Del Worsham put both hands on top of his head.
There wasn’t much else to do after Jacob Slater stopped the Compulink timing system at 5.452 seconds and, more noticeably, 291 mph in the second round of Top Alcohol Funny Car eliminations at the NHRA Brainerd Nationals.
Slater had just beaten Chris Foster. Worsham, meanwhile, was staring at a number he didn’t expect to see from the experimental blown-nitro Funny Car he brought to Brainerd to find out exactly what he had.
The 5.452 wasn’t outrageous. The 291 was another story.
“Absolutely was not on my radar,” Worsham said. “I thought at best it’d run 285, I truly though that. But again, the more you work on them, the happier you make them, the more attention you spend on them, they just keep getting better and better, and you think you’re doing things to possibly slow it down or even just work on it, but then it just gets happier. And as it gets hotter out and the day goes on, this thing seems to just like what it’s doing.”
There was another indication Sunday that Worsham’s experiment had become more than an oddity parked among the conventional Top Alcohol Funny Cars. People were showing up between rounds just to watch the crew work on it.
“It’s like going back to the Brad Anderson/Pat Austin era when this went on,” Worsham said. “That was a heck of a run, man; again, we’re learning with this every run, and we just don’t know until we keep working it. We’re not far off, we’re not far off if you look at the ET and the reaction time, it’s really close.
“But when you look at the speed, it kind of shows you the kind of horsepower this thing has potential to make; it’s going to take us a little while to get this… Again, it’s not much different than the other cars; it’s just close. And we’ll keep working on it, we’ll keep after here, we’ll keep making adjustments, and next time we run it, we’ll make some more changes that hopefully put it a little more in line with the top alcohol funny car so it doesn’t look so far out of whack.”
Slater left first against Foster, lost the lead almost immediately and spent much of the run chasing her. By approximately 800 feet, Slater had reeled Foster back in, and he never trailed again.
Slater’s 5.452 was competitive with the rest of the class. The 291 mph on the scoreboard was something else entirely, and Worsham knew immediately which number people were going to talk about.
That’s also the number he’d rather bring back. His concern isn’t the elapsed time as much as what 291 mph might suggest about the combination to the racers already competing in the class.
“I don’t want to discourage the alcohol funny car competition, and that’s not my intention at all,” Worsham said. “And I’m kind of afraid, I’m kind of afraid that they’re not looking at the big picture, which is the ET, and they’re just focusing on the speed right now. And I need to get the speed knocked off this thing so it doesn’t look so far in the wagon.”
For a guy who has spent much of his career trying to make Funny Cars faster, Worsham is now trying to take some speed out of one. That’s because building the fastest car in Top Alcohol Funny Car was never the point of this deal.
Worsham’s combination uses much of the same basic architecture found in a current nitro Funny Car, including the chassis, body and engine. NHRA restricts the combination to 85% nitromethane, one magneto and 16.7% supercharger overdrive, while the four-disc clutch has six arms and no lockup or clutch management.
That’s the hole Worsham has been trying to fill. A racer can spend years accumulating Top Alcohol Funny Car equipment, decide to move into nitro and discover much of what he owns isn’t going with him.
Worsham’s car was built with the opposite idea in mind. Much of what Slater is racing at Brainerd can follow a team if it eventually makes the move to nitro Funny Car.
Worsham sees the combination as a way to close the equipment gap between Top Alcohol Funny Car and nitro Funny Car, where much of what a racer already owns doesn’t transfer. He began testing the concept in 2024, continued in 2025, and came to Brainerd because eventually he needed to race the thing.
“No, that wouldn’t work, that’s not fair to anybody either,” Worsham said when asked whether he would sandbag the car. “Sandbagging, I mean, what good would that do? I mean, that’s why I came here was to figure out where this thing stood. I need to spend a lot of undivided attention on it, and race it in competition, and see where it stacks up. And we know, here we are. So, we’ll keep working on it, that’s all we can do.”
Slater opened the weekend with a 5.58 at 282 mph, already enough speed to get attention. The car continued responding as Worsham worked with it, eventually qualifying No. 1 at 5.458 seconds and 279.96 mph.
Worsham figured the car might eventually reach 285 mph if everything lined up. Instead, Slater went six mph beyond that estimate while racing somebody, and Worsham wasn’t trying to make it happen.
“The more you work on them, the happier you make them, the more attention you spend on them, they just keep getting better and better,” Worsham said. “And you think you’re doing things to possibly slow it down or even just work on it, but then it just gets happier.”
The engine hasn’t gone through the weekend without giving Worsham a few reminders that this is still experimental equipment. The early runs had been encouraging from a maintenance standpoint, but racing it repeatedly at Brainerd began uncovering a few things.
“It hasn’t been perfect,” Worsham said. “I mean, we’ve been working on it; it’s a work in progress. There weren’t a whole lot of full runs. We did some testing, but we need to make these full runs and see where it really sits. It’s pitched a ring on a piston, and scuffed one up a little bit, and we had to put one sleeve in it. And we’ve done a lot of maintenance on it, and just keep working on it.”
That’s also why Worsham wanted to race his Funny Car instead of continuing to make test laps. At a national event, the next round is coming whether the experiment is ready or not, and there’s somebody in the other lane trying to send it home.
Brainerd has forced Worsham to deal with the car under those conditions. Slater has now given him that information and, all the while, also gave everyone else something to talk about.
Worsham could joke about whether a rule adjustment might be coming after what showed up on the scoreboard.
“No, no,” Worsham said when asked if he’d ever heard of a team getting a rule change between rounds. “I guess maybe one might deserve it.”
The attention surrounding the car hasn’t been lost on Worsham, either. Seeing people gather around a Top Alcohol Funny Car between rounds brought him back to a time when Brad Anderson and Pat Austin were among the stars of the category.
Worsham isn’t declaring victory over one 291-mph run, either. The bigger job is figuring out whether NHRA can make the combination work without upsetting the racers already invested in conventional Top Alcohol Funny Cars.
And somewhere in the middle of figuring out blower overdrive, clutch combinations, parts wear and how to take some speed out of a car that apparently doesn’t want to slow down, Worsham is enjoying himself.
“Oh, I don’t know, it’s fun, let’s put it that way,” Worsham said. “I’ve had a lot of fun with stuff I’ve been doing last year; I really have. We had a lot of fun racing around with the IHRA; we have a lot of fun racing with Julie and going 332 miles an hour at Norwalk with the Mission Foods series. So, I’ve had a lot of fun, but it’s fun to watch Jake drive; he’s excited, it’s fun to watch a new combination drive.”
Worsham wanted competition laps when he brought the car to Brainerd, and Slater has given him plenty to study.
Now he also has to figure out how a Top Alcohol Funny Car he thought might run 285 mph went 291 when he wasn’t even trying to make it faster.
