Reports of the demise of reigning two-time NHRA nitro Funny Car champion Austin Prock were greatly exaggerated.
Seven races into his first season with his new team, Tasca Racing, Prock found the winners circle.
Prock clocked a 3.956-second elapsed time at 324.20 mph to edge former John Force Racing teammate Jack Beckman (3.971, 323.50) in the finals Sunday at the inaugural NHRA Potomac Nationals presented by JEGS Sunday at Maryland International Raceway in Mechanicsville.
“It means a lot. It’s like winning your first race all over again. You’re with a new team, all the same faces in different places, but all the work that we put in and everything that we learned,” Prock said. “It was like deleting our brains and restarting, essentially. To be seven races in and win the Mission 2Fast2Tasty [Challenge], win the Diamond Wally, I think it says a lot about this race team and what we’re capable of.
“I’m just very proud of my family – my dad, both of my brothers – Nate Hildahl, and this whole Ford Racing team this weekend. PPG was on board and had a bunch of guests out this weekend. And to get them all in the winner’s circle, I mean, the smile on their face was something they won’t forget. So, great weekend, but this is just the beginning of the new era of the Prock Rocket.”
Prock sent shockwaves through NHRA circles this past offseason when he departed John Force Racing to align with Tasca.
But Prock didn’t hit the ground running in 2026, entering the MIR weekend with a 2-5 elimination-round record and only 11th in the standings.
That all changed this weekend. On Saturday, he defeated Matt Hagan to win the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, and although he only qualified No. 11 with a 4.036-second time at 316.90 mph, his team – led by his father, championship crew chief Jimmy Prock, and his brother, Thomas – were ready for race day.
Prock disposed of Matt Hagan, Spencer Hyde, Ron Capps and then Beckman. Hagan, Capps, and Beckman have, like Prock, all won NHRA nitro Funny Car championships, so nothing came easy.
For some nitro Funny Car drivers, not winning Wallys isn’t headline news – but it has been for Prock, and for good reason.
Prock began the 2026 season as the winner of 17 of the previous 39 national events on the NHRA circuit. He compiled an amazing 98-22 elimination-round record over the 2024-25 seasons. But his last win came last October in Dallas – a span of seven months.
“As a competitor, you’re just kind of beat down. When the race car started coming alive again, and I felt like I was behind the race car at times this year where the race car was performing better or excelling better than I was,” Prock said. “And after last weekend, I was really, really hard on myself.
“After the semifinals [in Chicago], we didn’t run good enough to win, but I didn’t even I didn’t leave good enough to even put us in contention to win if the car did run,” Prock said. “I was really hard on myself, and I wanted to come in here this weekend and prove to myself that I still got it. And I feel like I did that. I still have room to work on myself. I think that I can do a better job. But we were good enough to turn on win lights six times this weekend, so that felt really good. I’m really proud of the team.”
Prock acknowledged getting back to the winner’s circle was a trying journey. He switched teams, and from Chevy with the Force team to Ford with Tasca.
“Trying to read a foreign language that you don’t know – that’s the easiest way to explain this,” Prock said. “It’s been very, very difficult. There hasn’t been just one thing that’s been hard. It’s all been hard. And we’ve done a lot of work. Like I said, we’re not just building a package to race and compete, we’re trying to build a dynasty right now. We’re redoing the shop. We’re building a fab shop. We’re trying to design our own parts. We’re doing so many things on top of trying to come out here and win races for our sponsors, for Ford Racing and PPG, Motorcraft, and Quick Lane.
“It’s been a grind, but when you have days like this, it’s all paid off, and you forget about all those hard times that you had. I can’t believe that we’re six months in here at Tasca Racing. It feels like we started yesterday. That’s how much we’ve been working and how much of a blur it’s been. But all those late nights, all those long hours, all those issues that we’ve come across that we had to fix just go out the window when you hold one of these Wallys.”
Prock wouldn’t give away his team’s secrets in his post-race press conference, but admitted it wasn’t a quick fix for it to discover its groove.
“It’s been everything. It’s been trying to dial in our engine combination. And when you’re racing we didn’t really test other than the preseason test,” Prock said. “We needed to test for three months before we showed up to Gainesville, honestly, to come out and perform like we did with as much as we changed. And when you’re trying to race, qualify, etc., and you’re trying to get your engine combination dialed in, but it’s not there. You’re trying to work on the clutch, but the engine ain’t running right, and it’s running differently every run.
“We run a centrifugal clutch, so if the engine’s not perfect and it doesn’t do the exact same thing when you step on the gas and rev up and do the exact same thing when you jiggle it and you pull timing out of it and ramp back up, all the efforts that you made on the clutch just don’t matter. It just took us time to get the engine running clean and making power. I tell you what, this Ford Mustang makes plenty of power.
“It’ll smoke that Mustang [Dark Horse] SC [Supercharged] they just came out with, I guarantee you that. But it’s just all these steps that compile on top of each other. And to be seven races in and holding one of these Wallys and having really a dominant car this weekend says a lot about this race team. We’re only like 200-plus points out of the lead. There’s a long way to go and I’m not giving up. I don’t see why we can’t. I mean, we gapped them by 200 points last year, so why can’t we shrink it by 200 points going into the Countdown [the final six races this year]?”
With the win, Prock etched his name into Ford racing history.
“I mean, it’s awesome. It’s kind of full circle. My dad, in his office, has a receipt from an engine my great-grandfather bought back in 1928 for his midget car, and it was a receipt from Ford,” Autsin said. “It was a four-cylinder from Ford. And my great-grandfather raced a Ford back in the 1920s, and all of us Procks are still racing today. And to add my name to that list is unbelievable. Ford Racing has been awesome to work with. Having the engineering backing that they give us, obviously, my dad and brother are very intelligent, and they can use the hell out of their support.
“They have a lot more money than we do. Getting that access has been great. And like I’ve been saying, this is just the beginning. We plan on doing this for a very long time with Ford Racing.”
