1 qualifying streak in Seattle but couldn’t go the distance on Sunday. The Sonoma final was particularly captivating with Etchells outrunning Force, 5.12 to 5.14, but Force eking out a holeshot win by a. 1 and defeated the late Chuck Etchells in the final round. At the first two events of the Western Swing, John Force qualified No. Amato faced big challenges in 1991 from former Funny Car champions Kenny Bernstein and Don “the Snake” Prudhomme and running the table at the Western Swing helped pad his lead enough to keep them at bay during his second of three consecutive titles.Ĭoming off his most dominant season until his all-world 1996 campaign, Force donned a Chevy Lumina body on his Austin Coil-tuned hot rod. The first five-time Top Fuel world champion always brought something special to Denver, whether Tim Richards was tuning him as he did during his 1991 sweep of the Western Swing or Jimmy Prock did years later when Amato set a track record of 4.58 in 1999 that was never broken during the quarter-mile era. The following is a look at the elusive club of drivers who have swept the Western Swing. (Pro Stock Motorcycle has never been contested at the Seattle event.) Consider how dominant Bob Glidden, Warren Johnson, Erica Enders, and Greg Anderson were during some of their championship seasons, and it is amazing that Anderson’s 2004 sweep was the only time it has ever happened in the factory hot rod category - same with John Force in Funny Car. It has occurred five times in Top Fuel by five different drivers and only once in Funny Car and Pro Stock. No professional driver has swept the Western Swing more than once. More than a decade has passed since a Pro driver last swept all three races of the Western Swing. In Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle, which have no power adders such as superchargers, the engines are destined to lose power in the atmospheric conditions, so teams make up as much as they can in the drivetrain with shorter transmission and rear-end gears and setups they don’t use at any other track. They pull out all the stops with the engine combination to make the clutch think it’s at sea level in order to perform as such. At this coming weekend’s Dodge Power Brokers NHRA Mile-High Nationals, nitro teams will pull out racks of rods and pistons that have been shelved since the last time they visited Bandimere Speedway, spin their blowers hard, and utilize wing angles that compensate for the thin air. The difficulty in mastering the combination at the Mile-High City cannot be emphasized enough. It requires versatility along with three races worth of mistake-free racing. The feat has a high degree of difficulty with one of the events being at the high altitudes of the Rocky Mountains and the other two in coastal climates. Seven NHRA Camping World Series pros and one more in the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series ranks have pulled off the elusive sweep of the three events held in Denver, Sonoma, and Seattle on consecutive weekends that have been a tradition on the NHRA tour since 1989.
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