Matt Hagan’s weekend at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota, is one that he’s moving onward and upward from.
The driver of the Dodge Direct Connection Charger SRT Hellcat Funny Car earned the No. 1 provisional qualifying position in Q1 on Friday with a 3.910 ET at 328.06 mph, giving Hagan three bonus points for the quickest run of the session.
After all four rounds of qualifying, Hagan secured the No. 3 qualifying position based on Friday’s round one of qualifying.
Hagan participated in his fifth Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge of the season. His four previous appearances came in the NHRA Arizona Nationals, the Route 66 NHRA Nationals, the Dodge Power Brokers NHRA Mile-High Nationals and the Menards NHRA Nationals presented by PetArmor.
Round four of qualifying Saturday also served as the NHRA’s Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge Finals, where Hagan faced Robert Hight. Hight defeated Hagan with a 3.988 ET, 315.05 mph run.
Hagan was eliminated following round 1 on Sunday. His 8.022 ET at 90.47 mph lost to Dave Richards’ 4.469 ET at 234.98 mph.
“It was obviously a very tough weekend,” said Matt Hagan. “The points will not be great for us this weekend having not gotten out of first round. We’ve got to move forward. We are better than that. We can perform better than that. You are going to have a couple of hiccups along the way, and unfortunately this is one of them. We are going to dig deep and figure out what we did wrong. It stops with us as a team and we are going to work harder.”
Hagan is currently second in the Funny Car championship standings, 21 points behind Funny Car leader Ron Capps.
This story was originally published on August 21, 2023. 
