Joey Haas is aiming to become a small part of NHRA history when he competes at the Dodge NHRA Great Lakes Nationals presented by Mopar.
Haas is trying to join a select group of drivers who have competed in Top Fuel and nitro Funny Car at an NHRA national event when he drives his family-owned NIMROD Funny Car at the Dodge NHRA Great Lakes Nationals presented by Mopar, Sept. 18-20, in Martin, Mich.
“We’re going to take our own car up there to Martin and try to mix it up with them a little bit,” Haas said. “We just ran it at the Cordova (Ill.) World Series of Drag Racing (Aug. 28-30), and then my dad was driving our car at the Triple Crown for IHRA (June 19-21 at Darana Raceway in Hebron, Ohio).”
Making his nitro NHRA Funny Car debut has been part of a steady progression for Haas.
From operating its own alcohol Funny Car during the early days of Funny Car Chaos to becoming the 2024 NITRO CHAOS champion, the team has continued to push forward.
“It’s the same car that we ran all through the Nitro Chaos Championship. We’ve just updated the body and a lot of parts,” Haas said. “This is the top. There are no more steps. We can only work to get better now.”
Haas has paid his dues to get to this point in his career. He holds all four nitro licenses: Top Fuel, Funny Car, Nostalgia Top Fuel and Nostalgia Funny Car.
The highlight of Joey’s NHRA career came at the 2021 Dodge//SRT Mile-High NHRA Nationals at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, Colo., near Denver.
In just his fourth Top Fuel start, Haas, driving the Terry Totten-owned and tuned Vita C dragster, upended Alex Laughlin in the first round and continued his upset parade with victories over Leah Pruett and Clay Millican to reach his first final round.
However, Haas dropped a cylinder at the launch and lost to Steve Torrence in the final.
“That was a big story of 2021,” Haas said about making the final of the Mile-High Nationals.
When Haas arrives at US 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, it will be his first NHRA event since competing in Top Fuel at St. Louis in 2021.
“So, from then until now, we’ve just focused on our own deal and have kind of poured all of our time and money and effort, and everybody around us has focused on our own deal,” Haas said. “We have tried to push it as hard as we can. In 2024, we did the Nitro Chaos Championship, and won that, and that let us get up to speed to see if we had what it takes to be competitive and turn the car around and have the tools and things that we needed.”
Haas acknowledged his team had plans to run the 2026 IHRA season, but those plans changed when IHRA abruptly ceased operations and canceled its season.
“When the IHRA deal folded, that left us a lot of uncertainty of where we wanted to go, and, I mean, the only place for us to go is up and not down,” Haas said. “So, we had made a lot of changes through the winter to do the IHRA deal, so the number of changes we still had to make for the NHRA wasn’t as much, and we’ve always loved running at Martin in the past. We’ve run their Northern Nationals and Night of Fire so much, and we’ve got a lot of runs in our Funny Car down that track.
“That was where we actually first went 300 mph, in the Funny Car at Martin when dad was driving, and I ran there last year and went 4.92 (seconds) to the quarter mile whenever we still ran some quarter mile stuff. We’ve always run that track two years in a row, pretty much since, I don’t know, 2012 maybe. I mean, we’ve run a lot up there.”
Although the Martin, Mich., event will be filled with NHRA’s stars as the event is the first of six races in the Countdown to the Championship, Haas isn’t lacking confidence.
“You go in wanting to win,” Haas said. “We want to qualify, and we want to make competitive runs that show the NHRA and the whole group that, you know, we are a car that can compete and we’re not here to play around. We want to be a group that everybody takes seriously. We just want to make respectable runs. Consistency is what we want to focus on.”
Haas said his team will likely compete in only this one NHRA national event in Martin this season.
“Moving forward to next year, I can see us doing a select few NHRA races and then a few of our match races that we typically do,” Haas said. “But it all comes on the backs of getting as much exposure and getting out there as much as we can, and just getting some more financial backing and putting ourselves in a situation where we can continue to do more.
“I know on the headlines of NHRA they always show the top dogs, and I know they have to, because that’s where a lot of their money and commitments come in from, but man, the exposure that the little guys get goes so much farther. Every little bit that they have in exposure goes so far with the little guys, whether it’s TV time here or interviews here, because that just gives them the next leg up. I mean, a lot of these guys, if the funding quit tomorrow, you know, they’d probably be gone, and the family racers have been racing their whole lives and poured everything they can to even get to this point. Every little bit just helps the small team so much more to move forward.”
Haas said Mike Kern will lead his crew in Martin. Kern is well-known in NHRA circles as he also serves as the wrench boss for part-time NHRA Top Fuel driver T.J. Zizzo.
“Mike’s been with us, going on five years,” Haas said. “I think he enjoys just getting more laps under his belt, and I know he was kind of a dragster guy from the beginning, but, you know, he looks at it as kind of the same deal, and we just got to get it down the track. So, he analyzes it as much as he can and makes the best of it, and I think he really enjoys just being out there in competition and making things better, and we try to give him a car that’s consistent with good parts in it, something that he can work with.”
