Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA AAA Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway at Madison, Ill., near St. Louis.

1 – BECKMAN PUTS BRAKES ON ‘SPICY-FAST’ PROCK’S STREAK – Tim Wilkerson had given it some thought. And tongue in cheek, he suggested a number of things that could happen for the NHRA Funny Car class to halt Austin Prock’s impressive steamrolling of the incredibly stout competition.  

“I’m looking for somebody to kidnap him – but I don’t know anything about it,” Wilkerson said, teasing. He nixed the idea, though, of locking Prock inside a portable toilet, saying, “Prock is pretty slippery. He’d be right out of that john before we even got the damn door closed. Hopefully we can get him to throw up, make some mistake, put a hole [cylinder] out, something.”

None of those things happened, but they didn’t need to. Prock’s problems Sunday during eliminations at the AAA Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway came from his own car, the so-called Prock Rocket that had carried him to seven victories and an iron grip on the points lead. The engine erupted at the finish line in his quarterfinal victory over closest championship contender Bob Tasca III. In the thrash to make repairs and meet teammate Jack Beckman in the semifinal round, the throttle stop was set a little too high.  "We had to change everything, and when I got on it, it was way over revved,” Prock said after his 14-round-win string came to a halt. “But that didn’t cause us to smoke the tires at the hit.”

Beckman, who defeated J.R. Todd and Dan Wilkerson in the first two rounds, took advantage of Prock’s misfortune and powered ahead to beat Ron Capps in the final round. Beckman, driving the Peak Chevrolet Camaro for the fifth race as a substitute for injury-sidelined John Force, said Prock’s car “has been amazing all year, but we’re pretty darn good ourselves. They have such a big points lead that we can take a chunk of that. But, more important, we want a win for John.”

The victory was Beckman’s 34th in a Funny Car and his first since 2020 at Indianapolis. The points from his first victory as a fill-in for John Force belong to Force and his PEAK Chevrolet Camaro team. Beckman has substituted for Force since the August race at Brainerd, Minn.

Beckman went up against Capps, his former Don Schumacher Racing colleague, for the 64th time in their careers, and afterward he said, “It’s great to be back.” He told Force he loves him and will hang onto the Wally trophy for him until he can present it to him.

Prock still has a 105-point lead over second-place Beckman, and the semifinal exit is a blip on his radar screen as he pursues a championship with his family-collective team that includes tuner father Jimmy Prock and assistant crew chief and brother Thomas Prock. Moreover, with his 12th No. 1 start of the season this weekend, Austin Prock is closing in on the boss’ 29-year-old top-qualifier record. When Prock was just a year old, Force set the NHRA standard of 13 No. 1 qualifying positions in a single season in 1996.

Prock opened race day with a bye round that was anything but ho-hum. He set the track elapsed-time record at 3.814 seconds, which was low E.T. of the season and eighth-quickest in Funny Car history. After the run, he said, “I knew it was trucking. I was just trying to keep it off the wall. Man, this thing was marching left hard, and I was hand-over-fist trying to keep this sucker in the groove. But great job by this AAA Camaro team. This thing's spicy-fast. Right now it feels like I'm in a spaceship.” The spaceship fell back to Earth in the semifinal round Sunday, but the Prock Rocket undoubtedly will be ready to launch again in two weeks at the Stampede of Speed showcase race at Texas Motorplex, just south of Dallas.   

 

3 – GLENN RETAINS POINT LEAD – Dallas Glenn’s Pro Stock victory was as much about what he prevented as what he achieved.

Glenn, earning his first victory at St. Louis after several runner-up finishes, scored a second straight Countdown triumph in his RAD Torque System Chevy Camaro. It was his fifth of the season and 13th overall, and it kept him in the points lead as the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series moves in two weeks to Texas Motorplex, near Dallas — where Glenn said he wants a first victory … and one of the cowboy hats that go to each of the winners. 

His final-round opponent was Aaron Stanfield, who earlier in the day had grabbed the Factory X trophy and was looking for a second one just like he had done at the recent U.S. Nationals at the start of this month. Glenn denied Stanfield his sixth win in the past nine races.

“It’s been a good three-in-a-row” string of final-round appearances, Stanfield said. “Really, it’s been a good second half of the season for us. Of course, today, not the result we wanted, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. That’s racing. Dallas and I are both really hungry to win right now. Today he made the better run, but it’s far from over. There’s still three races left, and I just might as well win all three of them.”

 

 

 

6 – SOME EARLY MATCH-UPS CRUEL – Just 65 points separated top-five Top Fuel racers Justin Ashley (ranked No. 2) and Clay Millican (No. 5) entering this event, and they had to meet in the opening round of eliminations. Ashley used a holeshot to win by 1/1,000th of a second. Shawn Langdon, who’s third in the standings and trying to regain some traction in the championship chase after a strong start to the season, and Doug Kalitta, who’s in fourth place and is hoping to notch back-to-back titles, drew each other – teammates – in Round One. Langdon won easily when Kalitta lost traction early. Ashley remained in second place behind Brown, while Langdon and Kalitta head to Dallas still third and fourth, respectively. Steve Torrence is fifth.

In the Funny Car class, second-place Bob Tasca III knew he was in for a rough day. As the No. 8 qualifier, if he could get past No. 9 starter Matt Hagan, who was on his heels in the points chase, he would be facing his chief rival in top qualifier and points leader Austin Prock, who earned a first-round bye in the short field. Tasca shook off Hagan but couldn’t stop Prock in the quarterfinals, even though Prock crossed the finish line on fire from an engine explosion.

Hagan, the four-time and reigning Funny Car champion, conceded on the spot Sunday that his pivotal first-round loss to Tasca knocked him out of the running for a repeat title.  “We just missed it out here today,” he said. “We didn’t have it together for the weekend, and it didn’t help only getting two rounds of qualifying. At the end of the day, you have to tip your cap to Tasca’s team. They’re on a different planet. That’s the nail in the coffin for us.”

Hagan said, “I think we need to sit down and evaluate what we’re doing as a team and take these next three races to test. We haven’t been the caliber team that I think we are capable of being. We won the championship last year, and we have a great group of guys. They work so hard. I’m so proud of all of them. You want nothing more than to be able to give them those wins. Hopefully we can go out there and be a spoiler these next few races and mix it up a bit, but I think that’s it for our championship hunt.”

The Pro Stock category saw two KB Titan Racing duels and two Elite Motorsports matches. KB Titan was going to lose half of its entries in the first round, as Dallas Glenn defeated Camrie Caruso and Greg Anderson beat Cory Reed. Likewise for Elite, which saw Aaron Stanfield oust David Cuadra, and Jeg Coughlin eliminate Jerry Tucker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9 – REPAVED TRACK REQUIRES FINESSE – NHRA and top motorsports racing-surface experts were on hand this summer at World Wide Technology Raceway to oversee the repaving project that workers completed July 18. According to the facility, “Christ Brothers Asphalt, Inc., which also repaved the WWT Raceway oval track in 2017, used a specialty blend of polymers and aggregate designed to maximize track preparation and withstand the demands of 335-plus-mph Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars.” And they introduced some unique conditions that drivers this weekend have had to incorporate into their strategy that not only applied to qualifying but also to Countdown implications from this weekend’s performances.

Here's what some of the racers had to say about it: 

Ron Capps (Funny Car): “They redid the track. The concrete is unbelievable. It's pretty much holding anything you can throw at it. The trick is the transition to asphalt. It's a little bumpy down there, very tricky. This racetrack in the past has been … you had to have a combination of driver, crew chief, and crew to be all together, as this is a very demanding racetrack to get down.” 

Jack Beckman (Funny Car): “Gateway’s an interesting racetrack. It’s only got 519 feet of concrete, the shortest on tour. The asphalt’s pretty green. We know it’s going to spin going off there. I’m only getting two runs, and by the way, I haven’t been here in five years. It’s an interesting feeling, knowing the thing’s going to spin, and telling your mind, ‘Just hang on — a little spin isn’t bad.’”

Shawn Langdon (Top Fuel): “It’s tricky conditions [with] not running yesterday and the new asphalt down there. Everyone's spinning on the asphalt. It’s kind of the first-to-the-asphalt scenario, so just have to get the car to run well down low and then get the momentum built up.”

10 – WORTH MENTIONING 

* Chad Green, whose Bond Coat Ford Mustang Funny Car suffered an engine failure without warning in the first round against Dale Creasy, made it back to the starting line for Round Two. However, a cracked fitting leaked fuel on the distribution block, and his crew had to shut down the car on the starting line. Green explained his first-round incident by saying, “It gave me no warning. It was just trucking on through there. We were on, it seemed like, a pretty decent run, and then just everything went blooey. Real sad about that. There's going to be some work. Good thing it was early in the round, so give us a little extra time.” 

* After Chris Cunningham watched Austin Prock clock his track-record, season-best 3.814-second elapsed time, the crew chief for Prock teammate Jack Beckman teased, “They’re just showing off.”

* Top Fuel racer Shawn Reed was almost giddy after he won against Tony Stewart on a holeshot by 1/10,000th of a second (.0001 of a second) to close the first round of Top Fuel eliminations: “Man, I grew up watching him, and I got to fight him. They can't ever take that away from me. I love the guy, man. He’s a great guy. He is a great ambassador. He is great for this sport. And I just got up on the wheel. I had to do something and we've been not doing too good on Sundays lately, and we just had to do something. My team's good. My car is good. We needed that really bad, and I'm really proud of my guys.” Reed went on to beat Brittany Force, virtually ending her quest for a third championship.

* For the first time in NHRA history, four women qualified for the 16-car Top Fuel field: Brittany Force (Monster Energy dragster, John Force Racing), Julie Nataas (airmine dragster, Scrappers Racing), Jasmine Salinas (Scrappers Racing dragster), and Ida Zetterstrom (Leatherwood Distillery dragster, JCM Racing). Force, the two-time champion and most experienced of the group, was the only one to advance past the opening round. Nataas, who lost to Zetterström teammate Tony Schumacher as his 111th different opponent, was making her pro debut. Zetterström was making just her fifth start, and Salinas is putting the finishing touches on her rookie pro season.