World champion drag racer Jeg Coughlin Jr. will have a little extra motivation this weekend at the 26th annual Arizona NHRA Nationals as he races with the support of his new friend, Jacob Valencia.

Jacob is a young drag racer who enjoys boxing, skateboarding, hiking, and fishing. Recently, Jacob was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of cancer usually found in young men aged 15-21. Facing 28 weeks of chemotherapy, Jacob has maintained a positive attitude, as revealed in his latest blog entry.

"Second round of chemo went really good. The side effects the doctors said would happen thank God haven't happened (knock on wood). I would really like to thank my nurse Lisa; I love her she's awesome! I really trust Dr. Shah and Dr. Williams I think they're great too. They make me feel like this will all be over soon. Thanks to everyone for their prayers. I know that's helped me so far. I know the Lord is watching over for me. I've also met a lot of people in the hospital that are worse off than me and I want to ask the Lord to watch over them too."

For nearly his entire life, there has been one constant for Donnie Couch – racing.

When Couch was in high school, he started going to races and working as a crew member for professional teams.

“My grandfather raced in the 1930s and 40s and my dad raced in the 50s, 60s and 70s,” the 53-year-old Couch said. “Then toward the end, my dad was working with Don Prudhomme as a mechanic. All through high school, if I got good grades and didn’t get in trouble, I got to go all summer with Prudhomme and Tom McEwen. I basically worked on McEwen’s car for 10 years, from the time I was a freshman in high school.”

Now, 40 years later, Couch has found another niche in the sport, his West Coast Funny Car Factory in Whittier, Calif., just south of Los Angeles which specializes in Nostalgia Funny Cars.

The American Drag Racing League (ADRL) is pleased to announce Universal Technical Institute (UTI) as the title rights sponsor for its Mar. 19-20, UTI Dragpalooza VI presented by Safety-Kleen at Houston Raceway Park in Baytown, Texas.

“Adding Universal Technical Institute as an event title sponsor is a real honor for us and I can’t thank UTI enough for their commitment to our future together,” ADRL President and CEO Kenny Nowling said. “We look forward to this partnership providing mutual benefits for years to come.”

When you’re 43 years old, a bucket list is about the last thing on your mind, unless your name happens to be Mike Neff.

“That was a huge bucket list item,” said Neff, of his experience in driving and winning with a Funny Car. “If I hadn’t won and then we had to park it; that would have bothered me. That would have haunted me. Getting that win checked that item off of the list. I could say to myself, ‘I’m good with this now. No matter what happens I’m fine with this now.”

“If I never drive again, I can always say that the last race I raced – I won. That would be the perfect ending for me.”

But as Neff sees it, he doesn’t believe his driving days are finished. If they are, he can live with that reality. And in an off-season of uncertainty, the assurance of job security went a long way towards confidence in 2010, regardless of the role he would play.

Two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion and winner of last Sunday’s 50^th Winternationals in Pomona, Larry Dixon, will be Newsmaker of the Week on The Race Reporters radio show, Wednesday, February 17, 7 p.m. ET, on www.PowerUpChannel.com.

After spending the first 14 years of his career driving for drag racing legend Don Prudhomme, Dixon moved to record-setting tuner Alan Johnson’s new Al-Anabi team last season. He won five times but lost the Top Fuel title by two points to Tony Schumacher. Including Pomona, he has 49 career national wins, with his championships coming in 2002 and 2003. 

Jason Scruggs believes that a drag racer is only as good as their last run. That’s why the two-time ADRL Pro Extreme world champion tries to one-up himself on every pass.

Tuesday afternoon, on a testing run at Palm Beach International Raceway [PBIR] located outside of West Palm Beach, Fla., Scruggs laid down the quickest run in doorslammer drag racing history with a 3.645 second pass.

Lance Larsen is back home. The longtime nitro tuner, who is the crew chief for the Melanie Troxel-driven In-N-Out Burgers Dodge Charger, is back to tuning a Funny Car, a class he last worked in seven years ago with Dean Skuza. Several tours of duty in Top Fuel and Larsen is back with a Funny Car.

“By far the most experience I’ve got is in tuning Funny Car,” said Larsen. “I was fortunate to join a team that had a lot of data to help the time that I’ve been away from it. Unfortunately, Brian Corradi, who is my best friend in the world [and a co-worker at Skuza Motorsports], works for a competing company so he can’t help me. But he left all the data and I just go through the book and make my best educated guess. It will be a while before I force my [tune-up] personality down its throat. All in all, it’s exciting and a new challenge.”

Dave McClelland, legendary drag announcer, continues to prove announcing a drag racing  event can be a talent equal with riding a bike. At least for the NHRA’s legendary voice it is.

McClelland joined NHRA announcer Bob Frey on the announcer’s deck multiple times over the course of the NHRA 50^th anniversary Winternationals to call the action, and to bring a nostalgic flavor to the weekend’s racing

“The author Thomas Wolfe once said you can never go home again and I found that to be wrong,” said McClelland, who retired from full-time announcing in 2004. “It was like old times here in Pomona.”

Ron Capps, recently appointed to the Professional Racers Organization board, adding to his existing role as a member of the driver’s safety committee, has been inspired to look closer at the safety concerns surrounding one of drag racing’s most talked-about upcoming events – four wide racing.

“We’re all concerned, and excited about it – we came to the conclusion that it’s all for a good cause,” Capps said, of the safety aspects related to the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in March. “It’s good publicity and good for a man who has built many of the tracks we race on – Bruton Smith. We just wanted to make sure some things from a driver’s standpoint, were looked at.”