Josh Haskett was supposed to be one of the teams, who were scheduled to compete at the prestigious Denso Spark Plugs U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis in Brownsburg, Indiana last weekend. The North Carolina native, who competes in Top Alcohol Funny Car, was not able to compete at The Big Go. 

Haskett -- who does not have a big primary sponsor -- saw his entire trailer go up in flames on Tuesday, September 1st, on Route 35 in Rio Grande, Ohio. He said a battery was the cause of the fire. 

“The tow car was downstairs in the hauler and it was the battery,” Haskett said. “According to the Fire Department and those that were there, all the hotspots were right there at the trunk. In the car, that’s where the battery was in the trunk. Thirty minutes prior to that, see, we had left North Carolina at 3 in the morning and we stopped to get something to eat around 7 am. Then, probably 20 miles up 35 after we stopped, the road was very rough. The trailer was bouncing. We assume that the battery was bouncing, which led to the fire.” 

The Pro Stock debut of Mason McGaha was a year in the making.

McGaha, 18, made his debut in the 2020 season and not surprisingly there has been some growing pains.

McGaha drives a 2020 Camaro for his family’s Harlow Sammons Racing team.

From the time Dr. Jamie Meyer took over as president of the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) Trade Show in May, he understood a day was coming when he'd face an unprecedented challenge.

Simply put, Dr. Meyer is the first PRI Show executive to be challenged with staging the annual trade show amid a global pandemic.

"It's a super complex area," Meyer said. "I'm respectful, especially folks like you that have caught it, that safety is just paramount. There's a lot of politics involved, but at the heart of this, we have to keep people safe and certainly not pushing this thing to make money or to do anything foolish like that. But many industry folks rely on the PRI Show to help them set up their next year and continue those relationships.

J.D. Campbell understood the time was as good as it would ever be the make the jump.

At 43 years old, Campbell, a diehard X275 Drag Radial racer from Arlington, Texas, had long aspired to race the Radial vs. The World division, the top of the food chain for the narrow tire style of racing. For him, he landed a big fish at the right time.

"I've always wanted to run Radial vs. The World or Pro Stock," Campbell said. "This is going to sound a little simplistic or whatever, but just to have what I call a purpose-built race car, a Bickel car that you sit back in the seat far, has always been a dream."

Owner and founder of Aeromotive Inc., Steve Matusek, has announced his plans to continue the 2020 Pro Mod season following an incident at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis on Sept. 6, 2020. Matusek debuted his 2020 Pro Mod Mustang with his new title sponsor, Tequila Comisario, before enduring a roll-over crash in round one of eliminations.
 
With continued support from Tequila Comisario, Matusek will be returning to the Pro Mod class in a backup race car from Elite Motorsports. Matusek is familiar with the black sixth-generation Camaro as he drove it to a personal best of 5.739 at 252.05 mph during the 2020 Drag Illustrated Door Slammer Nationals in Orlando. It utilizes a ProCharger supercharger as a power-adder for motivation on the dragstrip. The car’s livery will feature the Tequila Comisario logo and bottles.

The 2020 Atlantic Oils East Coast Thunder meeting scheduled for Sydney Dragway in November has been canceled, making it the fifth event this year to fall victim to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The last meeting on the domestic calendar was at Sydney Dragway, January 25, 2020.

Keith Haney crashed his nitrous-injected Camaro at the NMCA season-opener in March, and this weekend he will bring back out a repaired and rejuvinated Black Mamba 2019 Camaro in the legendary Shakedown Nationals XVIII in Richmond, VA.

Haney escaped unscathed from a fiery, upside-down crash in his 2019 "Black Mamba" Camaro while competing in the NMCA Pro Mod semi-finals at Florida's Bradenton Motorsports Park.

"We actually won the round, but when you wreck the car you really lost the round. I told my guys later that I 'Ricky Bobbied' it," Haney joked. "But Jerry Bickel Race Cars (JBRC) built me a great car that kept me safe and they rebuilt it even better. It's basically a brand-spankin'-new car again and Jerry said it's actually the lightest car ever to come out of his shop.

 
With two outstanding qualifying efforts at the Denso NHRA U.S. Nationals, especially for a part-time team with not a single full-time crew member, Top Fuel owner-driver Doug Foley’s team appears to be improving. This was supposed to be his learning year, his refresher year, with the revamped Foley & Lewis team.

And he definitely is making progress. But he’s not convinced the NHRA is. And he isn’t sure if his team – or many other teams – can survive if the NHRA doesn’t start making changes that reflect consideration of what the mid- to small-size teams need. 

“Maybe they'll have nine full-time cars next year, but it will be single digits of how many full-time dragsters there are running the tour next year,” Foley said. “I predict there will be about six races next year that will have 11 or less Top Fuel cars next year. That's the beginning of the end. As soon as you've done that, you basically put the closed sign up. As soon as you prove to the world we don't have enough cars, we're screwed, just telling the world, ‘Hey, listen, we're now a little mom-and-pop organization. We're more of a car club than we are a national sanctioning body.’ So we have to do everything we can in our power to prevent that from happening.”

The Australian drag racing community is mourning the passing of John Winterburn one of the most respected and influential identities to have graced the sport who has passed away, 71.
 
Better known as 'Stomper', courtesy of his size 13 feet, Winterburn was never a racer –‘no interest’- however his vision, commitment and authority helped shape the sport in his home state of Queensland and Australia for over five decades. 

A major player in the establishment of Willowbank Raceway, Winterburn was a member of the Management committee for 35 years, including 32 years as President, until stepping down in 2017.

His love affair with drag racing began as a 17-year-old volunteer at the opening meeting of Surfers Paradise International Raceway, then rising through the ranks to become meeting director, a position he held for 14 years until the venue closed in 1987. 

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The Bandimere family, owners of Bandimere Speedway, has been in court battles this summer with officials from the Jefferson County Health Department as related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bandimere Speedway is in Morrison, Colo., 20 minutes from Denver. Bandimere Speedway has been hosting races for 63 years.

The Bandimere family executive team runs the speedway and the family frustrations with restrictions for their events led to them host the “Stop the COVID Chaos” Rally, Sept. 1 at Bandimere Speedway.

The rally was billed to celebrate God and country and the people of the great state of Colorado.