Jack Beckman has had an up and down season, so Friday he had a reason to smile.

Beckman, who pilots the Don Schumacher Racing Infinite Hero Foundation Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, clocked a 3.922-second elapsed time at 327.19 mph Friday to take the provisional No. 1 qualifying spot at the NHRA Toyota Nationals in Las Vegas.

Tony Schumacher's tour of duty ends in less than a month.

Schumacher, who won seven NHRA series championships while sponsored by the U.S. Army, has two races left on the 18-year sponsorship.

And for the 84-time NHRA national event winner and first Top Fuel driver to compete in 500 NHRA events, the landscape is promising but uncertain.

Standout NHRA crew chief Aaron Brooks is back in the mix and keeping busy at NHRA national events.

This weekend at the NHRA Toyota Nationals (Oct. 25-28) in Las Vegas he will be tuning again for nitro Funny Car driver Jeff Diehl.

Mike Castellana powered to the current No. 1 qualifying position at the E3 Spark Plugs NHRA Pro Mod Drag Racing Series presented by J&A Service portion of the NHRA Toyota Nationals. This weekend’s Pro Mod racing, presented by Trask Performance, is the season ending event for the category.
 
Castellana raced to the top spot in his ’17 Camaro with his pass of 5.744-seconds at 252.10 mph.

Since 2016, Jeff Arend has drove a handful of races behind the wheel of the nitro Funny Car owned by Peter and Helen Russo.

Arend will be in the cockpit of the Russo Funny Car again when he competes at the NHRA Toyota Nationals (Oct. 25-28) in Las Vegas and the Auto Club NHRA Nationals in Pomona (Nov. 8-11).

The All-American Fuel Dragsters coalition has dispatched a quartet of 260-mph front-engine Nostalgia Top Fuel ambassadors to the NHRA Toyota Nationals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway October 25th-28th. Four teams spanning three generations of AA/Fuel drag racing are slated to run three special exhibition sessions and bring the fans a taste of Top Fuel, NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Series-style. 

Jason Rupert's drag racing career has been a storybook tale.

The multi-time Nostalgia Funny Car champion will soon begin writing another chapter.

Rupert purchased the complete Funny Car operation from the late Steve Plueger's estate.

"We gave him a deposit, and unfortunately he passed away before the deal was done," Rupert explained. "It went into the court system for a little while, so we didn’t get it as soon as we wanted to, but it all worked out. Everything was as agreed on. Paul Trabue and Plueger’s guys helped us get everything put in the trailer. I’m really sad about Steve passing away. We were excited for him and a couple of his guys to go with us. Now he’ll be with us in spirit."

California Hot Rod Reunion honorees Dave Wallace and Rick Voegelin never worked in the same office, but they did travel in parallel universes.

"He was doing the weeklies and I was doing the monthlies," Voegelin said. "When he was at Petersen, he was at Hot Rod, I was at Car Craft. We’d do anything to beat Hot Rod to a story.

"So actually other than the fact that we used to carpool occasionally from Orange County, and would hang out together at the races, we had really very little daily interaction, although of course we knew each other and we were well aware of each other’s work. But we were always just slightly out of sync. Seven degrees of separation or something."

 
Team Liberty Racing rider and team owner Cory Reed will compete in NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle for the first time since the Brainerd Nationals in August. 
 
Reed will ride his FireAde/Team Liberty Racing Buell that he rode earlier this season before letting Joey Gladstone take over riding duties at the U.S. Nationals. Reed stepped down to see if Gladstone could race his way into the Countdown to the Championship since he was out of contention and wanted to transfer his focus to his new bike being built.