
It was a tale of two scenarios that had swapped by the end of the season.
Bob Tasca III, the primary Ford Racing-sponsored driver, headed into the inaugural PRO Superstar Shootout with his sights on making a significant statement via his speedy race car, as well as joining his peers at the Professional Racing Owners [PRO] to prove racers could stage a successful major event.
Meanwhile, a few spots down in the pits, a “rookie” driver was doing his best not to buckle under the pressure of an unbelievable standard to maintain with a crew chief known to have little to no patience for subpar performance.
That’s the scenario in which Top Fuel driver turned Funny Car driver Austin Prock walked into on Tuesday morning at the closed session portion of the PRO Superstar Shootout. Tasca was steadily ramping his way towards unchartered speed waters. Meanwhile, the car driven by Prock was struggling to maintain the standards that made its previous driver, Robert Hight, the fastest piston-driven Funny Car driver in the world.
By Thursday, in the first session, every eye, camera, and likely satellite in space was watching to see what Tasca could pull off in the most favorable conditions of the week. Meanwhile, Prock pulled off his most incredible run of the test session to this point – a run that wouldn’t have even put him in the top eight.
One has to realize that on the first day of the private portion of the test session, the Procks couldn’t have hit water if they had fallen out of a boat. And in one moment, Prock gave his peers a glimpse of the future. After not making it past the tree under power for the first eight runs, there was no way Prock was going to lift, even with two cylinders out on one side, as he kept his Camaro Funny Car matted to the finish line for only his first full pull in six years.

As Prock and his peers watched, Tasca unleashed a 339.87 blast at 3.840 seconds to claim the provisional No. 1 qualifier, and a couple of slots back Austin finally got in the groove of 1000-foot passes with a 3.851. Ironically, the run tied the speed laid down by Robert Hight in the 2017 laid-back header season.
Twenty-four hours later, Tasca made history with the fastest speed in drag racing history, with a 341.68 trap speed paired with a 3.840. Tasca got what he was looking for and broke the unwritten speed limit in NHRA.
“It’s probably be one of the most signature things I’ve done in my whole career,” Tasca said. “I mean, to be the first, forget NHRA, it’s the first to do it, is one of the most significant things, one of the more significant runs in the history of the NHRA. First Funny Car to break a barrier, first person ever break 340. And to be able to do that at the PRO event, which, to me, made it even more special with the best of the best, that had four days to practice on the racetrack.”
Lost in the mix was the fact that Prock, while only running 337 mph, swiped the No. 1 spot while Tasca stole the headlines.
Raceday told a story as Tasca lost in the second round to Matt Hagan, and Prock went on to win the event in his first weekend as a Funny Car racer.
“I think to some degree it might’ve hurt us a little bit during the season because we really tried to do it again,” Tasca admitted. “In NHRA, we had several opportunities, all of which we came up a little short. I mean, I think back to that Sonoma run at 339, with a 30-mile hour headwind. It wasn’t in the cards.”
Shortly after the Bradenton event, NHRA, much like in the case of Eddie Hill’s first-ever 4.99 elapsed run in April 1988, put qualifiers on the legitimacy of Tasca’s 341 but repeatedly pointed out it was done elsewhere even though timing specialist Bob Brockmeyer certified the run as legit.

“It didn’t bother me because they run their world,” Tasca said. “They have their sanction. It was at an NHRA track with an NHRA timing system certified by Brockmeyer. No one can dispute that the run happened. I have the data; you can look at the engine RPM. And Jack Beckman came in the trailer that night. He goes, ‘Listen, all I want to see is the engine RPM.”
“He looked at it. He goes, ‘Wow.”
Tasca believed the look on then Flo Sports analyst Beckman’s face spoke volumes without a word.
“[NHRA] can put whatever asterisk on it they want,” Tasca said. “It’s like someone saying that they were the first person to walk on the moon with Adidas. Who cares? The first person to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong. The first person to break 340 was Bob Tasca. There’s no other way to discuss it.”
Tasca believes the one aspect of the run where asterisks cannot tread are the accolades due his crew chiefs, Todd Okuhara and Aaron Brooks.
“I will never let anyone take that [credit] away from them because it was that remarkable of an accomplishment,” Tasca added.
Once the drag racing tour headed to the NHRA Gatornationals, Prock made a few moonshots throughout the 2024 season that would have made Armstrong jealous. His Simpson racing shoeprints were visible on the moon’s surface from Earth.
The success Prock enjoyed was otherworldly, with a track record for 2024 that consisted of winning eight national events in 12 final rounds. He also had 15 No. 1 qualifiers. In all of those moments, he maintained modest speeds until the tour rolled into the final stop in Pomona, CA.

Prock knew he had the car capable of running the big speeds but the team chose to focus on getting down the track quicker and faster, and tuner/Dad Jimmy Prock honestly believed a 340-mph run would come somewhere other than Pomona.
But, it did come in Pomona, and when Prock heard he ran 341, he immediately asked what the speed was down to the hundredth of a mile per hour.
“It’s funny how the world works sometimes,” Prock said. “I couldn’t believe it; I saw we went 341, and as soon as I got out of the car, I was like, What was our change? And, what was Tasca’s?”
“When they told me it was identical, I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“The fact that two totally different Funny Cars, different manufacturers run 341 in the same season and it’s literally tied down to the thousandth. It’s pretty incredible. It was cool to do it, and we’re both equal right now; we just happened to do it at an NHRA race.”
Knowing drag racers and the competitive natures of both Prock and Tasca, one has to wonder if there will be a 342 showdown on the horizon starting next weekend.
“We’ll see if we can do it again,” Tasca said. “Clearly, we want to run speed, but I think doing that hurt us throughout the season because we were chasing it a lot, particularly in the Countdown when the conditions got good, and it caused us to smoke the tires. I mean, when you look at running speed, the car is set up differently than running ET. And Austin Prock proved that pretty much throughout the whole Countdown.
“We’re going to be much more focused this year on running ET and being more consistent. I was disappointed when you look at the runs that we smoked the tires; there was too much, too often, and we didn’t give ourselves enough of a chance to go down the racetrack. That will be different this season, I promise you. We may not run some of the big speeds, but we will make this car go down the racetrack more than we did last season, and I think that will definitely play to our favor.”


“I think if there is [a 342 Showdown], it’ll be there because there’s no points on the line, and the guys can have some fun with it. That’s really the spirit of that race. So yes, I would say unequivocally, if the conditions are right, you’re going to be looking at that Prock and Tasca car to see who can do it again. I think we had five track speed records. We know how to do it; he knows how to do it. We’ll have some fun with it. But come the season, we just have to do a better job of going down the racetrack.
Oh yeah, Prock is game.
“I want to try and prove our competition level to everyone every time we get in the car, and he’s not singled out by any means,” Prock added. “And there’s going to be a lot of cars that are going to be capable of doing that or close to this year. I believe every season, the competition just seems to get tougher and tougher, and our dominance last year is definitely going to bring everyone up a step. I guarantee you they’re working their tails off trying to close that gap. So I think the competition’s going to be stronger than it ever was rolling into this test session and throughout the ’25 season. So yeah, you might see it more than once.”
However, the one thing you shouldn’t see is asterisks or qualifiers, considering reportedly that NHRA will be helping tech the cars.