Austin Prock keeps mashing the gas pedal and good things keep happening.
Prock, piloting his AAA Camaro for John Force Racing, claimed his 12th No. 1 qualifying position of the season Saturday when he took the top spot at the Midwest Nationals near St. Louis. Prock clocked a 3.836-second elapsed time at 330.72 mph in Q2 to take the top spot for the 12th time in 17 races. Friday’s scheduled two rounds of qualifying were canceled by rain generated by Hurricane Helene.
“This place has new asphalt on it, and a lot of people were having trouble spinning down there. My dad (Jimmy), my brother Thomas and Nate Hildahl just said, ‘We are going to try and make it run as quick as it can for about 525 feet and it will spin and let the driver hang out and see if he can get it to the stripe.’ That theory and attack worked. We were low both sessions, and I’m really proud to be driving this AAA Camaro this weekend.”
Prock has won three races in a row: the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, followed by the Countdown to the Championship openers in Reading, Pa., and Charlotte. Overall, he has been victorious seven times in his rookie year of Funny Car action.
Prock arrived in St. Louis with a 129-point lead over second-place Bob Tasca III with four races remaining in the season. His championship cause is helped by the fact that by qualifying No. 1 and only 15 Funny Car drivers are on hand, he earned a first-round bye run into the quarterfinals.
“We are not changing our mindset, and we are not laying up at all,” Prock said. “We are going out there and racing what got us to this point. We want to get as much as a points lead as we can going into Pomona [Calif., the last race of the season], and we have been doing a good job of that. We wrapped up all the points today, and some of the cars that are tight with us didn’t get very many points or any. It was another great day. The schedule has me all messed up because I thought it was Friday all day, and it is going to be a little odd going into raceday with two qualifying runs. But we had two stout runs, and we have a good hot rod” for Sunday.
Prock talked about the game plan which was shortened to two days because of rainfall Friday.
“The cloud cover [Saturday] really helped the new asphalt down there just because it doesn’t have the time and amount of rubber on it,” he said. “But the cloud cover made it act a little bit more solid. They did a great job getting to the point it has been, and obviously there have been some good runs. For us race car drivers, it has been plenty fun going through the lights at 325 mph.”
Although Prock loves to race, he wasn’t totally disappointed that he and his team got something of a day off thanks to Mother Nature.
“Typically, when we have a rain delay, we are stuck out here all day long, and getting out of here at a decent hour [Friday] and just having a normal day. It was relaxing, and I had a nice dinner with my family and friends, and got up this morning and I was ready to go. We are getting out here early [Saturday afternoon], and we will be hard at it” Sunday morning.
The ladder for the 15-car field is very intriguing – one side significantly more than the other.
Though Prock gets the opening-round bye, the drivers that are second, third and fourth in the points are all on his side of the bracket. Second-place Tasca tackles multi-time NHRA champ Matt Hagan in a first-round heavyweight bout. Jack Beckman, who “occupies” third as John Force’s replacement while the 16-time champ continues his recovery from a June crash, qualified No. 4 – and if Beckman reaches the semifinals, it would be against Prock, Hagan or Tasca.
