Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The Texas NHRA FallNationals at the Texas Motorplex.

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1 – Leah Pruett wins Top Fuel trophy to complete first “nitro double” for Tony Stewart Racing - Leah Pruett defeated Steve Torrence in an epic showdown between top-ranked title contenders and combined with Funny Car winner Matt Hagan to give Tony Stewart Racing its first double-nitro achievement.
 
Hagan took the points lead with his semifinal victory over Tim Wilkerson, then extended it by running away from a tire-smoking John Force in the final round. 
 
While Hagan has won three championships, Pruett is the closest she ever has been to earning the Top Fuel title. And after working her way into the final round, the winners circle for the 12th time, and ultimately into the title talk, she said the emotion Sunday “surpasses [those from] my very first Top Fuel win. The excitement is super high.”
 
But she controlled her emotions all day long, saying she didn’t allow herself to think about her progress for the day or the season. However, following her victory in the marquee match-up of the day – her victory against Doug Kalitta – she was in line to inherit the Top Fuel points lead. And she said she was aware that she started the weekend in second place and had fallen to third place after qualifying was complete Saturday
 
Pruett knocked out No. 1 Kalitta in the second round.
 
“Beating Doug Kalitta, the points leader, was huge,” Pruett said. “You’ve got to do the best you can and make sure someone’s not running away with it. And Ron Capps said it best: Dallas, the Stampede of Speed, you don’t win a championship here, but you can lose one. We made darn sure we were deep in the hunt, at the top of the hunt.”
 
By then, No. 4 Justin Ashley, who had led the field into the Countdown after an outstanding regular season, already was out of contention. He lost to Clay Millican, even though Millican’s dragster quit before the finish line. Millican’s crew chief and Plano, Texas, resident Jim Oberhofer said, “We’ve got the ol’ Texas horseshoe up our butt.” It vanished by the semifinal round. Millican’s car looked as though it might do a wheelstand, but he averted disaster – and lost the race.
 
That sent Pruett into the final round, where she had the class’ other marquee match-up; i.e., against third-place Steve Torrence. He eliminated No. 5 Antron Brown in Round 2, then beat dad Billy by seven-thousandths of a second for the final-round berth. (“My dad’s my toughest competitor,” Torrence said. “He doesn’t come out here often, but when he does, he throws down.”)
 
2- Erica Enders makes history as motorsports’ most successful woman - Erica Enders made her first passes at Texas Motorplex as an 8-year-old from Houston, racing in the Jr. Dragster class, and in this most recent visit, one week after celebrating her 40th birthday, she is the winningest woman in not just NHRA drag racing but all of motorsports.
 
Enders defeated Dallas Glenn in the Pro Stock final round to earn her 46th victory in the factory hot-rod class. That achievement, coupled with one sportsman-level Super Gas triumph, broke a tie with three-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion (turned Top Alcohol Dragster driver) Angelle Sampey.
 
“We came in here on a mission,” Enders said. It was a daunting task, the No. 3 starter said, considering the top half of the qualified field was separated by mere thousandths of a second.
 
“I’m really grateful,” she said. I’m so blessed to get to do what I do with people who mean the most to me.”
 
She said her goal when she started competing was to be the best racer, rather than the best woman racer. And with Shirley Muldowney’s 18 victories and “a bunch” by Sampey when she started, Enders said she never thought such a day like Sunday was possible. “I never thought I’d be racing long enough for this to happen,” she quipped.
 
3 – Hagan once again becomes the Funny Car dominator - For Funny Car winner Matt Hagan, Sunday’s victory was his fourth at Dallas and sixth of the season.

And in a season marked by momentum swings and all the twists and turns of a 330-mph soap opera, he knows the chase is far from over.
 
“It’s anybody’s ballgame. Look how close it is. We’ve won two races in the Countdown, and we’re not running away with anything,” he said. “I feel like I’m in a knife fight in a phone booth.”     
 
In the end, though, he said, “We really, truly rose to the occasion today. You just ask for the ability to have a great day. You can’t ask for any more than that.”
 
And he was anticipating celebrating with his team owner.
 
“I know his pilot is here, but I hope he [Stewart] stays around so we can get drunk together,” Hagan said.

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5 – Pro Stock’s Troy Coughlin Jr. escapes massive smoke cloud - Troy Coughlin Jr. was nonchalant after escaping from a massive cloud of smoke that enveloped his Jegs.com Chevy Camaro Pro Stock car during the semifinal round Sunday.    
 
“It’s part of racing. You sign the waiver at the gate, and it's a danger. That's just part of the game,” he said after his engine blew up and he traveled most of the way down the quarter-mile course with thick smoke billowing from and around his race car. “But it's definitely unfortunate for everybody at Elite Motorsports and all of our sponsors. But I can tell you that everybody at Elite Motorsports is going to work extremely hard. We're going to get it together for Vegas.”
 
Coughlin steered his car to a stop against the wall in his lane in the showdown with teammate Erica Enders. 
 
“It's definitely my driving force to becoming a better driver, really. I could have done a better job keeping it off the wall. I knew she [Enders] was probably around me where the motor started to expire, so I probably should have steered a little bit more to the inside,” he said. “So, just, things happened so fast and in the moment, but the cockpit was filled full of smoke. My helmet's filled full of smoke. You're struggling to breathe. You're not breathing your normal air. So a lot of things aren't like they are. You get into a routine, so a lot of things are so different. But we'll be back in Vegas” in two weeks. 
 
As far as damage assessment, Coughlin said, “I would say there's definitely going to be some hours [of repairs] involved, so I would say I'm going to be getting a couple pizzas and a few things for the fellas.”

 

 
6 – Top-three-ranked Funny Car drivers make early exits - Sunday morning points leader Bob Tasca III looked like everything was going to go his way in the opening round when he got past Jack Wyatt, then watched No. 2 Robert Hight fall to lower-qualified Terry Haddock and No. 4 Ron Capps lose to Alex Laughlin.

But Tasca was a spectator at the outset of the quarterfinals. He lost to Tim Wilkerson. The big beneficiary was Matt Hagan, who entered the weekend as the No. 3 contender, but suddenly had the chance to move back into the points lead for the first time since the Topeka race. He could be atop the leaderboard if he could defeat Wilkerson in the semifinal round.
 
After Haddock advanced past Hight, Haddock’s crew chief, Johnny West, said his team didn’t beat Hight: “No, he did it on his own. They gave it to us. That’s their move.”
 
Capps, the No. 1 seed at the start of the Countdown, has slid down the order in the past four races. A bit all over the map in the playoffs (with a semifinal finish, a first-round loss, and a runner-up showing), the 2022 Dallas winner and current champion heads to Vegas in fourth place.     

 

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7 – Injured motorcycle racer Angie Smith to visit dragstrip again soon - Doctors have not given injured Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Angie Smith a timetable for her return to competition, but husband Matt Smith said, “Right now, we’re trying to have her maybe come back at Vegas.” That is the next race on the schedule, the Oct. 27-30 Nevada Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “She wants to just come back and hang out, not ride, but my goal is to try to have her come back for Pomona and hang out and show everybody and then go to the banquet. So we'll see how things go,” he said.
 
He reported that she has eight broken toes and that “eight bones were broken in her foot. So she got eight of the 10 of them.” When Tony Stewart facilitated Angie Smith’s trip home from St. Louis to North Carolina a few days after her accident and the group posed for a picture, she amazingly was standing.

“They had two hard casts on her and then a walking boot on. So they had it where she could stand up – not put total pressure, but at least put some pressure, on them,” her husband said. “Her heels are fine. It's just the front of her feet is what was broke.”
 
Smith, who suffered road rash so severe that it shredded her forearm to the bone, has had one surgery and faces a second one this coming Wednesday.
 
“I hope that's the last one, but we don't know yet, for sure,” Matt Smith said. But he said, “I think you'll definitely see her in Pomona. There's a chance you might see her in Vegas, but we'll wait and see.”
 
Angie Smith’s mother-in-law and sister both are nurses, so they take turns changing her dressings and caring for her needs. “So all in all,” Matt Smith said, “she's in good shape and good spirits. She just wants to get back out here.”
 
8 – Matt Smith has bike back but still perturbed by Tech Department’s procedure - After Angie Smith tumbled from her Denso EBR motorcycle two weeks ago at World Wide Technology Raceway, the NHRA Technical Department impounded her bike. It finally returned the vehicle to Matt Smith Racing this past Thursday.
 
Relieved to have it back, Matt Smith nevertheless saw no reason the NHRA needed to take possession of the motorcycle (“No, not at all,” he said), let alone to keep it for as long as it did.
 
“There was nothing illegal on the motorcycle, nothing whatsoever that they could accomplish that they didn't accomplish in two days,” he said. “It's just sad that they would do that to people and in their rulebook, which really needs to be changed, that they can confiscate anybody's bike, car, or anything and never have to give it back or have to pay for it. And that's totally wrong. We're not NASCAR. People don't have a ton of money like they do, and that don't need to happen in our sport. And that's something that needs to be changed.”
 
He said, “They shouldn't have kept it that long. I mean, I can understand if somebody gets very seriously injured, life-critical, or they died. I can understand that. But when somebody just has an accident, and they go to the hospital, and they get released, the minute they get released, that bike should be reinstated to the team, period, point blank. And for them not to do that is just wrong.”
 
Smith wasn’t prepared to guess whether the Tech Department was intent on finding whether the bike malfunctioned to cause Angie Smith’s crash or perhaps scrutinizing proprietary information.
 
“I mean, I don't know. I don't know. That's something [to] ask the Tech Department. But all I know is it's not right what they did, and they caused me a lot more headache than what I just had to go through.”

 

9 – Julie Nataas delivers triple crown weekend - Newly crowned Top Alcohol Dragster champion Julie Nataas needed a big truck just to carry home all the hardware she picked up at the NHRA Texas FallNationals. She drove the Randy Meyer Racing (RMR) Oslo Tapet & Gulvelegg (OTG) dragster to not only a Lucas Oil championship but also the race win and a JEGS Allstars victory.

“I think everything I’ve done has led up to this,” Nataas said. “My dad getting me a Jr. Dragster at nine years old, going drag racing on the weekends, and after school during the weekdays going go kart racing so I could be the best driver in one of these cars. He’s here every weekend with me.”

Nataas completed the hat trick, winning the FallNationals running a weekend best of 5.129 at 279.76, while Kirk Wolf had trouble early in the run and clicked off. The opportunity to win three titles in one weekend rarely comes in NHRA competition.

“It’s been a wild weekend,” she said. “A weekend I could only dream of. It’s going to be the most memorable weekend of my career. My dad decided to go to Dallas last minute, and I’m so glad he did and was here with me for this incredible weekend.”

To think, she has visions of racing Top Fuel. 

 
 

 

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