Past Pro Extreme world champion Bubba Stanton leads the field at the inaugural Professional Drag Racers Association (PDRA) Mid-America Indy Showdown. Over 270 cars went down the Lucas Oil Raceway eighth mile, a season-high car count for the all-eighth-mile series.

Seeing the Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod make its debut at Bandimere Speedway on Aug. 4-5 makes Jim Whiteley feel like a proud parent. Whiteley’s drag racing career started at the Denver-area track, breaking numerous track records and winning multiple events in his Top Alcohol Dragster. Now driving his Pro Mod in the biggest and richest Pro Mod race in history, with a $100,000 winner-take-all prize on the line, Whiteley can sense the magnitude of the unique event.

“It’s just home and it’s going to be fun to bring the best cars in the country out there,” said Whiteley, who lives in Grand Junction, Colo. “You haven’t seen a lot of Pro Mods at Bandimere, so this is going to be big, one of the biggest blowouts you can have for a private, non-sanctioning-body race. This will be the stuff history is made of.”

United Nitro Funny Cars held the second of their Northwest Invitationals over the weekend with nitro funny car rookie Bobby Cottrell taking the trophy and handing the winner’s purse over to “Northwest Hitter” Camaro owners Bucky Austin and Mike O’Brien.

After a huge top–end fire in the first qualifier, Cottrell and the team pulled out a fresh engine to qualify second at 5.694 at 257.38 miles per hour, behind “Mr. Explosive” Mark Sanders’ 5.677 at 224.81 mph.  The all 5-second field was rounded out by Chris Davis in the “Old School Nitro” Arrow with a stout 5.875 ET at 238.85 mph.

NHRA officials announced today that the fifth of six events scheduled for the 2017 South Central Division Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series will be changing venues. The Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series event previously scheduled to take place at Thunder Road Raceway in Gilliam, La., on Sept. 15-17, 2017 has been relocated to the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas. This event will now be conducted as a 2-day (Fri.-Sat.) event on the same weekend of Sept. 15-16, 2017.

Del Worsham, one of only three men to win World Championships in both Top Fuel and Funny Car, has been added to the lineup for the 64th annual World Series of Drag Racing to be held on Aug. 25-27 at Cordova International Raceway.
 
Worsham has earned World Championships in both International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) and the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) competition. He was the 1992 IHRA Nitro Funny Car World Champion and added NHRA championships in Top Fuel in 2011 and Funny Car in 2015. Worsham, who has compiled 39 NHRA national-event wins and 66 final-round appearances, looks forward to returning to Cordova for one of drag racing's marquee events.
 

Drag racing is an extremely humbling sport – especially in the nitro classes of Top Fuel and Funny Car.

Nitro Funny Car driver Jim Campbell knows that all too well since the middle of March.

MagnaFuel has stepped up to present a pair of $2,500-to-win shootout races for Top Sportsman and Top Dragster competitors at the Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod presented by One Cure and J&A Service, Aug. 4-5, at Bandimere Speedway. The MagnaFuel Quick Star 16 (door cars) and Pro Star 16 (dragsters) Shootouts will supplement the $10,000-to-win Aeromotive Wild Card Shootout and $100,000-to-win World Series of Pro Mod.
 
“Top Sportsman and Top Dragster are the perfect complement to the Pro Mod show we’ve put together,” said Drag Illustrated Editor-in-Chief and race founder Wes Buck. “When we were laying the groundwork and putting together the class structures for this event, adding Top Sportsman and Top Dragster just made perfect sense. These are world-class cars, world-class drivers and wonderful people; really, in our opinion, two of drag racing’s most exciting and fastest-growing categories. You hear me talking about our efforts to ‘Make Drag Racing Great Again’, and these are some of the guys who are out here doing just that. They’re racing week in and week out for all the right reasons. We share their passion, and we’re excited to have them racing with us at the World Series of Pro Mod.”

Race fans are invited to enjoy a festive evening with NHRA racers, all in the name of charity, at the 11th annual Eric Medlen Nitro Night Charity Dinner at Bay Club Stone Tree on Thursday, July 27.
 
In addition to raising funds for the Sonoma chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities (SCC), the charitable arm of Sonoma Raceway, the evening is dedicated to the memory of Oakdale’s Eric Medlen. Medlen, a native of the San Joaquin Valley, won the Funny Car championship for John Force Racing at his home track in Sonoma in 2006. In 2007, he succumbed to injuries sustained in a testing accident.

Never had Sweet Cheeks wanted to win so badly for Nellie.

Sweet Cheeks, a.k.a. Tommy Johnson Jr., reached the Funny Car finals of the NHRA Route 66 Nationals in Joliet, Ill., losing a close race to teammate Ron Capps, who seemed somewhat like a reluctant winner.

Sunday's race was the first national event since the passing of Terry Chandler, a drag racing philanthropist who funded the car driven by Johnson, honoring the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

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T.J. Zizzo knows his role.

The last few years the veteran Top Fuel driver has competed in a small number of NHRA national events.
However, when the Illinois native shows up – he swings for the fences.

That’s exactly what he did at the 20th annual NHRA Route 66 Nationals last weekend in Chicago, and he had and his team had an amazing performance.