Photo – Courtesy of RobertHight.com
John Force and Robert Hight were a potent 1-2 punch at Summit Racing Equipment Motorsports Park on Friday night. Force’s Castrol GTX Ford Mustang set the track record with a provisional No. 1 elapsed time of 4.021 seconds at 317.72 mph. Right behind Force was teammate Robert Hight and the Auto Club Ford Mustang who ran 4.030 seconds at a track speed record of 318.77 mph.
As dominant as Force’s Castrol GTX Ford Mustang was in the final qualifying session on Friday the Auto Club Ford Mustang of Robert Hight was up to the task as well posting the quickest run of the first qualifying session and was second to Force in the night session. Hight picked up five qualifying bonus points for his efforts.
“It’s definitely coming around. Right now points are everything and we have to stay ahead of everyone that’s behind us to stay in that top-ten. Every run where we can pick up points in qualifying and go rounds on race day is huge. Today, we made five points on Tasca (Bob, III) and that’s exactly what we needed to do,” said Hight who sits 10th in the Mello Yello Funny Car point standings.
“I’m proud of my crew chief, Jimmy (Prock), that he didn’t just give it away tonight. We were low ET the first run. You know, we could have gone up there swingin’, trying to run in the threes, because that kind of is his style. He played it safe and we came up a hair short against John,” said Hight. “Just like last week when we lost to Capps, I told my guys, right now, when I lose on race day, I don’t want to lose smoking the tires, I want to lose going down the track making runs. If you throw out that run from last weekend when (Matt) Hagan and I got shut off, my Auto Club Ford Mustang has gone down the track every single run and ran 4.0’s. I’m proud of my guys. We need to do it twice tomorrow and see where it shakes out.”
Hight’s night time run may not have earned him the track elapsed time record but his monstrous speed of 318.77 mph grabbed the track speed record for the 2009 Funny Car champion.
“A track speed record is huge, but you can look at the incrementals and there’s more out there. Mike Neff ran almost three mph faster than us at half-track, yet we had the top speed. So, if we get ours to run through the middle like he did, you can run 321 mph. You see all these numbers, but there’s room for improvement. I’m excited because we’re not right out the ragged edge and we can run better,” said Hight.
Robert Hight is our next guest on Fan4Racing Fan2Fan NHRA Talk, Monday, July 8th at 9:30pm ET. Fans can interact with Robert Hight during the Q&A segment of our LIVE broadcast by calling 347-996-5176.
