NHRA

Indy ORP: Doug Herbert preview

With Countdown Position Secured, Herbert is Focused on Indy Doug Herbert and the SnaponFranchise.com Top Fuel Dragster will race in the 54th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals this weekend, Aug. 27 - Sept. 1, at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, ...

Published: Aug 27, 2008, 10:09 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

With Countdown Position Secured, Herbert is Focused on Indy

Doug Herbert and the SnaponFranchise.com Top Fuel Dragster will race in the 54th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals this weekend, Aug. 27 - Sept. 1, at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, Ind. The annual Labor Day event, which extends into Monday, is the biggest race of the year for the NHRA.

Herbert and the Snap-on team secured their spot in the Countdown to the Championship two weekends ago at Reading. With their playoff berth now guaranteed, this weekend will be a good opportunity for driver and team to focus on the task at hand, winning the U.S. Nationals.

Over recent weeks the Snap-on team has had successful qualifying sessions, scoring a top-five qualifying position at each of the last three events. However, each of those race days has resulted in a first round loss for the group, which looks to end that pattern this weekend in Indianapolis.

Quotes from Herbert:

"This race is always big," said Herbert. "It's been around for a long time and the fact that we race on Monday, on Labor Day, makes it different. It's bigger than any other race on the schedule, it's longer and it's an important win. Winning at Indy just has that extra, 'something special' about it."

The way its set up, with five qualifying sessions and the extra day, means it's important to stay focused when you're at Indy so it's really good that we clinched our spot in the playoffs. That takes the pressure off of worrying about points and allows the whole team to focus on just this race and on winning.

We've made a lot of progress with the car's consistency, which will be important when we reach the playoffs, but we've had some bad luck with smoking the tires on race day. This team could use a shot in the arm right now so I'm hoping we can head up to Indy and turn things around before the playoffs get started in Charlotte.

-credit: dhr

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Indy ORP: Tom Hammonds preview

Next article Indy ORP: Cory McClenathan preview

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Mission control: Inside the FIA and F1's latest answer to football's VAR

Formula 1

United States GP

Mission control: Inside the FIA and F1's latest answer to football's VAR

Marc Marquez puts his chances of retiring within three years at 70%

MotoGP

MGP MotoGP

Australian GP

19 min

Marc Marquez puts his chances of retiring within three years at 70%

Audi hands F3 runner-up Freddie Slater F1 practice debut

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

United States GP

55 min

Audi hands F3 runner-up Freddie Slater F1 practice debut

On this day: Fernando Alonso wins the world title, Michael Schumacher retires from F1

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Brazilian GP

2 h

On this day: Fernando Alonso wins the world title, Michael Schumacher retires from F1

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts