EVENT RESULTS EVENT NOTEBOOK POINTS AFTER EVENT ROUND-BY-ROUND RESULTS FINAL SPORTSMAN RESULTS

FRI. GALLERY SAT. GALLERY SUN GALLERY

SATURDAY NOTEBOOK – IT’S A HOT ONE AS THE RACERS STRUGGLE TO FIND THE RIGHT TRACK 

1 – THE JABS KEEP FLYING AS MATT SMITH PACES PSM – Pro Stock Motorcycle might not always fill its fields, but that hasn’t prevented it from creating more drama and banter than the other Mission Foods Drag Racing Series classes. 

At the center of the controversy are the dueling allegations of sandbagging. Those only got more animated Saturday as Matt Smith picked up in the heat of the day Saturday at zMAX Dragway, stepping up with a 6.799-second elapsed time at 199.67 miles per hour.   

“We knew the weather was a little bit better,” Smith said of the 117-degree track temperature. “I thought the track was a little bit worse than what it was, and everything stuck. We come up, we took a tooth off for this morning to see if we could control the tire because we lost control of the tire yesterday in Q2 and it worked. It stuck. And we went a .79 at 199. So, all in all, we thought we were on the right path. And then we come up here from Q4 and got back in that right lane, and that right lane is just throwing us for a loop right now.”

Smith and the rest of the Pro Stock Motorcycle field have been chasing Gaige Herrera, and while the gains this weekend haven’t been huge, some have been made. Smith made two in Friday’s sessions, but their Saturday totals were a push. 

“We’re just doing what we do every week,” Smith said. “We go all out. We don’t lay back. We don’t sandbag. We throw everything we got at it, and it shows always by our speed. We just tend to struggle with 60-foots, and when you have as much torque as the V-twins have, that’s where it kind of bites us. It tries to take the tire off of the first 30 feet of the racetrack. So, in essence we don’t typically 60 foot as good as Suzuki’s bikes do. In essence, they’re a lot faster than us a lot of times, ET-wise, but we typically outrun them on speed.”

Though each combination has its nuances, the frontrunners are vocal that neither is not giving it all. 

Herrera’s crew chief, Andrew Hines, fired the weekend’s first salvo: “Obviously, Matt [Smith] probably thinks he went too fast on that run and backed it up a little bit on that run.”

Smith is adamant that Vance & Hines need to show their full hand.

“Well, when they 60-foot good and they run the big speed, then I know they’re putting everything they got into it,” Smith said. “When Gaige goes out there and goes 1.09 [60-foot] and it goes 198 miles an hour, I know that they’re not showing their full hand. And the prime example is Reading. They shut off down there and probably E1 was probably going to go faster than their .74 pass. So, they’re just playing the game and that’s fine. That’s what is going on right now. I mean, NHRA has allowed that with their not keeping the parity close. It is closer than it has been, but it’s not still not where it needs to be. But all in all, we’re going to battle as hard as we can. That’s all I can do is I’m showing everything we got.”

2 – NITRO REMAINS UNCHANGED – With a track temp around 120 degrees, the chances either nitro category was going to have a new leader were slim. Both Brittany Force (Top Fuel) and Matt Hagan (Funny Car) held on to their top spots earned via rapid runs Friday. Force stood on the strength of her 3.690, 334.24, while Hagan’s 3.832, 333.25, was safe through both sessions. 

“We missed it on the first run today, and that was a really crucial run. But on our last run, we ran a (3.77), which was second in the field, so that was a killer run for us,” Force said. “We needed that. We just needed our car to go down the racetrack. We had a window we were trying to aim for, and we made it right in that window and picked up some points and had a good run in the heat.

“It’s going to be even hotter tomorrow, so that was actually more important of a run than our 3.69 Friday night. I wish we would have gotten down there both runs today, but we pushed a little too hard, and hopefully we can find that balance for tomorrow.”

Hagan didn’t run at the front of the pack Saturday, but didn’t need to either top secure his 52nd career No. 1 qualifier. 

“We feel like we found some stuff, working hard behind the scenes,” Hagan said. “My guys have obviously been scratching their head a little bit all year and have just not had the performance that we really wanted or hoped to, but knowing that we can run with these guys, and I think that we showed that Friday. That’s real. We can do this still, so that was a great shot in the arm for us. 

“Tomorrow’s going to be 90 degrees, so it’s back to probably pedaling the car some and figuring out how to get down the racetrack. But the lanes are really nice, both equal, so at the end of the day, I feel confident that we got a car that could go down the racetrack.”

Just because the leaderboard didn’t change at the top didn’t mean there weren’t impressive runs on the track. Top Fuel’s Justin Ashley ran a 3.745, 330.63 to set the pace Q4 while Jack Beckman picked up three points in the final Funny Car session following a 3.896, 321.35.

3 – ERICA CLEAN-SWEEPS QUALIFYING – Erica Enders ran strong enough Saturday to make a clean sweep of bonus qualifying points. She will start Sunday’s final eliminations from the No. 1 spot for the sixth time this season and the 40th of her career. 

Enders established herself as the driver to beat Sunday by Saturday’s performance, but that doesn’t mean it will be a cakewalk as she seeks her 50th career win. 

“We have our work cut out for us tomorrow,” Enders admitted. “Obviously, that 50 is being held over our heads pretty significantly. But great race car I have this weekend. My JHG Melling Performance car is flying. We were low for every session, which was worth 12 bonus points.”

Enders has won titles from both ahead and behind. She’s chasing now, but is this her preferred position?

“When you have the target on your back, everybody’s gunning for you, right?” Enders asked. “They throw their best up at you. People are very likely to go double-0 [reaction time]  against me. And then, next round, they tend to drag a 50 or 60 up there. So, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a compliment.’ Well, I’m tired of being complimented.”

4 – I’D SAY YOU WERE ON CRACK – If anyone had walked up to motorsports Hall of Famer turned Top Fuel Rookie Tony Stewart a couple of decades ago and told him he’d be racing the nitro-fueled dragsters and competing for an NHRA champion, what would he have said?

“Five years ago, if you’d have said that, I would’ve said, ‘You are on crack.’ Literally. I had no idea this is where my path was going to take me,” he said. “It wasn’t part of a master plan, which, honestly the majority of my career is. … Well, none of my career has been part of a master plan. There wasn’t a master plan. It literally was, I was a kid from southern Indiana that raced go-karts. 

“My parents mortgaged their house, so we had money to go race go-karts that paid nothing. You got a plastic trophy at the end of the day. So I feel like my parents are more insane than I was because they made worse financial decisions than I make.”

Stewart couldn’t have written a better script, with the outcome as unpredictable as anything in his career. 

“I would’ve lost a lot of money if we’d have wagered on it five years ago,” Stewart admitted. “I would’ve told people this was never going to happen. It never was on my radar even. But here we are. So, I’m having the time of my life again, and I’m energetic about going to the races each weekend. I like racing with [Matt Hagan]. He’s a great teammate, he’s a great teacher. And I have fun with our guys.

“I love all the teams we’ve had. We’ve had our sprint car teams where you got three crew guys, and you’ve got [NASCAR’s Stewart-Haas Racing] that had over 375 at one point. We’ve had everything in between. And now we’ve got a crew of about 25 every weekend, and we’re just a giant family down there. And I know all the guys. I know the majority of their spouses. The ones with spouses and girlfriends, I know both of those. But it’s fun to race with these guys. And I really like racing in this series.”

5 – PERFORMANCE DRIVEN – Jack Beckman remembers one of the few times so-called rookie Funny Car driver Austin Prock lost prior to the final round. Maybe the walls are thin in a hauler. It sure seemed that it was the case to Beckman in Brainerd in his first race driving for John Force Racing.    

Prock might be considered to have the temperament of his mother, but a bit of dad Jimmy Prock came out after the loss.

“I’m going to tell a tale, but I think it’s a good tale,” Beckman said. “When he lost in Brainerd, he didn’t like his light. He went and locked himself in his lounge, and we just kept hearing the foot pedal going down, going down, just practicing, just practicing, just practicing. And I tapped on his door and there was something that started with an F that came out of his mouth. I said, ‘We’re not going to bother him now.’ 

“And he went from that moment, which was ‘I didn’t like the way I performed out there’ to winning back-to-back races. And that’s just force of determination. That’s pretty damn impressive.”

6 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO … US – Two of drag racing’s leading nitro racers paid homage to CompetitionPlus.com, just days after the pioneering website celebrated its 25th anniversary.    

Funny Car driver and drag racing historian Jack Beckman took part in the NHRA’s press conference where he explained the impact Competition Plus has had on the straight-line sport.

“The world’s evolved a bunch,” Beckman explained. “NHRA’s gone online, created the website there. CompetitionPlus.com is providing that sort of information to the next generation and the next generation of hot rodders and drag racers. And to me, the standout thing with CompetitionPlus.com is the level of credibility. You’re dealing with a changing world where it’s all about rumors and gossip and, ‘Get me the news right now, don’t bother to vet it.’

“And I never have to stand up for [site founder and publisher Bobby Bennett], but I’ve been asked the question a lot of times. It’s just, Bobby puts it there, it’s as good as gold. As much as we deal with things on the spot, he’s so legitimate and credible there, and I appreciate that in a world where that’s easy to lose control of that.

Justin Ashley has grown up in the sport, and CompetitionPlus.com has been a staple in his life for as long as he can remember.

“When I first started in this sport, through Competition Plus and our personal relationship, [Bennett] took it upon himself to help me learn about this side of the sport,” Ashley said. “And I think that’s so critical. I think not enough people understand how important media is and your relationship to media.

“And Jack said it, when you go to a site like CompetitionPlus.com, you understand that the information that you’re getting is truthful. He’s putting out the right information, he’s putting out the right way. But it also comes from the heart. There’s a difference between reading something that’s just kind of written and reading something from someone who’s so passionate about our sport.” – Tracy Renck

7 – JASMINE’S ROAD AHEAD – Jasmine Salinas understood the family plan that she, one day, would be a part of a Scrappers Racing two-car team. However, she believed her teammate would be her dad, Mike Salinas. 

Following the NHRA Gatornationals, Mike was sidelined for the season with an undisclosed medical issue. That catapulted Jasmine, a Top Alcohol Dragster driver, into the role of the team’s primary driver. Sticking to the plan, the expansion into a two-car team will come next weekend at the NHRA Midwest Nationals outside of St. Louis. That’s when current Top Alcohol Dragster driver, and reigning NHRA world champ, Julie Nataas of Norway will make her Top Fuel debut.   

Nataas earned her Top Fuel driving credentials in recent months driving a Scrappers Racing dragster. 

“It’s always been the plan for my dad and I to be out here racing together, and, unfortunately, that didn’t happen this year, but we’ve had the whole second team ready to go,” Salinas explained. “Adam Cave, our general manager for Scrappers Racing, has been really instrumental in really helping build out everything that we need to really bring that second team to life.

“When we were licensing Julie Nataas this year, I know she had mentioned that she wanted to try to do a Top Fuel race this year, to try to get her name out there and to try to get more sponsorship on her end so that she can come out full time in 2025. 

“We knew we had a second car and a full team sitting there, so we talked with her and her sponsors and figured out a game plan, and we’re really excited for her to be coming out and joining us in St. Louis. And really, also, for our team to really start experiencing what it’s like to have two cars out here.”

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9 – NOT A FAN – While many female drag racers are celebrating the NHRA’s new female substitute driver policy, which is largely related to maternity leave, two-time NHRA champion Brittany Force is not. She didn’t mince words when asked about it at zMAX Dragway. 

“I actually don’t agree with the policy,” Force said. “I met with some of the girls in the beginning of the season, when all this was coming up to my knowledge, in Gainesville, and I made it very clear where I stood; made it very clear my thoughts on it. 

“I believe as a driver, you commit yourself to your team, your paying sponsors, and a full season, or you commit yourself to stepping out of the seat and starting a family. I don’t believe there’s room for both in between, and that’s just where I stand on it. That’s my beliefs. And my team knows. I spoke to my crew chiefs, my crew guys know, my sponsors know where I stand, and that I don’t plan to take advantage of that.”

10 – FIGHTING HUNGER – Starting with the U.S. Nationals and ending with the Nevada NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas, every time a Kalitta Motorsports driver turns on a race-day win light, the team is donating $1,000 to Feeding America. DHL, Kalitta Air and new partners will match the donation, making each race day win light worth $4,000 or 40,000 Feeding America meals. Thus far since the program began, Kalitta Motorsports has turned on four win lights.

FRIDAY NOTEBOOK – DRIVERS JOCKEY FOR POSITION AS THE COUNTDOWN ROLLS INTO CHARLOTTE

1 – A KICK IN THE SEAT, NOT THE MAN PARTS – Nothing was subtle about the reminder Matt Hagan delivered Friday night at zMAX Dragway. Though Austin Prock has grabbed the lion’s share of the headlines in 2024, Hagan showed he’s still got some fight left in his championship mettle. 

The four-time Funny Car champion ran 3.832 seconds at 333.25 miles per hour to claim the No. 1 qualifying spot through two rounds and tally the most bonus points of any driver in the class. 

“It’s kind of one of those things that the first run, you’re like, ‘Man, that’s a good run,’” Hagan said. “It’s definitely a good shot in the arm after our qualifying positions all year long have been a struggle. We’ve obviously been working hard behind the scenes just to try to figure it out.”

“You’re going like, ‘Ooh, it must be pretty bad if the guy’s not got it figured out,’” Hagan said. “But that’s what hard work does, and those guys never give up. I think it says a lot for us to come out here and have been qualifying in the bottom half of the field pretty much all year and then try to figure it out when it counts. This sport is so humbling that you take it where you can get it. I think it was just great for our guys, great for our sponsors.”

As strong as the car appeared in his first run, Hagan said the seat-of-the-pants feel was enough for him to tell his guys to be more aggressive in Q2.

“I just tell them how the car feels, and you relay the information the best you can,” Hagan explained. “They look at the graph and make the decisions from there. But all in all, man, it’s just good to come back and see our guys smiling in the pit and everybody high-fiving and uphill and top in. That’s why you do it. Because a lot of times these cars, they just kick you in the balls, you know what I mean?”   

2 – MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN IS OUT – No one should say Brittany Force isn’t making the most of her last-ditch dash to get into the Countdown. 

The two-time NHRA champion scored six points Friday by setting the pace in both sessions of Top Fuel qualifying. Her 3.690-second elapsed time at 334.24 miles per hour makes her the car to beat heading into Saturday’s final sessions. 

“To end qualifying with two solid runs, we picked up points, and we’re leaving currently No. 1,” Force said. “We’re all very excited. We’re very proud of that, John Force Racing. We’re all pumped. We all did pretty good today.”

So, what is the plan for tomorrow? She wants to deliver more of the same. 

“Mindset for tomorrow is what it was coming in today,” Force explained. “We want to do exactly what we accomplished today. We want to focus one round at a time. We want to pick up points where we can. Tomorrow’s going to be conditions where track temp’s going to be quite a bit different, and we got to figure that track out for Sunday.

“Tomorrow’s going to be very important – more important than what we did tonight. It’s going down a warmer racetrack and hopefully still staying No. 1 and putting some good numbers on the board.”

3 – PLAYING THE LITTLE POINTS GAME – When the championship is on the line, Erica Enders is going to make sure her presence is felt. She grabbed every possible point available Friday, scoring six bonus points for being the quickest Pro Stock driver in both sessions.

Her 6.557 elapsed time at 208.20 is the standard for which every Pro Stock driver promises to be gunning for in Saturday’s earlier sessions. 

“We call them ‘baby points,’ and they can be huge and make or break a championship run,” Enders said. “I think in 2015 when we won, we accumulated the most baby points in the Countdown, and it was definitely helpful for us to lock it up. So off the trailer, we went a 56, which I thought was pretty stellar. I watched Jeg [Coughlin] let go of the clutch in front of me. His car looked pretty good, and he put a 60 up. And when Mark said 56 [in Q2], I was like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty stout.’” 

Enders’ Q2 run came in the left lane and required all her skill to master.  

“It hiked the front end up and went hard left on me,” Enders said. “So I didn’t do the best job of driving, but it was still good enough to hold onto the No. 1 spot, and I’m thankful for that and those six points.”

4 – REELING IN GAIGE – Matt Smith got off to a fast start in Pro Stock Motorcycle qualifying, landing the provisional No. 1 with a 6.803-second elapsed time at 198.47 miles per hour. If the run holds through Saturday’s qualifying sessions, it will mark his fifth time this season he has set the pace. 

“Right now in the playoffs, we just got to go do our job and collect points,” Smith said. 

Smith gained two points on Herrera in the championship battle and heads into Sunday only 15 points behind. 

“It’s just little points,” Smith continued. “You just got to keep going, to keep digging. And we got to turn some win lights on Sunday. We got two of them at the last race. We should have had three. We had a fuel pump wire break, and it cost us the semifinals. But all in all, we’re ready. We’re ready to battle. And I think if we’d have made a better run, that run, but we just didn’t get after it enough. The track was way better than I thought it was.”  

5 – THE VISION GETTING CLEARER – Antron Brown got his first double-up as a team owner at the Pep Boys NHRA Nationals in Reading, Pa., when he and fellow AB Motorsports driver Angelle Sampey won. 

The former Pro Stock Motorcycle teammates are now racing nitro, with Brown a multi-time Top Fuel champion scoring win No. 62. Sampey, whose previous 46 victories came as a professional, added her first as an NHRA Lucas Oil racer. 

Brown remembered the moment the plan came together for the first time since they raced U.S. Army-sponsored Pro Stock Motorcycles under the Don Schumacher Racing umbrella.

Brown was instrumental in pairing her with the Michalek Brothers A/Fuel Dragster team, and she has reached the final round of the last two NHRA national events. 

“I’ve been trying to push Angelle to race in a nitro category for a long, long time,” Brown said. “I always knew she could do it, just to see if she wanted to do it. And a lot of people don’t know this, but she wanted to have her own Pro Stock Bike team when she got let go at Vance & Hines.”

Brown put on his salesman’s hat and began the process of pitching his longtime friend on the virtues of getting her feet wet in the A/Fuel ranks. 

He arranged for her to make a pass in the Rich McPhillips A/Fuel dragster after last year’s Pep Boys NHRA Nationals. He will never forget the response he got when he went to the shutdown area to congratulate her after a career-best 5.39 elapsed time. 

Adrenaline can be a mother, as Brown found out.  

“I was like, ‘Oh, Lord, I want you to think about this. I’ll see you back at the pit.’ By the third run she took to it and she was in love with it. She goes, ‘Okay, you were right. I love this. I don’t know why I waited so long.’”

6 – HAGAN, THEN AND NOW – It’s been 13 years since Matt Hagan smashed the three-second barrier in Funny Car during the official 1000-foot era in NHRA drag racing. The world is much different for Hagan, and certainly, he’s a much different driver today than he was back then. 

Learning to stay in his lane mentally and not physically is the most profound lesson. 

“When it’s race day, you just focus on what you can control,” Hagan explained. “You can’t  control what’s in the lane beside you. I mean, I try to remind my assistant crew chief a lot of times because they’ll make a primary call up there and stuff, and I’m just like, ‘We have a guy that pulls Grippo up, and [team owner Tony] Stewart pays him a lot of money to go out there and look at the track and pull grip. And it doesn’t matter what the lane is beside us; that’s not the lane we’re running.

“The numbers that we have are what we need to focus on, and we need to focus on running the absolute hardest that we can run in that lane in front of us. And I think that sometimes it’s easy to forget about that. Because you’re like, ‘Man, this guy, we’re racing.’ 

“But it doesn’t matter what you’re racing because you can only run it that fast in that lane whether you’re in the better lane or the worse lane. So sometimes you have to bring that back into perspective and really just focus on what you have control over. I think that minimizes pressure a little bit. My little job is my job, and their little job is their job, and you put it all together and it makes one big circle.”

Hagan made his NHRA Funny Car debut in 2008 after transitioning from the IHRA series, where he won three races. Sixteen years later, Hagan finds himself in a battle with Father Time, though he’s in the best physical shape of his life. 

“My assistant was kind of like, ‘Hey, man, he’s 28 years old, and you’re going to be 42. You’re getting old,’” Hagan conveyed. “I was like, ‘Hey, man, you don’t even have to remind me of that.

“Getting back and working on the practice tree and doing those kinds of things matters, right? You got to put the work in. You get out of it what you put in it. Kind of like that old saying on the farm ‘you reap what you sow.’”

Hagan went to the top of the qualifying list in Friday’s opening session with a 3.865, 331.94.

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8 – BECKMAN’S PLACE IN HISTORY – Jack Beckman loves the history of drag racing.

 

A past NHRA champion, Beckman, who is subbing for 16-time Funny Car champion John Force, made drag racing history in his debut as the back-up driver for the team owner in the last eight races. Beckman’s opportunity came from a new substitute procedure implemented before the season. 

 

“It’s unprecedented,” Beckman added. “NHRA had a COVID policy a few years ago where you could earn points for two races for someone else, but a lot of the media misperceived that this eight-race alternate driver policy is part of the COVID deal. This is a brand new deal for 2024.”

 

There have been points-earning substitute drivers in drag racing history, such as the one where James Warren filled in for an injured John Wiebe during the 1973 AHRA championship chase. Jonnie Lindberg filled in for Bob Tasca III, and Tommy Johnson Jr. also filled in and won for Matt Hagan. 

 

But this time, it’s uncharted territory. It’s also tough sledding. 

 

“Nobody’s ever come in with the ability to close the season and win a championship,” Beckman said. “Right now, these guys and [Bob] Tasca, J.R. [Todd], [Matt] Hagan, and [Ron] Capps – there’s so many great cars out there. I just got done doing an interview for Chevy, and I said, ‘So our goal is to win a race. Then rinse and repeat. Just win a race, then win a race, then win a race.’ 

 

“At the end of the year, we want Team Force [numbers] one and two.”

 

 

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9 – THE BASH BROTHERS GET SOME BASHING IN – NHRA announcer Brian Lohnes referred to the Austin Prock-Jack Beckman duo as the “Bash Brothers,” a play on the one-two punch of the former home run-hitting tandem of Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco when they played for the Oakland Athletics.

 

The description wasn’t a reach as they both delivered upper-deck shots in the Funny Car Q2 session. Beckman fired the first salvo with a 3.850, 327.27 to briefly land in the top shot on a run co-crew chief Chris Cunningham believed could have been better. Prock followed with proof there was more out there as he leapfrogged Beckman with a 3.833, 332.84.

 

“I think we can maintain (the pace),” Prock said. “I think we can keep it up. It’s unbelievable that (the car) hasn’t slowed down, you know. It’s just, honestly, gotten quicker and more consistent the longer the season’s gone on. So, we’ve got to try to keep it up for five more (races) and I’m really hoping that we can.”

 

“I don’t think tomorrow is going to give us the conditions to step up any higher than third in qualifying,” Beckman, the 2012 World Champion, added, “but it will yield qualifying bonus points (and) that’s our objective, to go after those 3-2-1 points (awarded to the three quickest qualifiers in each session).

 

“(Those bonus points) will help tremendously in changing positions in the Countdown,” Beckman said, “but if we’re going to catch Austin, it’s going to take round wins, and lots of them.”

 

10 – WHAT THEY’RE SAYING – “This is the most insane sensory experience I’ve ever had.” – ARCA East champion William Sawalich after watching his first pair of Top Fuel dragsters.

 

“This is a brand new deal for 2024, and I think it was made for the ladies that might want to get out and start a family. And to go on the record, John and I are not pregnant.  That has nothing to do with that, but we can take advantage of that.” – Jack Beckman on the NHRA’s eight-race driver substitution policy believed to have developed to provide an opportunity for female drivers. 

 

“The day that it came out, I was very disappointed in social media and some of their responses. Ninety-eight % of them were positive and people got it. And then there’s the 2% of people that shouldn’t even be allowed to have social media accounts because they’re not smart enough to do it.” – Tony Stewart on the NHRA’s new female substitution driver policy.

 

“It’s humid out here and these Suzukis get it all down low. We had a different clutch pack in Gaige’s bike coming here. I felt like I was on the craps table with that run. We had to throw something at it and it went 1.047 [60-foot]. Obviously Matt [Smith] probably thinks he went too fast on that run, and backed it up a little bit on that run. – Vance & Hines crew chief Andrew Hines on Richard Gadson’s Q2 run.  

 

“We had the kitchen sink in it for that first run. We kept it in there and maybe tickled it down a little.  This car can run.” – Funny Car driver Blake Alexander after his Jim Head-tuned Funny Car ran a 3.884, 328.22 in Q2.