AUSTIN PROCK HAS SUPER START TO CAREER
Austin Prock’s first competitive pass in Top Fuel competition produced a straight and fast 3.784-second elapsed time at 323.04 mph. And dad Jimmy Prock, who stuck around after tuning Robert Hight to a tentative top-half run in the Funny Car class, said, “Proud of him. This is what he lives for. The opportunity he has got, not too many people get a chance to do this. That’s really cool.”
It was a solo pass. In the second qualifying session, he lined up against freshly crowned champion Steve Torrence, Prock posted a 3.771, 326.63. He was eighth in the order overnight.
After his initial pass, Prock said, “Ronnie Thompson and Jon Schaffer [his crew chiefs] did an unbelievable job. That was the first run in the .70s for us. We’re going to keep picking at it, and hopefully we can keep improving.”
He was able to race at the Winternationals because of a fortuitous conversation Don “The Snake” Prudhomme had with an old buddy at the recent Barrett-Jackson Auction at Scottsdale, Ariz.
“We started talking drag racing,” Prudhomme said of his reconnection. “I told him Force needed a sponsor. He said, ‘Hell, I’ll sponsor him!’
“The kid is dynamite,” the Top Fuel an Funny Car legend said. “I like rookie kids. I just enjoy being around rookies and watching them build themselves up.”
Prock said his early-season opportunity “is all because of the Snake. He stuck his neck out for me and got it [a sponsorship deal] done. I owe him the world.”
John Force Racing President Robert Hight provided some background about how Prock ended up in the Top Fuel class rather than the Funny Car class, filling Courtney Force’s seat.
Hight said the decision had nothing to do with a scarcity of entrants in the Top Fuel category.
“No,” Hight said. “We decided early in the off-season that we were going to. First off, we didn’t know if we were going to run four cars. We had to find funding. But we also know that eventually we’ll find funding, so it made more sense for us to have two Funny Cars and two dragsters. Funny Cars can work together; dragsters can work together.
“You know, we had talked about moving [crew chief] Brian Corradi over to Brittany’s car when Alan [Johnson] left, but Brian wanted to stay in Funny Car. That’s why he came over here: he wanted to be a Funny Car crew chief. And John’s car needed to run better, so Brian and Jimmy [Prock], they are really good buddies and they work very closely together. So that was a good team, didn’t want to break that up. I feel our Funny Cars are very strong with those two individuals working together. [Top Fuel crew chief] Dave Grubnic was available. We got him, and we still had Ronnie Thompson and Jon Schaffer, who are very, very bright individuals,” Hight said and we just figured that that could be a good team over there. But you need two dragsters sharing data and working together. So it just made more sense to have two and two.
“It’s harder to find funding for a third Funny Car. You run into each more, we race each other,” Hight said. “It needed to be split up. So that was our goal. We never looked at the entry list and said, ‘Oh boy, we’ve got to get Austin to Pomona.’ That was never the case.”
He said, “We were not coming to Pomona unless funding came through, and it came through. So at the last minute . . . We’ve been working night and day, trying to get everything organized and coordinated, and it’s here. Don Prudhomme helped tremendously to put this together.
“This gentleman is very wealthy. He owns a lot of companies and loves cars, loves racing. In fact, he was a former bracket racer when he was younger. So it was really a good deal. So you know when somebody tells you they will come up with the money and it’s a week away, actually less than a week away, Saturday night I got the call, then you do whatever it takes to make it happen,” Hight said.
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