Spencer Massey (Top Fuel), Ron Capps (Funny Car), Greg Anderson (Pro Stock), and Karen Stoffer (Pro Stock Motorcycle) all took home a wally at the 46th annual Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Auto Plus Raceway on Sunday.
Massey made his victory debut of the 2015 NHRA Mellow Yellow Dragracing Series. Massey defeated defending world champion Tony Schumacher in his Red Fuel dragster with a whole shot off the starting line and performance of 3.882 seconds ET at 320.74 mph. This is Massy’s first win in Gainesville and 18th of his career. This victory puts him at on tie with Shirley Muldowney and Darrell Gwynn for 12th on the all-time wins list in Top Fuel.
Massey not only got his first victory of the 2015 season but multiple of his crew members also walked away with their first wins ever today. He was natural happy.
“Just to be able to race against legends and do this, this is my dream and I never want it to end,” he said.
In Funny Car, Ron Capps drove his NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger R/T in an impressive run against John Hale, a first-time finalist. Capps advanced from the semi-finals by a .0001 win over Tim Wilkerson. A final pass of 4.115 topping out at 311.05 mph clinched the win for Capps.
This is his third victory at Gatornationals and his 42nd Funny Car win. This win at Gainesville also came with an added bonus for Capps
“One of the coolest things about winning today was getting locked into the Traxxas Shootout, that is a tough nut to crack, so a win puts you in automatically so we can relax a little bit that we’re in that.”
Rookie Driver John Hale advanced to his first Funny Car finals in his ALO Drink Dodge Charger for Jimm Dunn Racing. This was only Hale’s sixth career start and he out ran 16-time world champ John Force, Alexis DeJoria, and Blake Alexander to reach the finals.
In the Pro Stock class Greg Anderson broke a career milestone taking home his 75th win in Pro Stock. This win in Gainesville was his first victory since 2012 in Englishtown. Coincidentally the last time he won was in a red car and that’s what he had today, a red Summit Racing Chevy Camaro. Anderson clocked in a 6.538 at 213.43 mph run in a Summit Racing final round after defeating teammate Jason Line.
Anderson says this was a very special weekend for him.
“A year ago I couldn’t even come to this race, I was trying to recover from heart surgery. Couldn’t even attend the race let alone drive a race car so its been quite a year for me.”
Karen Stoffer competed in her first race since 2013 and was the last (wo)man standing. Stoffer had an impressive performance running 6.900 at 195.11 mph on her Stoffer Enterprises Suzuki to defeat three-time world champ Eddie Krawiec in the finals. This is Stoffer’s second win in Gainesville and seventh career win in Pro Stock Motorcycle.
Stoffer only had one engine to race this weekend but that didnt damper her or her team’s drive for success.
“If you’re coming up here to race at this level with this caliber of people, and this caliber of teams you got to go all out. We didnt do anything other than the fact that we were more conservative on our program back in the pits. We tore down a little deeper then we normally would.”
Up next for the NHRA Mellow Yellow Drag Racing Series is the 6th annual NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, in Charlotte March 27-29.
For full audio of the above quotes see below:
Karen Stoffer Pro Stock Motorcycle