It was a nice cool Wednesday evening for the Hitchman Racing team and all the other racing teams that were arriving at the O’Reilly Summer Nationals, held in Topeka, Kansas. There was rain and cool weather but it did not last long.

Thursday morning it started to warm up and it just got hotter. The first qualifying pass was Friday at 12:48 pm and it was sunny and warm. Temperature at run time was 92 degrees and track temp was 115 degrees. Darryl pulled down a E.T. of 5.518 @ 261.78 mph which put him in the tenth qualifying position. Later in the day the second qualifying pass was at 3:59 pm with a temperature of 96.1! Track temperature for that pass was a mere 121⁰ degrees. The pass was clocked at 5.529 @ 252.80 however Darryl had shut down before the finish line. The team was moved to the fourteenth position. It was not quit as hot for the third qualifying round but the car slowed down to a 5.632 @ 251.06 which placed the team in the second most popular position at sixteen in field of sixteen cars with number one being the most popular position. Being in the sixteenth position means you run the number one car!

It was a blistering 97⁰ and track temp of 140⁰ when Darryl went up against Chris Copeland who had made an unbelievable first qualifying pass of 5.268 @ 274.72. He was the only one to run that E.T.  

The team put the car in an aggressive mode to hopefully pull out another upset but that was not the case. Darryl and the team was disappointed as the tires smoked almost immediately shutting down the run and Chris Copeland slowed to a 5.409 @ 272.06. The heat was taking it’s toll on all the cars.

The team stayed the night and packed up and headed home Sunday morning.