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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _,_HRA Wl_ ton C_~ N __· ns__ hampioDship Drag Race Series: Round 6 DRAG RACE .~ e Winner Dave Schultz (near lan~) and Jim Bernard went head-to-head at the NHRA ':\'inston Championship U.S. National Drag Race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Sh ltzscores at Indy cu By Todd Veney INDIANAPOLIS, IN, SEPT. 1·3 arring a minor miracle, David Schultz won't be winning the eNational Hot Rod Association's Pro Stock Championship in 1990, as he did in '87 and '88. When it became apparent just a few months into the season that the honor would go to J ohn Myers, Schultz focused on winning th e next best thing, a single event many racers consider as prestigious as the season-lo ng NHRA Championship - th e U.S. Nationals - which is to drag racing what Daytona is to road racing: " Peo p le are already asking me if I still th ink I can win the cham pionshi p this year," 'Schultz said di sbeliev ingly minutes after his year-making victory at the Indianapolis Racewa y Park, just six miles from th e Indianapolis 500 track. " Hey, I just won the biggest drag race in the world. Forget the points." The fiercely competitive racer has been overshadowed in the last two years by 1989 N H RA Cham p io n " Pizza John" Mafaro an d 1990 champion -elect B Myers, winning just on e race (the 1990 Southern Nationals) since he punctuated his '88 championship with a second consecu tive U.S. Nati onal win. ' Schultz was a man on a mission at Indy - in qualifying, in eliminations, and in the 80-hour work weeks leading up to the event . " I built a special motor just for this race and this track, and I made up to eig ht test runs a da y," he said. " I'm here to win ." . Schultz's painstak ing preparation paid off right from the beg inning at IRP. H e rode th e Van ce & Hines Kawasaki-powered Eagle-I ZX-IO to an off-the-trailer 7.86-second, 171.69 mph run, whi ch gave him an early q ualifying lead he never relinq u ished. Myers, who had ridden '84 Indy ., winne r Geor ge Bryce's Star Racing Suzuki GSXR . to the number one q ualifying pos ition at eight consecutive National events dating to J uly 1989, was two- hundredth s of a second behi nd with a 7.88/ 175.67 (the fastest speed of the event). It took a seven-second run just to mak e the fast half of the 16-bike field, which was an chored by GSXR rider Tim Loomis ' 8.14/161.20. Rookie Jim Bern ard (No .3, 7.91/170.97), Steve Meiterman (No.4, 7.9 3/168. 53 ), Mafaro (No.5, 7.94/169.39), Springnationals Ch ampion Paul Gast (No. 6, 7.96/164.86), Steve J ohnson (No. 7, 7.96/168.95), and Tim Goff (No. 8, 7.98/167.09) rounded out the fast half of th e fastest field in history. Schultz, in taking a one-sided firstround win over Loomis, spun the tire furiou sly on the oily mid-track portion of the quarter-mile, which limited his winning time to a 7.95/168.22. Loomis sh u t down to a coasting 10.58/120.41 wh en hi s Suzuki GSXR 's transmission wouldn't en gage properly. After putting o n a fr esh tire, Schultz's Kawa saki responded b y d ropping ba ck bel ow 7.90 in his second-rou nd 7.88 /171. 36 ' to 8.00 / 166.88 win over Paul Ayers. But hi s , performance edge was gone. For th e first time all weekend, Myers re-assumed the dominant persona he ado p ted here a year ago wh en , as a roo kie, he won the spo rt's biggest race in his first try. Myers main tained his 7.8-second qualifying pace in effortless prelimi nary-roun d decisions over Norm DeVine's Ninja (7.86/1 70.42) and Steve Johnson's Slick·50 backed Ninja ZX-7 (7.85/ 169.81). Myers has been virtually unbeatab le in th e last 12 months because of his lightning-qu ick rea cti ons to th e " Christmas Tree" lights that signal the start of each race as much as for hi s bike's unrivaled power. But he was left at the starting line in the semi finals by one of his few reflex peers , Bernard, a rookie who has become one of the most feared riders in drag racing in just three NHRA outings. Myers dumped the clutch just .079second after the green light flashed, (an ything under .100 is considered quick), but Bernard beat him out of the gate with a n other worldly .016 reaction time. Myers made the quickest run of the event (to that point), a 7.853/ 172.51, but Bernard's .063-seco nd head start allowed hi s 7.915/171.00 to cross the finish line first by the smallest possible margin: one thousandth of a second! One minute later in the o ther sem i final heat, Sch ultz recla imed Low E.T. of th e meet honors with a 7.83/174.89 thra shing of Meiterman, wh ose solid 7.98/167.62 wa s di squalified wh en he blasted off th e line before getting the green . Bernard got a small holesho t lead over Schul tz in the nerve-wrackin g final befor e more than 50,000 fans, bu t he short-shifted the 1-2 and 4-5 shifts and Sch ultz sped by, earning perhaps the mos t gratifying victory of his career wi th the fastest run of the three-day event, a 7.82/ 169.26. C' 27