The 2018 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season kicked off Friday and Jack Beckman powered to the Funny Car qualifying lead at the 58th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals presented by ProtectTheHarvest.com at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona.

Clay Millican (Top Fuel) and Drew Skillman (Pro Stock) are also provisional qualifying leaders in their respective categories at the first of 24 events on the 2018 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series schedule.

Beckman leads the Funny Car category with a run of 3.860 seconds at 332.84 mph recorded during his second pass of the day. He’s chasing the top position at the season-opener after wrapping up 2017 with a stretch of two consecutive No. 1 qualifiers.

When the 2018 NHRA season begins – Feb. 9-11 at the Winternationals in Pomona, Calif., Richard Townsend will be there.

The veteran Nostalgia Funny Car driver is going to make his NHRA nitro Funny Car debut. Townsend will make the transition with his teammate Dustin Davis.

According to Townsend’s crew chief Lance Larsen, Townsend completed his nitro Funny Car license at NHRA’s Nitro Spring Training last week at Wild Horse Motorsports Park in Phoenix, Ariz.

Vowing to “drive his car better than he does,” veteran street racer “Daddy Dave” Comstock has agreed to step into Keith Haney’s 2017 championship-winning Radials vs. the World (RvW) ride Mar. 2-3, for the season-opening Frankenstein Engine Dynamics Mid-West Pro Mod Series (MWPMS) event at the Texas Motorplex, near Dallas.

“Keith knows I can drive and I’m real competitive and more than ready to push things right to the edge,” stated Comstock, a regular on the Discovery Channel’s runaway hit Street Outlaws TV show. “I’m going to drive it like it’s my own and I’ve been known to grenade stuff before in order to win, so …,” his voice trailed off. “No sense in leaving anything on the table.

Terry McMillen had planned simply to go 300 or 330 feet on the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports dragstrip Thursday to test a list of new equipment in his Amalie Oil Dragster before the 2018 NHRA Mello Yello season. But the joy on his face was hard to disguise.

“It’s good to be back and for Team Amalie, we’re just going out there and we’re going to hope for the best and try to get some more wins like we did in Vegas last year,” McMillen said, “because that was just overwhelming. I want some more of those overwhelming experiences. So it was really good, and you know, I’m just excited to be back out here and doing what we do.

“It’s just exciting. I can’t wait. Pomona’s a week away. It’s a week away. When we left Pomona, we were what, 90 days out from the next race? Those 90 days felt like about 15 because it’s flown by,” he said.

The Ford Motor Company returned to fulltime Funny Car racing last Wednesday with a big bang – literally.

Bob Tasca’s car grenaded during a practice run during the first day of Nitro Spring Training, then had a mishap at the starting line Thursday. However, the Rhode Island auto dealer and staunch Ford associate at the racetrack and in business wasn’t angry.

“We just broke an intake valve. It’s just one of those things in these cars where everything in the car is brand-new. I mean, brand new, so you can’t blame it on an old part. It is what it is. Things happen and we’ll bounce back from it,” he said afterward. “The car made two great runs. I mean, up until the time it broke, the intake valve, it was some of the quickest 60’ times of my career. So, I mean, the car ran fantastic. And the first run, we shut it off at 330’, our planned shutoff. And the second run, we were outpacing the first run substantially, and it just broke an intake valve. So, hey listen, that’s nitro racing.”

John Force Entertainment will be releasing a ten-episode web series to the John Force Racing YouTube page on Friday, Feb. 9 at noon ET. The series, titled “Force”, follows the four-car team throughout the 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Season offering behind the scenes views of the Force family.
 
When John Force Entertainment began filming in 2017, they had no idea they’d be chronicling the team’s path to a pair of world championships.

Terry Haddock’s NHRA nitro Funny Car and Top Fuel career has been a case study in perseverance.

The Temple, Texas, team owner/driver, however, has kept plugging away and he’s more optimistic than ever about what his team can accomplish in 2018 when he competes in the Top Fuel class.

“We had a brand-new Top Fuel car built and we are trying to get everything squared away and we are working hard trying to be there next week to see how it all plays out,” Haddock said. “We finished 12th last year (in the point standings) and we are going to try and improve on that. My heart is still in those Funny Cars, but sponsorship is so tough, and at least right now I can get those qualifying checks in Top Fuel that keep you going. It’s not enough, but at least we can keep trying.”

Next week is NHRA’s season-opening Winternationals Feb. 8-11 in Pomona, Calif.

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 Richie Crampton is a self-described realist, and because of that he’s maybe the most thankful driver on the Mello Yello tour. Crampton worked at Don Schumacher racing briefly but made his name at Morgan Lucas Racing [MLR}, first as diligent clutch specialist then driver. He came to Kalitta Motorsports after MLR abandoned the driving side of business, stepping in after Troy Coughlin Jr.’s late-season decision to step from the SealMaster Dragster that once had JR Todd at the wheel.

After MLR parked his dragster and Lucas’, Crampton admittedly was in limbo. He said he had no guarantee he ever would drive a Top Fuel dragster again.

“I think I’m more realistic than anyone out here on just how just hard it is to get a ride with a top-level team like this. I was obviously very fortunate when I was selected to drive for the previous team, but to get the phone call to come here was something I hoped to happen, but in all reality, I didn’t know if it ever would,” Crampton said. “Everyone in the world wants to drive one of these cars, and I understand it. There are a lot of up-and-coming sportsman racers that deserve a shot also, and I get that, too. So for me, it’s just about appreciating what I have here and hope to never be without a ride again.

Jack Beckman said his Infinite Hero Dodge Charger has been treating him terribly in the preseason test session. “We’re 0 for 5,” he said of his sluggish start to the Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park event this week. “But you know what? Literally half our clutch pack is brand new, so you have to be patient about this. It would be different if this was a Monday test after a national event where we knew exactly what the track conditions were and what clutch combination it needed. We’re running on a track that hasn’t seen nitro cars in months.   We’re also running with 40-degree headers, which in essence makes the car seem heavier.

“So if we had all of our stock discs in, it would be easier to adapt to the track and the headers. But why would we? We’ve only got enough of last year’s stuff to go two and a half races. Why use that up getting acclimated to the new headers and rev limiter and stuff and know we’re going to have to change it again come two races into the season?” he said. “So we’re going to bite the bullet right now, make wholesale changes in the bellhousing and just stay until we figure it out.”