George Blanda was 48 years old when he played in his last NFL game.

Baseball legend Satchel Paige was just shy of 60 when he threw his final pitch. 

Gary Player was 73 in his farewell pro golf tournament.

Stock car racer Hershel McGriff was 90 when he competed on a 3/8ths-mile Tucson Speedway in 2018.

J.R. Todd finds it hard to be upset with the way his 2020 season played out.

Todd, who won the 2018 NHRA Funny Car title, was one of those who wasn’t even sure the season was going to happen. As he sees it, anything beyond the first two events was a bonus. 

“I was glad we were able to get on track this year and get in the amount of races that we did,” Todd explained. “We were able to race in front of a select group of fans at some events. At the same time you want to go out there and perform at a high level and be in contention to win a championship.

McLeod Racing, a leading performance clutch manufacturer, has announced that it will be the West Coast supplier for Boninfante Friction racing products. Boninfante Friction, based outside Philadelphia, is a world leader in friction clutch manufacturing for the motorsports racing market. With a West Coast supplier available to customers, Boninfante continues to uphold quality customer service and quick turnaround times for new clutch disc and steel floater products as well as clutch unit re-certifications.
 
McLeod, located in Anaheim, CA, will stock various sizes of discs and floaters, clutch units, and will have the ability to recertify customers’ units. McLeod will be available to serve the West Coast customers in the Nostalgia Funny Car and Top Fuel, Top Alcohol, Truck Pull, Drag Boats, and NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car classes.

The Virtual Reality Hot Rod Association, a fan-vote drag racing series created by CompetitionPlus.com during the pandemic shutdown, will return on Tuesday, December 1, 2020, for its second season.

The inaugural series featured five events and crowned champions in five professional categories. Defending series champions include Terry McMillen (Top Fuel), Tim Wilkerson (Funny Car), Kyle Koretsky (Pro Stock), Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle), and Rickie Smith (Pro Modified).

To know Bobby Lagana Jr. is to know he's a glass-half-full kind of person.

Lagana epitomizes what is good with drag racing. He's passionate, competitive, and, most of all, kind-hearted. The son of drag racer Bobby Lagana Sr. has endured the highest of highs behind the wheel of a race car and the lowest of lows when injured in a life-changing accident. He then took his talents in tuning to work in conjunction with Richard Hogan at Steve Torrence Racing on a three-time championship run.

This year has been a tough one for Lagana, but he sees the bright spots amid adversity. In our annual tradition, Lagana steps up to deliver a list of the things he's grateful for in this year's What I'm Thankful For Series.

The Camping World Era of NHRA Drag Racing began in October, but it’s generating even more excitement as business mogul Marcus Lemonis opens up about his decision to become the series sponsor and what kind of an impact he hopes to make in the sport. Lemonis spoke November 23 with CompetitionPlus.com Senior Writer Susan Wade and shared some of his insights about what’s meaningful to him:

SUSAN WADE: What intrigued you about the NHRA and drag racing that made it an attractive property?

MARCUS LEMONIS: Motorsports has been a pretty good investment for our company – actually, very good investment for about 10 years now. We’ve had the truck series for just shy of 10 years now. And what I really started to notice is that out of all sports sponsorships – we do a lot – the highest conversion rate of familiarity with our brand and loyalty to our brand comes in the motorsport space. NASCAR has been an amazing partner, but I’ve always studied NHRA from a distance and really tried to understand how it works . . . because obviously the size of the attendance at the races was always different from what NASCAR had, at least back in the day, huge crowds. And what I didn’t realize was that NHRA gets the same thing. It just gets it over a series of days.

The beginning of the road to earning the nickname "Fast" for two-time NHRA Pro Modified champion Steve Jackson started with a 383 stroker engine in a pick-up truck.

Jackson is best known for his exploits behind the wheel of supercharged combinations, but isn't primarily known is his background with nitrous-injected engines and what led to him becoming presently one of the top nitrous tuners in the game despite not driving one.

To tell the story, we must go back to the 1990s. Then 16 years old and working at a gas station, Jackson got a hankering to put nitrous oxide on his Chevy truck. so he went to his manager at the Tim Taylor Service Station with an exciting proposition.

In Top Fuel Motorcycle, Larry “Spiderman” McBride, of Newport News VA, saved the best for the last of the event, putting a 5.678, 265.95 up on the scoreboard to win the event. His booming MPH is a new national record with the sanction, eclipsing the old mark of 263.10 set last year. In a post-race interview, when asked what it’s like to run that kind of speed on a motorcycle in the quarter-mile, Larry replied “Like Elmer used to say, it feels Goooood! It’s awesome, really; there’s no way to put it into words.” 

Other new national record marks were set at the event in:

Continuing a busy off-season of marketing partnership additions and renewals, 2020 NHRA Rookie of the Year Justin Ashley announced today that Auto Shocker™, Biocide Systems’™ best odor eliminator on the market, has renewed their associate sponsor agreement on the Strutmasters.com Top Fuel team for the 2021 NHRA Camping World NHRA Drag Racing Series. Auto Shocker has been aligned with Justin Ashley since the end of the 2019 season and was prominently featured on his Top Fuel dragster during all 12 national events in 2020. Moving into the 2021 NHRA season, Auto Shocker and Justin Ashley Racing have a number of consumer promotions as well as social media programs in the planning stages.
 
“I’m proud to represent Auto Shocker and Biocide Systems’ line of odor eliminating products,” Ashley said. “They have the most effective odor eliminators on the market. Last season we had success introducing these products to the NHRA community and its audience. In 2021, we’re going to expand upon that and use all of our resources to show the world how great these products are. I couldn’t be more excited to continue our marketing partnership next season.”

Second-generation Funny Car racer Jason Rupert knew one-hundred percent he wanted to go NHRA Fuel Funny Car racing in the Big Show, and wasn't the least bit intimidated. That is until he looked in the box.

"The Box," as many refer to as the black box, includes many wiring and timers that control a fuel car's engine management program.

"I look in that thing, and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, what is all that stuff?" Rupert recalled, with a chuckle.