Okuhara & Barlam Bake Up New National Record for Pritchett and Papa Johns

Team Speed Society driver and all around badass Leah Pritchett very nearly reset the national record in qualifying a few weeks ago at the Toyota NHRA Sonoma Nationals in  Sonoma, California, but her engine expired just before the finish line in the “Home Run Ball” second qualifying session, sending her through the finish line with a 3.66 elapsed time at only 304 MPH.

Tonight, however, at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, being contested at historic Brainerd International Dragway in Minnesota, everything held together beautifully through the stripe following a picture perfect run and the scoreboards told the story: 3.640 at 330 MPH!

Leah kicked off the event with a stellar 3.67 in the first qualifying session that put her solidly atop the field following the opening session. Between the first and second qualifiers, the typically good conditions at Brainerd only got better and co-crew chiefs Todd Okuhara and Joe Barlam and the Papa Johns crew found the magic combination to push the car even quicker through the cooler evening air. Lined up alongside rival Steve Torrence, who swiped the points lead from Pritchett a few races back, Leah laid down absolutely stellar numbers at every increment as she traversed the 1,000 foot Minnesota track. An unreal .822 sixty foot set the pace for the run, and the golden Papa Johns Pizza sponsored digger blitzed through the 1/8th mile mark in just 2.92 seconds at 298 MPH, pacing Torrence by a full 8 MPH at the 660. Out the back door, Leah covered the final 340 feet in just .72 seconds, lighting up the boards with a 3.640 elapsed time at 330.63 MPH, also way up on her list of highest speeds.

Making the run that much sweeter, there appeared to be not even so much as a hiccup from the 11,000 horsepower hemi powerplant churning just behind Leah as she laid down the new record. Following the run, Leah pointed to her awesome crew for making the run happen. “These guys are like my family out here. I mean, we spend more time together than with our families, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. These guys made that run happen, I just get to strap in and drive!”

When describing the run, Leah had a hard time finding the right superlative, hesitating to call it a perfect run, though watching the pass on FS1, it certainly looked to be a perfect pass. The team made a swap back to the style of chassis they used at the beginning of the season, which saw Pritchett set the national ET record at Phoenix and win three of the first five races, building a points lead she would carry well into the middle part of the season. “Being a dragster, we don’t have a ‘front suspension’, but we do have some things we can change in the front half of the car that sort of work like suspension in a way. We can change the flex and the weight transfer by changing the geometry of the braces, and this car we are running now is basically just like the car we started the season with.”

Leah credited DSR with providing her with the best equipment available. “They provide us with the best of everything at DSR. They have data coming in from all of these teams and they’ve got it down to a science. We know with what we have, we can go out and run numbers like this, and that’s a great feeling.” Leah said of the Don Schumacher Racing team.

Pritchett pointed out that the first qualifier could have been a tad quicker but there was a pretty severe vibration that had her seeing double. “I noticed it in the burnout, something felt… off. I looked at the tach and the RPM’s were right on, I was going about the right speed, but something was shaking hard. We backed up and staged up and it just immediately started shaking hard. I know what it feels like when we break a crank or something in the rear end, but this was different. By the time I got to the top end, the two grooves were four and I had never wanted to just get to the finish line so bad,” said Leah of the first qualifying run. “Even when my guy came over the radio and said ‘sixty-seven’, I said ‘Maybe so, but I bet we have an issue somewhere.” However the team found no breakage and nothing out of the ordinary, so they chalked it up as an anomaly and turned the car around for Q2.

The third qualifying session will be in the middle of the day, so look for the Papa Johns team to test their race-day tuneup and make a solid a-to-b pass in the heat of the day. Depending on how that goes, they may take another swing for the deep ball if conditions are good for the fourth session, which will kick off around 4:30 in the afternoon. As always, despite the prestige that comes with running big numbers, the goal is to win on race day. Leah is confident that her team is poised to return to the winner’s circle, and with this weekend off to such a good start, Brainerd just might be the race for that to happen. Be sure to tune in to FS1 Sunday afternoon to see if Leah and the Papa Johns team can get their hands on another Wally trophy.