Larry Dixon victorious in Top Fuel NHRA Nationals at Charlotte North Carolina
Sep 19th Charlotte, USA: Larry Dixon extended his lead in the Top Fuel class with an enormous advantage over his nearest rival, Dixon may not have won the championship just yet, but he again proved it will be difficult for anyone else to take the lead from him. Dixon ran his final-round record in 2010 to an astonishing 11-0 when he defeated Doug Kalitta. The win is the 59th of Dixon’s storied career and his third straight.
“I can’t believe the amount of wins we’ve had and the amount of finals we’ve been in without losing,” said Dixon. “It’s hard to imagine when you think about all the great cars that are out here. It’s a credit to the team”
“I guess we win ‘em every different way. The race against Tony Schumacher was amazing. There is a period of about two-tenths of a second when I was off the throttle and it was quiet that I could tell it was quiet in the other lane, too. I had a 50-percent chance of hitting it right. Tony is still wearing No. 1, and he’ll continue to do so until someone takes it away from him”
Though the end result was the same as his previous victories, Dixon didn’t have the dominant outing people have come to expect of the Al-Anabi team. He started off strong with a 3.840 that was low ET of the weekend to defeat Dave Grubnic, but after that he needed some lucky breaks to get by championship rivals Schumacher and McClenathan. Against Schumacher in round two, both cars smoked the tires, but a quick pedal got Dixon back on track, while Schumacher continued to trail smoke all the way downtrack. In the semi-finals, Dixon again suffered tire smoke, but McClenathan faced the same troubles earlier in the run and was far enough back that Dixon came out on top.
Dixon remains the NHRA Full Throttle Top Fuel points leader, he leads second-place Cory McClenathan by 85 points.
