Columnist Ron Kantowski: A race that ended before it began

Monday, April 18, 2005 | 10:30 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

There was an old Indy 500 driver from Texas named Lloyd Ruby who, as I recall, was pretty darn fast except at the Brickyard, where he was pretty darn unlucky.

I remember one race in the 1970s -- he had to be in his 50s by then -- when Ruby's car quit running almost before Jim Nabors was through singing. After consoling Ruby and with little else to say, the reporter back in Gasoline Alley asked how long he planned to continue racing.

"I reckon if I only have to drive seven laps every year I can go until I'm 80," I remember Ol' Rube saying.

Seven laps would have seemed like an eternity in comparison to Rod Fuller's day at the NHRA Summitracing.com Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on a glorious Sunday afternoon.

Fuller, who moved to Las Vegas three years ago and now wonders what took him so long, is five races into his second go-round as a Top Fuel driver following a nine-year hiatus from the pro ranks. This was to be his coming out party in his adopted hometown, but it was over before they even put out the bean dip.

Actually, it was over in a literal blink of an eye.

Fuller spun his tires on the starting line, giving Tony Schumacher an uncontested victory in the first round of Top Fuel eliminations. Schumacher covered the quarter-mile in 4.609 seconds at a speed of 323.66 mph. Fuller's car, which looked like it was racing on banana peels, covered the quarter-mile in 22.029 seconds at a speed of 28.98 mph.

At the end of the track, the Little Old Lady from Pasadena and a boy scout in a soap box derby car stopped to ask Fuller if he needed a push.

That, my nitro-breathing friends, is NHRA drag racing, where 7,000-horsepower engines are wound tighter than the rubber band around the Sunday newspaper with the hope they'll hold together for about five seconds or 300 mph, whichever comes first.

"I think it was a malfunction. Mind if I ask them real quick?" Fuller said from the lounge of his transporter after the aborted run, excusing himself to have his engine guys confirm what he suspected.

Yup, he said upon returning. His crew guessed wrong on the setup.

Actually, that's a little harsh, as his crew led by Richard Hogan until Sunday afternoon had pretty much taken out most of the guesswork about preparing the David Powers Homes/Valvoline/Mac Tools Top Fuel dragster.

Fuller posted the fourth-fastest qualifying speed of the 16 cars that made it to final eliminations and, almost as important, was as consistent as he was fast. His composite time on his four qualifying runs was better than the entire field, but all that got him was another date with Tony Schumacher, the two-time defending Top Fuel champion.

Unlike Fuller's crew, Schumacher and his wrench-turners struggled most of the weekend and were able to complete only one full run. Thus, Schumacher qualified what for him was a pedestrian 13th-fastest.

"What a terrible draw," said Fuller, who soon may start answering to Quick Draw McGraw, given his almost weekly run-ins with Schumacher. Sunday was the third consecutive race that Fuller was relegated to signing autographs by the driver of the Army-sponsored car known as "Sarge."

It would be kind of like Arkansas, where Fuller was a star soccer player, going 25-3 during the regular season but then drawing North Carolina in the first round of March Madness.

Fuller said the idea was to give Schumacher four seconds of hell, instead of 40 minutes of the same that his beloved Hogs gave to Duke in the 1994 NCAA championship game.

Woo, Pig, Phooey.

When it came to his setup, his crew applied full-court pressure when a nice half-court trap might have sufficed.

"We were on the edge," Fuller said, "and basically we just misjudged the track. We were way too aggressive (for the 85-degree weather which produced a greasy track) and it got us. But the team really wanted to win this race and I wanted to win it, and we we're going for it.

"I think maybe people can respect the fact that we were going against Tony Schumacher and that he's a two-time champion."

But Fuller said he could have been racing Michael Schumacher's Formula One Ferrari and it wouldn't have mattered. That Tony Schumacher posted his top time of the weekend against Fuller only confirmed that Fuller's crew was probably right to try an aggressive setup.

"That's a good run," Fuller said of Schumacher's 4.069, "so we would have needed a really good run (to beat him)."

Naturally, the affable Fuller was disappointed not to make a stronger race day showing in front of his new hometown fans. But he said a lot of that was offset by the many new friends he and his charming wife Tammy, a local real estate agent, made during the weekend.

He said it almost got to where he had to turn off his cell phone or go broke trying to accommodate all the requests for tickets and pit passes he paid for out of his own pocket.

"I don't think too many people knew about me here in Las Vegas," said Fuller, a multi-sport high school athlete who comes from a long line of drag racers. "But (given) how well we did (during qualifying), it was almost like we became a fan favorite. Last night at the restaurant, it was kind of wild. People kept coming up and saying 'great job' and I was thinking 'I don't even know how these people know who I am.' It made me feel really good."

Fuller will turn 34 on Wednesday, which in drag racing years means he is only a pup. Unlike Lloyd Ruby, I think he's got a lot of time for race fans in Las Vegas to get to know him even better.