Nitro Dogs Racing

It’s crunch time again for Grubnic, who hopes to avoid repeating playoff miss

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The upcoming Mac Tools

U.S. Nationals is the 18th and final race of the Countdown to the Championship regular season. In Top Fuel, where eight of the 10 playoff berths have been clinched, only 10 points separate the three drivers, Dave Grubnic, Doug Kalitta, and Morgan Lucas, competing for the final two playoff berths.

Last year, Grubnic, driver of Kalitta Motorsports’ DHL dragster, was bumped from the Countdown playoffs by a mere three points by Doug Herbert’s dramatic win at the Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals. Grubnic is looking to offer a different story line in 2008. Entering the regular-season finale next weekend, Grubnic is in ninth place with 736 points, just four points clear of teammate Kalitta and 10 points ahead of Lucas. “Here we go again,” he groaned.

“We went through this last year and got bumped out by three points, and to make matters worse, we had a rain delay, and that race never got finished until Wednesday. So for two days I was sitting there stressing out on what was going to happen,” recalled Grubnic, who qualified a fine fourth and won Sunday’s first round before action was called. When racing resumed Monday, he lost in the second round to Lucas.

“But it is what it is. We’ve got knocked out, and here we are looking down the barrel, fighting for our position again, but we’re definitely not going to let it go, that’s for sure.”

After reaching the final round in

Phoenix, the second event of the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series, which catapulted him to third in points, Grubnic hasn’t made it past the second round, including 10 first-round losses. Those early outs are tempered somewhat by his car’s potential, as evidenced by his No. 1 qualifying position in

Madison. His James Riola-tuned DHL digger has consistently been a top-half qualifier.

“Our attitude stays the same,” he insisted. “We get asked a lot, ‘Are you going to do anything different? Will the pressure affect you or whatever?’ But we go to each event with the same goal. And obviously our goal is to be the No. 1 qualifier and to win the event. So nothing really changes there.

“So we’re going to go back into Indy with that goal as well. So, you know, hopefully, if we can achieve that, it will keep us locked into the Countdown. But I know how it is. Morgan’s going to go in there with the same attitude, and so is my teammate Doug Kalitta.

“And we’ll just have to wait until Indy and see how all this plays out. But it definitely makes it an exciting event, that’s for sure.”

A win in Indy for Mac Tools, a team sponsor and main backer of Kalitta’s team car, would be great salve for a tough season for Connie Kalitta’s operation, which suffered the loss of Scott Kalitta in Englishtown and save for Hillary Will’s breakthrough win in Topeka has been devoid of many highlights, but the team will remained focused on its primary goal of making the playoffs.

“Considering the year that Kalitta Motorsports has had, there are a lot of other things that we look at as well when it comes to winning the

U.S. Nationals,” he said. That has to be set aside. We go out there like facing one round at a time. You know, we’ve obviously got to win that round. In qualifying, we’ve got to run well. But that’s my attitude, exactly. Sort of like well, we’ve got to be in the Countdown, we’ve got to win the

U.S. Nationals. There are so many things that sort of weigh up, and you’ve got to set it all aside and take it one round at a time. That’s my attitude.”

Except for a semifinal finish in 2005, the U.S. Nationals has not been especially kind to Grubnic, who has reached the second round only once in five other tries, but he keeps hoping that his moment will come on drag racing’s greatest stage under the intense spotlight of the Countdown.

“The butterflies are bigger, obviously,” he admitted. “It’s especially in my case with everything that’s going on. But again, you have to kind of like keep it in the back of your mind. You can’t let it affect you, if that makes sense. You go up there, and you worry about it, and you do this and that. But once the helmet goes on, it’s like, ‘Okay, you have to become a machine and do your job.’ “