After coming very close at NHRA Atlanta last month, New York’s Mike Ashley earned an overdue first career win in Funny Car eliminator. Driving the Torco/Skull Gear Dodge Charger, which is co-tuned by Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald, Ashley outran the independent Toyota Solara driven by Jim Head in the final round. Ashley’s winning time was 4.896 secs at 310.70 mph.

Ashley’s win included top speed of the meet (overall) at the event. His 327.11 mph in the Dodge Charger was even faster then the 325.85 mph best set overall in Top Fuel by Doug Kalitta. In fact Topeka was the 5th straight NHRA race that he has recorded top speed of the meet in Funny Car eliminator.

While the win was Ashley’s first in the nitro FC class it was not first career NHRA victory. The former Pro Mod racer had collected the NHRA AMS Challenge season titles in both 2004 and 2005.

Funny Car round two featured a super scary incident when Robert Hight’s AAA Auto Club Ford Mustang exploded into flames shortly after winning over Scott Kalitta. Hight collected both guard walls before exiting the car while it was still rolling into the top end sand trap. Hight was not injured and the entire JFR crew worked hard to make repairs and make it back to the staging lanes. But it was there they ultimately decided that the car was not fit to run. That allowed Jim Head a free ride on a single into the final.

A big oddity at the event was a DNQ from overall points leader Ron Capps whose new look Dodge Charger had nothing but problems running only a best of 5.461 secs – well short of the 4.946 secs bump. That marked the first time in 56 races that Capps has not qualified.

Greg Anderson kept his simply dominating 2007 season going as he won for the 5th time this year driving the Summit Racing Equipment Pontiac GTO. Anderson stopped his nearest points rival David Connolly in the final round with a winning 6.704 secs at 206.86 mph while Connolly went .008 red.

Anderson’s victory was one of totality – he qualified #1 (6.703 secs) and set low ET and top speed during eliminations at 6.682 secs 207.24 mph.

Pro Stock racing at Topeka was affected in a very odd way when the recently ground burnout boxes were found to be so smooth that teams could not get their tires to spin and thus up to preferred operating temperature. NHRA crews were required to work Friday night to rough up the surface to remedy the rather weird situation.

Brandon Bernstein moved into the overall lead in POWERade Top Fuel points when he racked up his 3rd win of the season (and 3rd in the last 4 events) driving the Budweiser/Lucas Oil dragster.

Bernstein again had to deal with that “spunky” J.R. Todd in the final round but beat him 4.582 secs 320.51 mph to 4.667 secs at 299.86 mph.

Bernstein was very consistent on Sunday at Topeka with four straight mid 4.5 secs elapsed times. He beat Hillary Will, Whit Bazemore and Tony Schumacher in earlier competition.

TF racing at the event produced a surprise poll sitter with Oregon-based independent racer Joe Hartley earning the #1 slot after a career best 4.518 secs (low ET). Hartley was however dealt out in round one by Cory McClenathan.

Top Alcohol Dragster racing produced a first time winner with Colorado’s Jim Whiteley scoring driving his supercharged alcohol car. The win marked a solid comeback for Whiteley who had that very bad crash at the season-opening Pomona Winternationals.

Bob Newberry was the winner in TAFC earning his 44th NHRA national event title. Newbery benefited from a red-light start by transplanted Australian driver Steve Harker in the final winning at 5.698 secs to Harker’s 5.604 secs (low ET).

Racing at Topeka did feature an aborted schedule as rain showers on Friday washed out one of the four scheduled Pro qualifying sessions.