Schumacher: Still the king

They told him it couldn't be done.
Tony Schumacher didn't believe them, and Sunday he had the last laugh when he clinched his seventh Top Fuel championship, including the past six in row, when two-time champ Larry Dixon smoked the tires in a semifinal at the Auto Club Finals at Fairplex to gift-wrap the title to Schumacher.
Schumacher claimed it his most-gratifying title, better than his 2006 title when he won the championship on the final run of the season.
"This was probably as gratifying as anything I had to do in my life," Schumacher said. "I can't possibly tell you what it's like to lose a complete team, have them all leave, have to rebuild, and have people say, 'It's impossible. You'll never do it.' That's now how it works. We can rebuild. That's what my dad does. He knows how to hire people let them hire people, motivate people and give us a gift to do what we love to do, and that's racing cars and win.
"Like I said, this trophy will go to Ft. Hood (in Texas). I don't think there's any question where it belongs. We stuck together as a team, got together and did what we had to do Saturday with that (top-qualifying run), and it got us the Full Throttle championship."
Said Dixon: "We were so great all day. It was just a victim of circumstances. It went out and spun the tires. At the end of the day, that was it."