Two weeks ago at the season-opener in Gainesville, Matt Hartford and crew chief Eddie Guarnaccia put the Total Seal Piston Rings Pro Stocker in the top spot in early Friday qualifying, but the remainder of the event did not follow suit. Leaving the Gatornationals far too early translated to a team that was fiercely determined to make the most of what they’d worked so hard to get, and on the first day of qualifying for the 40th annual NHRA Arizona Nationals, Hartford and company began to find their redemption – not just from the disappointment in Gainesville, but also from a previous season that had come with great challenge.
In the first session of Friday qualifying at Firebird Motorsports Park, Hartford put up a good pass – a 6.557-second push at 208.88 mph – that was fourth-quickest for the round. In the later session as the sun dipped below the horizon, the cooler racing surface invited improvement, and the Phoenix-based driver powered to a slick 6.509, 208.20 for the provisional pole.
“It was worth staying late to put up a number like that. Tonight’s conditions were just the best you can get for Phoenix, probably in a decade,” said Hartford, who went on to explain how his team had turned around the challenges they had met the year before. “We decided to take a step back. We knew that the car we ran in 2023 was fast – it won a lot of races and a lot of rounds, it won Indy – and we said when we came out this year we were just going to put everything back on the car the way we ran it in 2023 and forget about everything we thought we knew. At the end of last year, the car started to perform, then we went to Gainesville with it and the car was fast right out of the box in Q1.”
In Gainesville, Friday’s later session set up a scenario of national records ripe for the picking. Hartford and Guarnaccia were going for it, and in doing so they came across just a tad too aggressive and shook the tires. Greg Anderson claimed the record with a 6.443.
“Take one gram off the clutch, it goes to the top and sets the record,” reflected Hartford. “We thought we could run 6.43 in the second session in Gainesville and get the record – we didn’t, but we certainly felt like we could. So we came here, backed up and said, ‘Let’s not make mistakes in qualifying. Let’s go up there and put a set-up in it.’ The conditions were kind of similar to Indy in 2023 for the first session, so we used that as a baseline, and the car was pretty fast tonight.”
For his efforts, he gained three bonus marks and assurance that his hot rod was ready to run all weekend long. Beyond how this weekend plays out, Hartford has a sense of renewed optimism — he also sees that he isn’t pulling away from the back in dramatic fashion.
“The performance is going to be there, and I feel that we have a really solid program when it comes to that,” he said. “But with 21 or 22 Pro Stock cars coming to all these events, five or six cars are going to go home before Sunday. It could be us just as easily as it could be anyone else. Come Sunday, you have 16 really good drivers out there now, and it’s going to come down to who can get their left foot of the clutch, who can keep the car in the groove, and who’s got the best tune-up. This year is going to be the most competitive year we’ve seen in Pro Stock in a decade.”
Qualifying will continue on Saturday at Firebird Motorsports Park with Pro Stock sessions scheduled for 12:45 and 3:30 p.m. MST.
Pro Stock qualifying order after the second qualifying session: Click here.
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