50th Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals
presented by J&A Service
Gainesville Raceway
March 14-17, 2019

Top Fuel Harley Eliminations

Round 1 Eliminations

Round 2 Eliminations

Round 3 Eliminations

Top Fuel Harley Qualifying

On Friday, March 15th, 2019, during the 50th running of the Amalie Motor Oil, NHRA Gator Nationals, presented by JA Service, after 2 rounds of qualifying on Friday, 15, March, 2019, Tak Shigematsu of Japan was sitting in the #1 spot with a 6.10 @ 233 MPH. Two more rounds of qualifying are slated for today, Saturday, 16, March. Approximate run times may be close to 11AM and 3PM, EST, depending on actual race event run times.

Tak Shigematsu makes the quickest run in NHRA Top Fuel Harley history with a 6.101
Video courtesy of nhra.com – Full Coverage on Fox Sports

Qualifying after 2 rounds on Friday yielded: Tak Shigematsu 6.10, Doug Vancil 6.34, Beau Layne 6.39, Tii Tharpe 6.41, Jake Stordeur 6.52, Armon Furr 6.56, Tracy Kile 6.81, Rickey House 7.18 (Bump Spot 8 bike field). Outside looking in for the moment are: Chris Smith 7.51, Bobby Malloy 7.63, Billy Jackson 7.72, and Jay Turner 11.05. For the purists who truly love drag racing, Tak Shigematsu’s incremental numbers:

RT / .112
60’ / 1.139
330’ / 2.80
1/8 ET / 4.065
1/8 MPH / 196.70
1000’ / 5.15
1/4 ET / 6.101
1/4 MPH / 233.68

TFH Q-3 session: Going into the Q-3 session the eight bike field bump was a 7.18, coming out of the session, the bump lowered to a 6.43 elapsed time, a very stout number to run under. The low qualifier going into the session was Tak’s 6.101 and that number was still standing at the conclusion of the session. But big moves were made by the big dogs.

Bobby Malloy was in the number 10 spot after two sessions and he moved up to the #5 slot with a 6.35 @ 217 mph.
Rickey House was in the #8 spot at the start of Q-3 and his 6.37 was a vast improvement over his 7.18, but the overall field improved so strongly, his number only moved him up one place to the number seven position.

Moving into the bump spot at #8 was Jake Stordeur who has been running hot-straight and true all weekend. Jake’s 6.435 locked down the bump and Armon Furr (6.56), Tracy Kile (6.69), Jay Turner (6.71), Chris Smith (7.51) and Billy Jackson (7.72) are all looking to improve and make the field during the 4th and final qualifying session.

The biggest move in TFM qualifying during the Q-3 session was Mike Scott of Calgary, Alberta, CA who had two previous incomplete runs. His 6.32 @ 224 moved him from completely outside the field to the #3 spot on the bottom half of the ladder.

TFH Q-4: There were two significant improvements by a pair of  heavy hitters during the fourth and final session of TFH. Doug Vancil’s tuner Mike Romine made a change in the tune-up that gave Doug a performance boost, his 6.33 @ 226 MPH improved to a stunning 6.18 @ 237 MPH that caught everyone’s attention.

Also Tii Tharp’s bike, was 6.36 @ 222.23 as of Q-3 and it improved to a 6.27 @ 222.77 on it’s final pass, picking up a tenth with a dead-on MPH, clearly Tii is getting everything out of that bike, that Jeremy Hoy, Rex and the entire JTR team can do to the bike.

These performance improvements moved Doug Vancil from the #4 spot to the #2 slot on the ladder and Tii moved from #6 qualifier to the #3 spot on the bottom half of the ladder and this affected the pairings for Sunday’s elimination match-ups. These qualifying position improvements are super important in the national championship point’s race for the NHRA #1 plate. The lower the qualifying position, the greater the points rendered for qualifying deep. At the end of the season – every point counts.

The 8 bike qualified field for the 50th annual NHRA Gator Nationals: Tak Shigematsu 6.10, Doug Vancil 6.18, Tii Tharpe 6.27, Beau Layne 6.30, Mike Scott 6.32, Bob Malloy 6.35, Rickey House 6.37, and Jake Stordeur 6.43 on the bump spot.

On Sunday, the pairings are Tak Vs Stordeur, Layne Vs Scott, Vancil Vs House, and Tharpe Vs Malloy. The DNQ’s for this event, the racers who did their best but came up short were; Armon Furr, Tracy Kile, Jay Turner, Chris Smith, and Billy Jackson.

Pro Stock Motorcycle

Eliminations

Hines raced to his first win in the category since Pomona 2 2017 with a run of 6.752 at 199.17 on his Screamin’ Eagle Vance and Hines Harley-Davidson Street Rod. He defeated his teammate and defending event winner Eddie Krawiec for a rematch of the finals from 2018. Krawiec was the No. 1 qualifier for the event and secured his 49th career victory.

“The motorcycle I had this weekend was phenomenal,” Hines said. “It was tracking straight down the track and it responded to all of the changes. That made it so much easier to focus on going out there and racing, cutting good lights and not really worrying about what could happen the very next run.”

Krawiec was the No. 2 qualifier for the event and defeated Scott Pollacheck, Jim Underdahl and Joey Gladstone en route to his fourth consecutive final round at this facility.

Round 1 Eliminations

Round 2 Eliminations