Photos by: Ron Lewis, Mike and Jeff Burghardt
Competition Plus’ random water-cooler topics from the Muckleshoot Casino Resort NHRA Northwest Nationals at Seattle’s Pacific Raceways
1 – KALITTA MOTORSPORTS EARNS DOUBLE – Top Fuel winner Doug Kalitta, the No. 2-ranked driver in the standings, defeated aggressive challenger Leah Pruett, rated No. 3, Sunday to complete Kalitta Motorsports’ second “nitro double” with J.R. Todd.
The triumph was Kalitta’s third of the season and 62nd of his career. With that, he matches Larry Dixon for third place on the class’ all-time list and is just three victories from tying second-place Antron Brown. Kalitta swept the Western swing that, with the loss of the Denver dragstrip, has shrunk to just two events.
The tour still has two regular-season races to go, then six races in the Countdown to the Championship. As the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series goes to Minnesota for the Aug. 20-23 Brainerd Nationals, Kalitta, in his MAC Tools dragster, is just five points behind teammate Shawn Langdon.
2 – TODD SETS TEAM DOUBLE IN MOTION – J.R. Todd has had his eye on that NHRA 75th anniversary-inspired diamond Wally all year long. But in his Funny Car class’ previous 10 races, they’ve gone to Ron Capps three times, Chad Green and Matt Hagan twice each, and once to Austin Prock, Jordan Vandergriff, and Jack Beckman. Todd was determined Sunday’s final-round opponent Prock wasn’t going to get another one before he earned his first.
Todd won automatically when Prock was .005 of a second too early at the starting line and set the stage for Doug Kalitta’s Top Fuel triumph that gave team owner (and Doug’s uncle) Connie Kalitta the organization’s second nitro double. Afterward, Todd said it was “definitely a big weight off our shoulders.” And he said of his car, “That thing’s back in the winners circle, where it belongs.”
Looking back, Todd said he “had no idea what was going on there” in the final with Prock darting off the starting line before the green light. And he was surprised to see his win light come on. “Some of these guys want to get cute on the starting line, and that was an instance right there. I saw him in front of us, then saw our win light come on. I thought, ‘Well, he must’ve red-lit.’
“I think we’ve turned the corner with this Toyota GR Supra. And it’s time to make some hay with these guys, get these frontrunners out early, and make up some ground on ’em,” he said.
Todd, who drove dragsters before, has 23 victories overall, 16 of them in Funny Car.
3 – ANDERSON RECLAIMS POINTS LEAD – Proclaiming, “I had a very lucky day, big breaks all day long,” Pro Stock victor Greg Anderson celebrated his record-extending 115th triumph, which became an easy one because opponent Greg Stanfield fouled out by .008 of a second. Anderson moved back into the top spot in the standings with his fourth career Seattle victory, which ties him with NHRA legend and his former boss Warren Johnson. Anderson is just one behind the late drag-racing pioneer Bob Glidden.
“We were down on our luck the last couple of weeks. But we scraped and clawed and never gave up,” he said. “This was a long time coming. Mr. H [car sponsor Rick Hendrick with HendrickCars.com], I told him I was going to get him one of these diamond Wallys, and it took me a long, long time. But I finally got you one, buddy.”
Was Anderson exaggerating? This was his third victory in six final rounds this season.
4 – GAYNOR’S DOUBLE-UP HEADLINES SPORTSMAN – Shortly after the Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Alcohol Funny Car divisions crowned their winners at the NHRA Northwest Nationals, a Super Stock racer who pulls double duty in Top Dragster delivered the weekend’s signature performance. Ty Gaynor became the 32nd driver to record a double-up victory at an NHRA national event, capturing both Super Stock and Right Trailers Top Dragster titles at Pacific Raceways.
Gaynor sealed the deal by defeating Brad Burton in the Super Stock final with a .035 reaction time and a 9.150-second run at 141.59 mph. He earlier defeated Don Sefton in the Top Dragster final with a .005 light and a 7.203 at 170.45 mph. The victories gave Gaynor his second and third Wally trophies and marked the 48th double-up in NHRA national-event history.
Shawn Cowie earned his 28th Top Alcohol Dragster victory by defeating Joey Severance with a 5.207-second run at 277.72 mph. Cowie chased down Severance before half-track to add another Seattle title to his résumé.
Doug Gordon collected his 29th Top Alcohol Funny Car victory by defeating Brian Hough in the final when Hough was unable to complete the run. The victory also made Gordon just the sixth driver in Top Alcohol Funny Car history to earn 300 round wins.
Ryan Warter earned his sixth Competition Eliminator Wally and third at Pacific Raceways by defeating Dustin Lee in the final. Gary Gandee scored his first national-event victory in his first Stock Eliminator final-round appearance with a near-perfect .001 reaction time.
Paul Nero claimed his eighth Super Comp victory after defeating Zach Meziere, while Cooper Chun earned his second Super Gas title by stopping Steve Lowe in the final.
Bryan Warr picked up his fifth career Right Trailers Top Sportsman victory and his third at Pacific Raceways by defeating David Cook. Dana Glenn completed the list of sportsman winners by beating Dustin Ward in the Super Street final.
5 – THEY’RE QUICK – Top Fuel winner Doug Kalitta set low elapsed time of the meet, surpassing Josh Hart’s 3.670 by one thousandth of a second earlier in the first round. Jack Beckman was quickest in Funny Car competition, posting low E.T. of the weekend in the opening round with a 3.858-second time. Dallas Glenn followed suit in the Pro Stock class, using a 6.468 to win his Round 1 faceoff against Mason McGaha.
6 – GIBBONS A TRUE DRAG RACER – Tim Gibbons’ interview with FOX Sports following his first-round loss to Jack Beckman was an example of the heart of a drag racer. He told Amanda Busick, “We work so hard. We need the money. We have gracious sponsors. All the glory to God. Without Him, none of this is possible. I love Gary Densham and Joanne and all my crew. It’s a tough gig. I love my NHRA family.”
He clocked a 4.019-second elapsed time and a 307.02-mph speed, his career quickest and fastest. And he said, “That’s a career-best E.T. and mile per hour, and I worked hard for it.”
Asked how much he loves drag racing, Gibbons vowed, “I’ll never quit.”
7 – SALINAS’ STRONG STRETCH ENDS – Jasmine Salinas’ two-week momentum stalled in the second round Sunday, in the rematch of the Sonoma final round against Doug Kalitta. As Salinas backed up from her burnout in the Scrappers Racing/Valley Services Dragster, the car made a loud popping noise, and it jettisoned an object. An NHRA official picked up the object and placed it by the wall. Then, just after the launch, about 40 feet into the run, more parts fell onto the track and bounced behind the car. Finally, at about the 330-foot timing block, the motor let go in a ball of fire.
That ensured Kalitta would mark the 10th time in 12 races he has gone to the semifinals or better this year.
Salinas, who knocked off Clay Millican in the opening round, said at the end of the day, “The first round is always the toughest, in my opinion. I was more nervous for the first round today than I was in the finals against Doug last week in Sonoma, which is pretty funny. Getting that first-round win was really cool. We were hoping to continue to go rounds, but now we’ll have some time off to get everything together and continue building on this momentum.”
8 – WAIT! WHAT?! – OK … Pay close attention … This sounds tricky … Here we go …
In the second round of Top Fuel eliminations, Tony Stewart missed out on the chance to advance to the semifinal and line up against the car he owns – because he lost to the racer who sold to Elite Motorsports team the car he is driving. Stewart fell to Josh Hart, who last September sold his operation to Elite team owner Richard Freeman. Stewart’s exit also meant he would not face wife Leah Pruett in the semifinals. It would have been the first time the couple met in eliminations. She defeated Justin Ashley in the quarterfinals and was waiting at the top end of the track to see if she would race either Stewart or Hart. It was Hart, and she won to reach her second final of the year.
8B – YOU AGAIN? – Eight times have Paul Lee and Chad Green raced in the first round for the last two seasons. And guess what, one of those times happened on Sunday, with Lee, the slower qualifier of the two, getting the win. The same thing happened last weekend in Seattle with the same result.
9 – BAD DAY TO BE NITRO POINTS LEADER – The opening round of Sunday eliminations was rough on points leaders and 2025 winners of this event. In Top Fuel, Shawn Langdon spun the tires and pitched the blower belt – and had a slightly slower reaction time against the only other driver who consistently can match him on the Christmas Tree. Justin Ashley, the No, 13 qualifier, cut a .042-second light to Langdon’s .062 for the upset of the No. 4 starter and last year’s Top Fuel winner Langdon. In Funny Car’s first round, Cruz Pedregon knocked off points leader Ron Capps.
10 – THEY SAID IT –
“We have a responsibility to win on and off the track.” – Justin Ashley
“This is the time to dig for the Countdown – not Brainerd, not Indy. It’s now.” – Leah Pruett
“It’s cutthroat out here in Funny Car.” – J.R. Todd
“It’s going to be fun, tangling with the old girl. It’s been a while. She’s going to be great. I’ve got to find a way to be great, too. It should be wonderful.” – Greg Anderson, anticipating his semifinal match-up with longtime nemesis Erica Enders
SATURDAY NOTEBOOK – HART, TODD, GLENN LEAD THEIR FIELDS INTO ELIMINATIONS; GROSE CRASHES PRO STOCK CAR; DONER’S MEMORY LINGERS AT PACIFIC RACEWAYS
1 – HART LIKE A BIG WHEEL – Josh Hart and his Speedmaster team returned to form Saturday at the Muckleshoot Casino Resort NHRA Northwest Nationals, capturing Top Fuel’s No. 1 qualifier award for John Force Racing. The Gatornationals winner ended qualifying with an impressive blast of 3.685 seconds at 335.40 mph.
It was encouraging for Hart, who won the season-opening race and debut for JFR, but has struggled of late. And he earned himself a first-round bye, to boot. In Round 2, he’ll meet the winner of the Tony Stewart vs. Maddi Gordon duel.
Billy Torrence, whose early Saturday run was tossed out because of a timing issue with the Christmas Tree, rebounded to qualify No. 2 at 3.692, 338.17. Doug Kalitta is third with a 3.703, 336.57 performance.
“We absolutely had to have that because J.C. [John Collins] and [David] Grubnic have been working so hard, putting in the time and effort and the results weren’t there yet,” Hart said. “The team makes very little mechanical mistakes, so we knew it was going to come around. We changed just about everything, and you know I’m the lucky one that gets to be in the seat.
“It’s a whole different level than the confidence. You just have to stay patient, keep the faith, and know that this team has had so much success in the past. I’m just blessed to be able to share in that,” he said.
2 – TODD TOPS IN FUNNY CAR – Funny Car’s top qualifier, J.R. Todd, of Kalitta Motorsports, earned his third No. 1 start this year and 17th overall by turning in a pair of outstanding passes Saturday that included a 3.885-second elapsed time at 335.73 mph in the DHL Toyota Supra.
He also went 3.90 to close out the day, giving Todd confidence he can pick up his first victory of the season. Todd will open race day against Jeff Arend.
Jack Beckman qualified second with a 3.890, 327.43, and his John Force Racing teammate Alexis DeJoria is third with a 3.900, 337.41.
“That was a really good run there in Q3 and then we backed it up with another consistent run in Q4,” Todd said. “We’ve been battling [clutch controller] issues since we unloaded, so my guys have been busting their butts nonstop, and, luckily, we got it turned around here today. I think that the weather played a big role in the performance today and I think it’s going to be cool again tomorrow, so it should be a pretty exciting race day.
“Now’s the time to get rolling. We still have a shot at the regular-season championship but, big picture, we’re looking at the Countdown to the Championship,” he said. “Hopefully, we can rack up some points going into Brainerd and Indy, then let it eat those last six races.”
3 – IT’S GLENN AGAIN – The Pro Stock No. 1 qualifying position went to hometown racer Dallas Glenn on speed. He and KB Titan teammate Greg Anderson had an identical 6.470-second elapsed time, but Glenn edged out Anderson with a 211.89-mph speed against Anderson’s 211.06.
Glenn said after the run that his RAD Torque Systems Camaro spun the tires in the last 300 feet and probably knocked a few thousandths off his targeted E.T. “It was on a really good run. I was about five-thousandths of a second faster than Greg at half-track.”
He’s hoping to repeat his 2025 achievement of winning on home turf.
4 – GROSE CRASHES, APPEARS OK – Pro Stock racer Joey Grose, trying to bump his way back into the field during Saturday’s final qualifying session, rode out a wicked-looking rollover accident.
The Lodi, Calif., resident exited his upside-down Chevy Camaro with help from the Safety Safari, and was walking around and talking with emergency and medical personnel. He was alert and joking, and, after an initial check-out by NHRA medical personnel, he was transported to a Seattle-area hospital as a precaution.
Grose was making a solo pass in the right lane when his car got out of shape, banged the wall, spun around, toppled over onto its roof, and took a hard hit on its roof on the opposite-lane wall. It ricocheted off the left wall and back into the right wall, igniting a flash fire.
Competition Plus will provide more information as it becomes available.
5 – BALDWIN SUBBING FOR TOP FUEL VETERAN – Ron Smith has been a Northwest Nationals staple, and he still has a presence at Pacific Raceways with his dragster this weekend. But he isn’t driving the car. Krista Baldwin is, with a deal that materialized in less than a week.
Cameron Ferré was in the seat for Smith last July, but Ferré was unable to attend this time around because he and wife Angie committed to focusing on their seven-year-old son Jett’s motocross interests. This weekend, they’re in Tyler, Texas, at Swan MX Raceway Park facility, so, Ferré said, “he can train in the humidity” before competing August 3 at the Monster Energy AMA Amateur National Motocross Championship at Hurricane Mills, Tenn. Jett Ferré races in the Micro E class, and he’s one of just 42 in the world to qualify each year. “It’s a pretty big deal. We are excited and for sure proud of him,” Dad said. “He’s come a long way at only seven years old. He has a long way to go, but he’s willing to put in the work and strive to get better and better. Little guy just loves two wheels!”
Back in Seattle, Smith and Baldwin are concentrating on the four-wheeled racing machines. Smith said he misses competing but has been hampered by macular degeneration in his right eye. So he reached out to Baldwin a week ago Friday despite having never met her. But he raced with her grandfather, Chris Karamesines, and with her father, Bobby Baldwin.
“Last Friday I contacted her. There’s a bad guy that did my blower restraints and my transmission cover. He still got them. He’s had them since the 6th of June, to get them certified. All he’s got to do is sew a little tag on them. So I had to borrow her bag and her thing on the plate underneath the top of the injector.”
So Baldwin brought some of her own equipment with her, but the car wasn’t ready for her to make a pass Friday.
“We haven’t had a chance to even start it up,” Smith said before Friday’s opening session. Not only did he plan to run in the first session and not the second, but he had planned to scuff some tires for Billy Torrence’s Capco team, as well. ‘We have three other teams come down and ask us to scrub them for them. I’ve only bought ever one set of tires.”
6 – UP, UP AND AWAY – NHRA Top Fuel sensation Maddi Gordon turned a unique experience into high adventure Friday before qualifying began for the Muckleshoot Casino Resort Northwest Nationals. Her eighth-place starting position for Sunday eliminations might not have been a super-thrilling experience, but her weekend at Pacific Raceways started out with an unforgettable adventure that was anything but ordinary.
Gordon, the Ron Capps Motorsports rookie from Paso Robles, Calif., usually sees the dragstrip from the seat of her 330-plus-mph Carlyle Tools Dragster and usually in three- to four-second bursts. But she got a bird’s eye view of it Friday – in one of the slowest-moving methods of transportation: a hot-air balloon provided by the Muckleshoot Casino Resort.
“It was awesome. It was so fun,” the always-supercharged Gordon said Saturday, still grinning from the memory. She said he got the chance to experience floating over the fir trees and gazing down on the racetrack and jumped at it. But, she said, “I thought we were going to be tethered to 150 feet because of the weather. And then the clouds didn’t roll in like they thought they were going to. So, we got to go for a full ride. It was so cool. I love heights and adrenaline stuff.
“It was way calmer than I expected, so that was pretty cool,” Gordon said. “And then with the wind – I didn’t know this – but they don’t have any guarantee of where we’re going to land because we just have to go wherever the wind goes.
“So we’re coming down. We’re getting close to these people’s yard,” she said. “It’s a nice, big yard. And they [the residents] come outside and our guy yells, ‘Hey, can we land in your yard?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah!’ So we landed in the yard. We made some race fans out of it; got them tickets. They came out, got to go in the burnout box. They got the full experience [at Pacific Raceways]. You want a hot air balloon to land, you got to have a big yard.”
She said the ride “was really fun” – and, no, she didn’t pilot the balloon.
7 – ‘WE DON’T WANT TO SUCK’ – Chris McGaha, who owns the 11-year-old track speed record in the Pro Stock class at 213.40 mph, is tuning son Mason McGaha this weekend for the second race in a row since taking off five events to stay home at Odessa, Texas, and debug the Harlow Sammons Camaro entries. The younger McGaha is driving the “Silver Bullet” Chevy that his dad always drove, and they left Mason’s blue car at home for both West Coast events.
Chris McGaha said, “For three years, I’ve been like, ‘I need to park a car. I need to park a car. I need to park a car.’”
And why did they focus on the silver car?
“I felt like that was the better car,” he said. “I told Mason we’re taking our best car, our best engines, our best driver – all of our best stuff – and putting it in one pile. It has been faster. We’re going to go to Brainerd [the next race on the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series tour], and we may drag that blue one to Brainerd instead of the silver one.”
They haven’t tested it. “That may be the test,” he said, “because it’s gotten to where it costs just as much to test as it does to go to the race. Then at least you have a true comparison.”
They have been working nonstop, even though they weren’t racing. And they did sort of miss attending the races. “The whole time we was off,” McGaha said, “it was like, ‘Well, we want to go back, but we don’t want to suck.’
“Me and Mason, we were in a great mood. We were just in there, working. It seemed like normal to us. We never stopped working on it. Everybody [the rest of the crew members] was in a more of a bad mood, just as bad a mood not going as they were going and sucking really and truly.”
McGaha conceded that “it was nice to be off sometimes. It was.” However, he wasn’t ready to use the “R” word. He said, “As far as retiring, I wouldn’t say retiring. I want to get it going the right direction and then I may look at it.”
8 – THEY SAID IT – Overheard at Pacific Raceways:
“That was like a train wreck. You could see the bus full of nuns parked on the train tracks, and you could hear the siren. I don’t know what everybody else was thinking. I mean, everybody wants the best for the organization and the racer … but …”
Pro Stock driver Chris McGaha, on IHRA’s recent collapse
“The track came to everybody today. Good for all.”
John Collins, John Force crew chief for Top Fuel No. 1 qualifier Josh Hart
“The crowd is awesome here this weekend. I told our guys I’d like to be able to go pee before I get in the car. But we’ve been signing [autographs] the whole time and enjoying it, telling a lot of cool sprint-car stories with the people up here in Washington.”
Top Fuel driver Tony Stewart for Elite Motorsports and team owner, TSR
9 – MISSION CHALLENGE WINNERS – Antron Brown (Top Fuel), Dan Wilkerson (Funny Car), and Greg Stanfield (Pro Stock) were winners Saturday in the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge finals.
Elite Motorsports was guaranteed to win the Pro Stock Challenge because it made team history at Sonoma last Sunday by advancing four cars to the semifinals.
“It’s pretty cool for an all-Elite Mission race,” said Stanfield, who beat Enders in the final round at Sonoma. “I hate it for Erica, but turning the win light on is great for our team and everybody that sponsors us. The momentum’s great and helping us to keep going. It’s because of all the hard work everybody at Elite Motorsports puts into these teams, so just for me to do my job for those guys, not let them down, that means a lot to me. I think if we can just pick up a little more, I think we can be dangerous.”
Four-time Top Fuel champion Antron Brown earned his first Challenge victory of the season by defeating Jasmine Salinas in the final round of the bonus race. That helped Brown continue his momentum for what’s been a strong stretch. He advanced to the semifinals in Sonoma following back-to-back final rounds in Bristol, where he won, and Norwalk, where he was runner-up.
“The Mission Challenge is going to pay dividends this year. I can already tell just how close the field’s going to be,” Brown said. “We know Dougie [Kalitta] and Shawn [Langdon] already have a lot of them, but for the rest of the field, it’ll help us out. It’ll help us when we get to those tight places. You think about, ‘Man, I wish I would have won that Mission race,’ or ‘That Mission race really panned out.’”
Funny Car’s Wilkerson, whom most observers say is a victory waiting to happen, beat fellow Ford Mustang driver Austin Prock, who reached the final by eliminating rival Jordan Vandergriff in the process. Wilkerson is the class’ eighth different winner in the 11 speciality races to date this season. He has asserted himself in recent weeks, making final rounds at Bristol and last weekend in Sonoma.
“At Bristol and at Sonoma both, I was positive they were wasting their time showing up in the finals because I was just so sure we were going to win those races. So, to be able to get a victory, even though it’s a little later than I wanted to, it’s really good,” Wilkerson said. “It does a ton for the team and it helps morale a ton. We just needed another run in the good conditions, so it’s exciting. These bonus points are going to mean a lot. I think we were four points out of fourth last year, so to snatch up three right here, it’s going to be pretty important. I think anyone who thinks we’re not going to be a super-big threat in the Countdown to win the whole freaking thing is joking themselves, so we’re going to need all these little points we can take.”
10 –– DONER’S GHOST STILL COLLECTS TICKETS IN SEATTLE – Every July, the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series returns to Pacific Raceways with a new cast of stars, fresh storylines and another chapter in Northwest drag racing history. Yet every nitro header that rattles the Seattle air still echoes with one undeniable truth.
This is still Bill Doner’s house.
Long before Pacific Raceways became one of the NHRA’s marquee stops, Doner transformed the facility then known as Seattle International Raceway into a destination racers circled on their calendars and fans refused to miss. He didn’t build the dragstrip, but he built its reputation, convincing teams to tow thousands of miles and spectators to believe Seattle offered something they couldn’t find anywhere else.
His legendary 64 Funny Cars show wasn’t simply another race. It was a production featuring synchronized engine fire-ups, wheelstanders, jet dragsters and radio promotions that became part of Northwest folklore, all wrapped around the biggest gathering of nitro Funny Cars the sport had ever seen.
Doner never apologized for thinking beyond the racing.
“It’s a show,” he said years later. “That’s what it is. It’s a show. It’s an entertainment.”
That philosophy became the blueprint for everything fans experienced the moment they walked through the gates.
Veteran Funny Car racer Gary Densham witnessed it firsthand.
“Doner’s on the mic getting everybody riled up because nobody could do it any better than him, especially when him and Steve Evans were together,” Densham recalled. “They could get the crowd so excited about whatever was going to happen that they just left thinking they had the best time in the entire world and had to come back to the next drag race.”
Ed “The Ace” McCulloch credited Doner with helping create the original Western Swing by linking races throughout the Pacific Northwest, making the long haul worthwhile for touring Funny Car teams. Hall of Fame announcer Jon Lundberg perhaps captured Doner’s greatest gift during his famous roast when he joked that Armageddon itself couldn’t begin “unless Bill Doner sells the tickets.”
Pacific Raceways belongs to today’s NHRA stars, but every return to Seattle is also a reminder of the promoter who taught the sport that a drag race could be much more than elapsed times and win lights.
Bill Doner passed away in 2019. Every July, when the nitro engines return to Pacific Raceways, Seattle reminds everyone that the promoter never really left. – Bobby Bennett
FRIDAY NOTEBOOK – SALINAS, PEDREGON, GLENN LEAD WAY IN QUALIFYING; REED TEAM TAKING SAFETY MATTERS INTO OWN HANDS; TRACK OPERATOR RETURNS TO PROVEN FORMAT; ENDERS STILL UNQUALIFIED AND ‘FREAKING FRUSTRATED’
1 – SALINAS SHOWING HER CAPABILITIES – Valley Services/Scrappers Racing dragster driver Jasmine Salinas capped opening day of the Muckleshoot Casino Resort NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways, powering to the lead of the Top Fuel provisional chart with a 3.794-second, 328.38-mph performance.
Shawn Langdon had paced the first session 3.823, 320.97 on the 1,000-foot course, but by the end of Friday’s action, his elapsed time was sixth-best overnight, one-thousandth of a second behind tentative No. 5 Tony Stewart.
Just four-thousandths of a second behind Salinas was second-place Antron Brown. Doug Kalitta and Leah Pruett were third- and fourth-quickest Friday.
For Salinas, the accomplishment came just five days after her career-first runner-up Top Fuel finish at Sonoma Raceway, her hometrack. If it holds up through two qualifying sessions Saturday, the San Jose, Calif., native will have her first No. 1 start.
“This is something that I knew we’ve been capable of doing,” Salinas said. “We’ve been seeing the numbers, and we’ve been knowing our capabilities. We just haven’t had the shot to really go and show it to everybody else. Sonoma was a really good eye-opener, I think, for a lot of other people and, honestly, for myself, too. It’s something where I’ve been telling myself I know I’m going to get better and there’s a lot of things I’m working on. But to do it kind of so consistently that weekend, that’s awesome.
“Top Fuel is by far the hardest class that I’ve ever raced, and there are a lot of people whose job it is to wake up and win races. That was a huge thing and mind-shift for me, and that was a huge part of why I decided to leave California five years ago and move to Indiana because I knew I was competing against people who wake up, live, breathe, eat, sleep drag racing, and that has become my life the past five years. It’s starting to kind of show or pay off a bit.”
2 – PEDREGON HEADING IN RIGHT DIRECTION – Cruz Pedregon Racing’s work is beginning to pay off. The two-time NHRA Funny Car champion captured the provisional No. 1 spot in his class in the early Friday session with a run of 3.926 seconds, 325.61 mph on the 1,000-foot course.
Rip Reynolds, the crew chief on Pedregon’s Snap-on Tools Charger, joked that he was supercharged by a breakfast consisting of seven cups of coffee, but said, “We’ve been working hard, and we’re finally getting it to do what we want.”
Pedregon said the crew slowed the tune-up down a bit, and added he was glad they did. “It’s been a long time coming,” he said, “but this car wants to rip. I keep saying it, and I probably sound like a broken record – the car’s right there. We just needed to get a couple of breaks.”
3 – GLENN STILL ON TOP – Dallas Glenn, Washington’s favorite son – who grew up within a handful of miles from this track and won last year’s Pro Stock trophy – proved he still is in charge here. The KB Titan Racing RAD Torque Systems Camaro racer drove his Chevy to a provisional class-best 6.527, 210.34 pass in the evening session, improving on his earlier 6.541, 210.08 run.
4 – WATCH THIS – Friday evening, Top Fuel’s Jasmine Salinas and Funny Car’s Alexis DeJoria were quickest of the session and each earned a $2,500 Oris watch from Ben Bridge Jeweler Tacoma. As part of the Friday Night Low Qualifier Giveaway program, a corresponding fan also received a watch. Fans entered the giveaway during the day, and names were drawn and paired with drivers before the session.
“I didn’t even know this was a thing until I got out of the car,” DeJoria said, stunned that she had earned the unique timepiece. “This is actually incredible. It is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous,” she said. Of the Friday night prize, she said, “It gives everybody an extra incentive. It’s exciting for the fans, as well. We win Wallys, but anytime you get something new and incredible, like, it’s absolutely incredible.”
Salinas said, “I don’t own a watch, so I’m really excited for this. I hear you have to wind it manually, so I’m going to need some assistance. I wish I could split this watch and give it to all of my guys. I didn’t do anything. I just drove the car for three seconds. Thank you to the track and Ben Bridge for doing this.”
5 – TUNER TAKES PROACTIVE APPROACH – It has been a year since Shawn Reed suffered fractured ribs and serious hand injuries that cost his left index finger. That incident occurred during Saturday qualifying due to a rear tire failure at 290 mph. A woman spectator near the top end of the track was airlifted to the hospital with a potential head injury that thankfully was not as severe as initially thought.
In that one year, Reed crew chief Rob Wendland has taken measures to mitigate personal and collateral damage should such an accident recur. But all that Reed and Wendland have from tire manufacturer Goodyear so far is the assertion that “there was no smoking gun,” meaning it determined no discernable cause for the tire failure.
Goodyear representatives met following Reed’s wreck, Wendland said. “After they got all the pieces back, they collected 99.9 percent of all the pieces, so they said, ‘Put it all back together,’ and gave us a presentation right here on the counter, and said that there was absolutely nothing that they could find for the reason for that failure to happen. There was nothing that was punctured. There was nothing that was, material wise, [wrong] with the tire that they could figure that happened.”
So, does Wendland accept that explanation?
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know if there was a construction issue with the tire. I do know this: After looking at all the information that we had and there were no pieces on the track at that point that they found the punctures, Goodyear said themselves there was no puncture marks on it. You saw where it came off and hit the wing and had a piece of the wing in the tire or whatever from hitting it, right? From hitting the wing – that’s what took out the car, when the tire let loose and hit the wing. And the super slo-mo that was provided to us from TRD at the time and [PRO representative] Chad Head, you could go frame by frame and look at it and it looks like the actual tire is coming apart. I don’t know if [it was] delamination, but it lost its normal form.
“And then actually Goodyear said that there was no smoking gun. ‘There was no smoking gun’ was the exact words,” Wendland said.
“And that was a brand-new tire. On top of everything else, that was a brand-new tire. I think possibly something happened to the tire. Any of the crew chiefs that look at it, the data, all that kind of stuff, nothing came out of the motor. The motor was still fine. We ran that motor. And so nothing happened to the motor. Nothing came out of the motor. Matter of fact, that short block was in for [Jordan] Vandergriff when he drove the car and ran it” at Brainerd, he said. “Another thing they did … They came up to me five minutes after the crash, and I’m down there watching them take Shawn out and everything. And they said to me, ‘It looks like something punctured that tire.’ I’m like, ‘How can you tell something punctured that tire five minutes after[ward]?’”
Although he still has no definitive answers about the cause of the tire failure, he recognized Goodyear’s long-time and deep investment in the sport. He said, “A couple things are going on in this sport that are good and bad. The great thing is that Goodyear makes a tire that we can race on. I don’t think there’s any other manufacturer out there that wants to do that. It’s a lot of liability, right? And with that, there was an injury in the crowd. Wasn’t from the rear tire, although it was from the tire coming apart and the car crashing. A front wheel came off the car and hit the lady. I think she’s supposed to be out here this weekend.”
Wendland said he spearheaded his own quest to solve the problem or at least minimize the impact of such an event in the absence of a sustained effort from the NHRA Technical Department. “We try to make these cars as ‘unballistic’ as we can,” he said.
“What we’ve done, we’ve been proactive about it. And I find this really hard for NHRA not to jump on board, but I’ve made some tethers. The whole control arm came off when it hit the wall,” Wendland said. “There’s only two points of attachment for the front spindle and wheel. There’s only two attachment points, the upper and lower control arm. And they’re both single-point attachments. It needs to be three. That would help things. As we know, a plane is described by three points, and that would help hold that. I did it at one time, I remember. I think it was around 40-some percent stronger to hold that assembly onto the car. So what we did to help, we ran a cable through the spindle and wrapped it around the frame rails. So if it was to break, the cable would actually slow the process of it leaving the car. And hopefully the cable would take away some of that energy of the tire and the A-arm flying away from the car. Both our cars are like that. And it’s very, very, very, very cost effective to do. It’s like maybe $50 worth of parts.
“It’s something that’s proactive that NHRA hasn’t mandated, but I felt that if any car was in that kind of position again where the front end is going something to slow that down or keep it from leaving the car [this would work],” he said.
Wendland talked last with NHRA’s Tech Department approximately six months ago. He showed them exactly what he did to Reed’s car. Officials looked at it and agreed to “talk about maybe mandating some tethers on there. They had some drawings and stuff like that, and then boom, it’s gone,” he said. “The subject has been dropped. Now, are they still exploring it behind the scenes? Maybe. They damn sure haven’t told me.
“I feel like you got to be proactive, but in the moment when cars aren’t seeing a safety issue, then we’re more relaxed on being proactive about doing some of that,” he said.
Has Goodyear ever explained what happened with the tire here last year in qualifying?
Reed made a storybook comeback, winning an IHRA race near Columbus, Ohio, that was designed to be simply a test run to see how he would adapt to the steering wheel and car following the amputation of his left index finger. Then the next week at Pennsylvania’s Maple Grove Raceway, the former boat racer earned his first NHRA Top Fuel trophy with a victory in the Countdown opener.
“What that man has been through … with his recovery and running a business at the same time and keeping all of our guys employed … that tells you a lot about his character,” Wendland said.
Whatever the reason for the accident last July, the ordeal still evokes an emotional response from Reed. After reeling off a 3.837-mph elapsed time at a session-fastest 325.14 mph on the 1,000-foot course that put him second in the order to Shawn Langdon in that first time down his hometown dragstrip since 2025, Reed was emotional.
The native of Puyallup, Wash., who owns Tacoma-based Reed Trucking and Excavating, said, “I haven’t thought about this place until about a week ago. All my friends are here. My employees are here. It’s pretty dang weird, to tell you the truth. It’s been pretty emotional for me. But we’re here. The team’s here. We’ll go home in one piece, I promise you.”
6 – WALLY’S THE MAN – NHRA founder Wally Parks always contended that “the cars are the stars” of drag racing. Maybe it’s Wally – THE Wally – that’s the real star. Jordan Vandergriff won the Funny Car final last Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. But he was upstaged by his trophy when he flew back home to Atlanta. When he scored his first Funny Car victory – his first NHRA victory – at South Georgia Motorsports Park, he drove home. So this was his first time to take his “Wally” statue through the airport. And he said, “Let me tell you, Wally is a superstar. Walking through the airport with Wally, more people wanted to talk to him and take pictures with him than they did me. It was a cool experience to walk through an airport with the trophy of our series. Some people asked questions about what it was, and others already knew. So it was a cool experience. He sat in my lap on the plane ride home, and everything was OK.”
7 – TRIED-AND-TRUE FORMAT – The Northwest Nationals has returned to the traditional two Friday qualifying sessions and two Saturday sessions at Pacific Raceways.
“We’ve gone down some rabbit holes trying to build a better mousetrap, and we rented well over a hundred grand worth of lights for two years to keep the four qualifying schedule. It was really important to the fans to get back to four qualifying sessions. And we tried two on Friday and two on Saturday under the lights and then one on Friday and three on Saturday to try to drive attendance. And it didn’t manifest itself in a noticeable increase in ticket sales,” Pacific Raceways President Jason Fiorito. “We thought collectively working with PRO [Professional Racers and Owners Organization], working with NHRA, and getting the track’s input and some input from the fans that the more traditional two on Friday, two on Saturday, not under the lights, was just go back to the kind of tried-and-true scheduling instead of trying to force a square peg in a round hole.”
Fiorito said, “I had a lot of my fans in the tents last year that paid a lot of money to be in the Nitro Club and the Finish Line Club that were upset with me for putting a Musco lighting truck in their field of view. When I walked around, they were like, ‘Jason, I pay a lot of money.’ And I went, ‘OK. I can see your point. I’m sitting here and you’re losing from 800 to a thousand feet of view with the cars behind the Musco.’”
They asked him, “Why can’t you move the truck?” And he told them, “Well, that truck takes hours and hours to set up and get level to put the pole up that high. It’s not like I can just drive it out of the way and back it back in. And if I need to run under the lights on Saturday, I need it to be there. But I understand your point. You paid a lot of money to be here, and you can’t see through the truck.
“So, he said, ‘We just got a lot of input from a lot of different people. It was hard on the teams to run that late at night and then show up the next day and run three qualifying sessions, but they were willing to try. It was hard on my crew. It was hard on the NHRA crew. We were willing to give it a shot to give the fans something new, but it just didn’t pencil out at the end of the day. We gave it our best.”
Fiorito credited the NHRA and PRO for their cooperation with Pacific Raceways on a number of issues. For starters, they combined to attract 15 Top Fuel cars (better than some of the shortened dragster fields at some events this season), with a full Funny Car field, and an overflow, 17-car Pro Stock field.
“So to their credit, we’re heading in the right direction. I appreciate the work PRO has done. And I’m always pretty critical if I’ve got something on my mind, but I’m actually pretty happy with PRO and NHRA,” Fiorito said. “Chad Head and Michelle Domagala helped me to get a great stock of drivers down at our fanfest in Auburn. So PRO is stepping up and helping support the cities that are supporting the race.”
8 – LEGEND OF RACE STILL ACTIVE AT 92 – NHRA pioneer “Big Jim” Dunn, 92, who has participated in 75 years of the sport, took time from his starting-line routine as tuner for Jeff Arend, was recognized Friday as Legend of the Race.” And he said, “I got one thing to say: Everything about being a legend is great, except one – you’ve got to be friggin’ old.”
9 – MISSION CHALLENGE ‘DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN’ – Elite Motorsports made team history at Sonoma, locking up all four Pro Stock semifinal spots, guaranteeing the event victory. The benefits keep compounding, as Elite also is guaranteed to win this weekend’s Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge. Greg Stanfield, Erica Enders, Troy Coughlin Jr., and Jeg Coughlin will battle among themselves for championship bonus points and a cash prize during Saturday’s qualifying.
In the Top Fuel category, Jasmine Salinas will see if she can beat Leah Pruett again this week, and Doug Kalitta will go for a sixth bonus-race victory, again at Antron Brown’s expense.
Funny Car fans are eager to see another Jordan Vandergriff-Austin Prock meeting. And Dan Wilkerson, as always, will be pumped up to face Jack Beckman again.
10 – ENDERS CHANNELING POSITIVE SEATTLE VIBES – Six-time Pro Stock series champion and 50-time event winner Erica Enders is hoping she has a knack for winning the milestone races at Seattle.
“I’m definitely really excited about Seattle. We’ve had some pretty serious success there. I have a silver Wally there for winning the 25th anniversary of the event. That was the second Pro Stock race I ever won. That is on my shelf at home,” she said.
But what heightened her enthusiasm about coming to Pacific Raceways is what’s happening right now. She’s fresh off a runner-up finish in Sonoma and seventh in the standings with two more races after this before the Countdown begins. “Seattle is definitely a fun, tricky racetrack, but I feel like we’re directionally correct in the way that we’re heading. That makes me really excited, because it’s been a really long 18 months, and to have four Elite cars in the semifinal in Sonoma gives us great hope moving forward,” she said. “It’s definitely a good time to start running well and hopefully peak during the Countdown to the Championship.”
She’ll need her positive Seattle vibes, because her weekend didn’t start out the way she had hoped. By the end of the day, Enders was unqualified, in 17th place for a 16-car field, and she said her situation was “really frisking frustrating.” But she’ll have two more sessions to make Sunday eliminations.
In her first opportunity Friday, she didn’t make a pass because her Melling Camaro had a leaking radiator. It happened to be the second leaking radiator in her car already this weekend. Her team discovered a faulty radiator Thursday and replaced it – and that one also sprang a leak. Her troubles continued in the second session Friday, and she could coax only an 8.149-second elapsed time from it.
“It’s not the way we wanted to start out in Seattle. This by no means defines us, but it’s really freaking frustrating,” she said.
She’ll be back on track Saturday, competing in the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge.
If it’s any consolation to Enders – and it probably isn’t – Kenny Delco was unable to make a Q2 pass because of a broken weld on his radiator.
