset national records in those categories. For the third time in a month, Jack Beckman reset the Funny Car ET mark – this time at 3.901 seconds.

Red-hot Beckman, who lost in the semis to Johnson Jr. when his ultra-quick Infinite Hero Dodge Charger lost traction, used his 20-point national record bonus to increase his series lead to 50 points over Hagan. Hagan lost in round two to Beckman in the quickest side-by-side race in NHRA history.

Fellow DSR teammate Matt Hagan, driving his Rocky Boots/Mopar Charger, ran the quickest FC time in history at an astounding 3.879 secs (!) – but was unable to back that run up within the required 1%. Hagan did however up the national MPH record to an amazing 329.58 mph.

Event Essentials:   NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals (Aug 21-23rd, 2015) 

Posted with files from NHRA Communcations and Bruce Biegler
Photos by: Jim Kampmann