Sophomore Jacob Eggert (9), a UMD quarterback candidate from Mankato, launched a long pass over the reach of Caden Osmonson (92), a senior from Bloomington, during UMD's spring game. Photo by John Gilbert.

One of biggest single sports events of this or any year came and went with the 41st running of the Lucas Oil NHRA national championship drag races at Brainerd International Raceway, although the local, regional and national coverage it earned this time left the entire weekend shrouded in mystery more than information.

If you’ve never attended an NHRA meet, you probably can’t grasp the quite astonishing impact one of the major drag-racing weekends can have. Thousands of RVs filled much of the infield area of the 3-mile road-racing course, and observed numerous highlights — among them the 75th championship won by Ron Capps in Funny Car, and the season’s highest Top Fuel speed of 338.26 miles per hour by Mike Salinas, which was also third fastest of all time. Salinas, however, lost to eventual Top Fuel winner Antron Brown in the semifinals.

Greg Anderson, Duluth native and regional favorite with five national season Pro Stock championships on his resume, was fastest qualifier in the non-supercharged class and won his first-round match, but lost to Kyle Koretsky in the quarterfinals in one of the closest races of Sunday’s eliminations on what is known as a “hole-shot.”

Koretsky cut the starting lights closer, for a reaction-time edge at 0.030 to Anderson’s not-bad 0.041, and that edge of 11-thousandths of a second equated to victory by Koretsky, even though Koretsky’s elapsed time for the quarter-mile was 6.587 to Anderson’s quicker 6.584-second burst. Both cars hit identical 208.14 mph top speeds. Koretsky also won his semifinal round, but suffered bad tire shake in the final and was beaten by Dallas Glenn’s 6.566-second winning time.

The attraction of watching two cars race side-by-side in various classes up to those top three pro categories makes for riveting entertainment, and estimates of up to 50,000 fans filled the grandstands on Sunday, after thousands of them had been camping in those infield RVs since Thursday.

But covering such a complicated sport requires far more than, for example, covering a football team like UMD’s as it heads into a new season. The roster changes, but the results are cut and dried by watching the game, or at least the scoreboard. For example, each car is clocked on its own for elapsed time, and the top speed is just an add-on, impressive or not. If a driver is quicker reacting to the starting lights, each 10th of a second edge translates to the chances at victory, and can even lead to a slower time and lower speed beating a quick ET and higher speed. That adds to the complexity.

The NHRA made videos and interviews of Greg Anderson available to the media and many took advantage of it to preview the big weekend. Some, including Fox Sports, which carried Sunday’s eliminations in a crammed full session Sunday afternoon, said it was Anderson’s home track, where he’d been racing for 50 years.     

The big story about Anderson is that his dad was a personal friend of the late John Hagen, who was killed in a Pro Stock accident at Brainerd when Greg was a youngster, and it caused him to veer away from interest in the sport. As a brilliant mechanic, he ultimately got a job working on the crew of Pro Stock champion Warren Johnson, and actually never drove, or had interest in driving, until years later when he married a woman from Charlotte, N.C., whose father set him up with his own race team. A fast learner, Anderson then won five season championships in Pro Stock.

Similar misconceptions might have come from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where my former teammate and buddy Patrick Reusse went to Brainerd and wrote his usual interesting piece about the fans and race teams from the early days. Patrick wrote that when George Montgomery built the original Donnybrooke Speedway, road-racing was his main motive, “yet he also was wise enough to do this: The track was designed with an extra-long straightaway as the main viewing area and also to accommodate a quarter-mile drag-racing strip.”

Not quite, Patrick. George was a wonderful man, who used to race Ford Cobra sports cars, and was a pilot for Northwest Airlines. When he spent his retirement money to build the road-racing track, he designed it with a mile-long straighaway so that he could drive his Cobra at incredible speeds, ending it with a banked right Turn 1.    

In those days, there was specific fan bases for road-racing, stock car circle-track racing and straight-line drag racing, and very few of those interested in one had any interest in the others. Montgomery loved road racing, and he hated drag-racing. After huge successes putting on SCCA road races such as the Minneapolis Tribune Can-Am in 1970 and 1971, and the Trans-Am and Continental Championships, the expenses of putting on such events was staggering. Having covered all the Donnybrooke races since its inception, my family had numerous get-togethers with the Montgomery family, and I tried hard to convince him to put on some drag races. My logic was that any road-race required huge investments, but if you run a drag race, all the competitors will pay to race and you can keep them coming back by giving the winners a plastic trophy. Finally, he agreed to try it, and drag-racing became an enormously popular event — to George’s astonishment.

When the track still suffered and went into bankruptcy, race driver Jerry Hansen bought it, renamed it Brainerd International Raceway, and arranged a contract with the National Hot Rod Association to conduct one of its coast-to-coast national meets. As time has passed, road racing is all but forgotten, and the annual NHRA meet has reigned supreme.

Still, the sameness of the repetition of every national event both endures and suffers, and the high cost of real estate where race facilities are located has meshed with a decrease in overall attendance — perhaps because ticket prices have gone over the moon — and some of the most iconic dragstrips are closing, including Englishtown in New Jersey, the home of the Summernationals, Bandimere Speedway near Denver, the NHRA’s home track, plus Heartland in Topeka, Kansas, and others are being shuttered.

My wife, Joan, and older son, Jack, and I cleared a couple of conflicts so we could make the one-day drive from Duluth to Brainerd Sunday and return Sunday night, so I sheepishly tried to call the BIR office to inquire about 11th hour credentials. No answer, except a recording, suggesting I should call back this week! I tried online, too, and that is where I discovered that single-day admission tickets for Joan and Jack would be $120 each! We decided to pass up the venture and see what we could on television.

But all the racers love coming to BIR for the clean air, clean water, resort-level accommodations, and persistent fan interest, and this year was a continuation of that trend. In the mid-1980s, a heavy rainstorm washed out the afternoon qualifying for Friday, and after the rain stopped, a heavy overcast remained.    

The forecast was for no more rain, so track officials tried everything to dry out the track, desperate to get in at least one round of pro qualifying. A helicopter was even deployed to hover low over the asphalt in order to dry it out. When the Pro Stocks made a run, and then the Funny Cars and Top Fuelers, the spectacle was stunning.

Because of the dense, cool air, the big supercharged engines made enormous power and the flames shooting out of the exposed Funny Car and Top Fuel engines went 10 feet above the cars, piercing the gathering darkness. In the process, Top Fuel cars set repeated track speed records in that session, which couldn’t be duplicated the next day, Saturday, in hotter conditions. The NHRA seized the opportunity and mandated that every national event would have a Friday twilight qualifying session trying to extend the magic. Ironically, all that history came into play at BIR last Friday.

After one complete round of Pro qualifying, the cars were set for the twilight runs. Greg Anderson put his Camaro at No. 1 in Pro Stock qualifying, but Blake Alexander’s Mustang blew its engine in the Funny Car runs, dumping all its oil onto the track. With twilight approaching, the track and NHRA crews worked feverishly for almost an hour to clean up the mess and dry out the surface. They ran seven more Funny Car passes, and some of the cars nearly veered out of control from the slippery surface. The Top Fuel drivers got together and decided they had to talk to lNHRA officials, but for reasons known only to those NHRA officials, nobody answered their phones. S

o the Top Fuel drivers decided the track was unsafe for their huge engines, making 11,000 horsepower through those giant slick tires, and they agreed to not make their second qualifying runs in the gathering darkness. The foul-up cost the Top Fuel cars the best and coolest weather of the weekend, and they proceeded to Saturday for the rest of qualifying.

Because the various news media had abandoned BIR, with Reusse, for example, leaving to write about his favorite small-town amateur baseball tournament, and others trusting wire services and the NHRA for information, race fans were left in a void. The NHRA is clever at never giving out anything that might sound negative. Only one national racing publication carried any information about the “Minnesota Mutiny” of the Top Fuel stars.

Even the Fox Sports “live” coverage spent much of its first noon session doing features and promo pieces and ignored the biggest news story of the season. And when it came to the eliminations, also on video replay, it overlooked the fantastic runs of Mike Salinas in Top Fuel, and even winner Antron Brown.    

It also ran a nice personal featurette on the legendary John Force — the most colorful quote machine in the history of NHRA — even while Force was winning his first-round match, and then lost to Dale Creasy in the quarterfinals. Dallas Glenn, driving a Greg Anderson team car, not only beat Kyle Koretsky in a pair of team cars in the Pro Stock final, but it was his fourth victory of the season and boosted his Pro Stock points lead.

Bulldogs depth key

As the UMD football team continues to train for the upcoming Northern Sun Conference season, Kyle Walljasper is the runaway leader at quarterback, but faces a different situation this year as a sophomore. Last year, as a freshman, he wasn’t even mentioned on the depth chart, but after a few injuries, he got the chance to go in, usually in situations where a quarterback run was called for. Game after game, he produced with regularity.

Now as a sophomore, he has taken a clear leadership role in the huddles, the dressing room and in the scheme of coach Curt Wiese. His running specialty remained, and Walljasper has worked to polish his passing skills, which proved surprisingly adequate as a freshman once he was entrusted to throw the ball more.

Meanwhile, Wiese has assembled some impressive depth at quarterback, and his biggest chore might be to decide who will be his choice as first backup — preferably in blowing victories and not because of injuries. The offense should be secure, and it will be the development of the UMD defense that might be the key to success this year.

The Bulldogs open the season August 31 against Northern Michigan in a non-conference game that will provide a stiff test for the newly realigned NSIC, in which there no longer will be north and south divisions, but all will compete overall in the standings. The Bulldogs go to Northern State in Aberdeen for their September 9 NSIC opener before returning to Malosky Stadium to face Sioux Falls in their home conference opener on September 16.