Veteran drag racer Doug Foley is bringing his racing school to Maple Grove Raceway Oct. 7-8.
 
The two-day driving school will feature both morning and afternoon Dragster Experience sessions, along with fantasy rides and licensing classes for various types of cars.

Being selected as the best of the best, is a distinguished honor in any sport. Earning this recognition with previous event wins this season in the Southern California Drag Racing Association (SCEDA) will provide a select few an opportunity to claim a winner takes all jackpot of $1,600.00 in the Pacific High Reach Shoot-Out held on October 17th at Autoclub Dragway in Fontana, Ca.

The Pacific High Reach Shoot-Out will include the 18 previous winners of SCEDA events in 2009. Racers who have won events in the Meziere Enterprises Electronics and Mickey Thompson Performance Tires and Wheels Non-Electronics categories are eligible for this event. Southern California bracket hitters, Rob Strong, Don Gatlin, Scott and John Joines, Jeff Interliccia and Dave Meziere are a few who are scheduled to line up for this season ending race of champions.

The NHRA has released another DVD in their line of forthcoming classic Diamond P drag racing footage.

Even on his weekend off from NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing, reining Funny Car Champion Cruz Pedregon has a need for quarter mile competition and he’ll be on the 1320 October 16-18 at Auto Club Famoso Raceway during the 18th California Hot Rod Reunion. The two-time NHRA Funny Car champion is calling this trip to the west coast a “Tribute to Joe Pisano” and will debut his 1978 Plymouth Arrow nostalgia Nitro Funny Car for the first time at the prestigious annual event.

Pisano, a drag racer and racing aftermarket pioneer, was instrumental in the careers of many drag racers and especially in the life of Pedregon. Joe P. as friends and competitors knew him, passed away in 1991. He helped Cruz in his early racing career and in fact introduced him to veteran top fuel and funny car team owner Larry Minor. In 1992, Pedregon won his first NHRA Funny Car Championship in a McDonald’s-sponsored Funny Car owned by Minor. Pedregon looked at this as an opportunity to pay a tribute to his longtime friend by asking Joe’s brother, Frank, if he could paint his nostalgia Funny Car similarly to one that Pisano raced in the late 70s. Hot Rod Reunion founder Steve Gibbs wanted to provide a place for racing friends to gather and share their stories shortly after the death of Joe Pisano.

The JEGS Top Dragster Shootout that was to run in conjunction with the recent JEGS NHRA Northern SPORTSnationals was rained out along with all of the other event activities on Saturday at National Trail Raceway.  Because the JEGS Northern SPORTSnationals event was the last race for the year in the Spitzer Race Cars Top Dragster Series, the special JEGS Top Dragster Shootout has been rescheduled for Saturday, April 24, 2010 at O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis.

JEGS’ John Coughlin and Division Director Jay Hullinger also announced that JEGS has extended their sponsorship of the JEGS Top Dragster Shootout through 2010, ensuring that the popular Shootout will return as one of the many features of the JEGS NHRA Northern SPORTSnationals at National Trail Raceway, September 25, 2010.

Daniel Wilkerson had been waiting his whole life to do what he did in late May this year.  He was in Topeka, racing a nitro Funny Car, and was doing it at a national event on the NHRA Full Throttle tour.  To cap it off, he even out-qualified his dad, running a 4.215 to take the 8th spot while his pop, popular Funny Car contender Tim Wilkerson, landed 12th.

Now, as the tour approaches this weekend's running of the O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals in Memphis, Wilkerson can say "I've been waiting my whole summer for this" as he comes back again for his second pro start, almost exactly four months after his debut.  Wilkerson will again field a second Levi, Ray & Shoup entry as he fights for a spot in the field and success on race day.

Since last June, NHRA Top Fuel and Funny Car drivers have not had the chance to earn 20 bonus points for setting a national elapsed-time record. The course shrank from 1,320 feet, or a quarter-mile, to 1,000 feet, and the sanctioning body chose not to keep records.

The NHRA didn't explain its reasoning, whether it was considering the 1,000-foot mandate as temporary. Nor did it explain in its Labor Day announcement why it will start recognizing 1,000-foot records.
 
But that's what it will do, using Tony Schumacher's 3.771-second pass last October at Richmond as the baseline for the Top Fuel class and Ron Capps' 4.023-second run this February at Phoenix as the Funny Car standard. Neither Schumacher nor Capps received the 20 points retroactively.
 

Richard Petty once said that the only autograph he ever sought out was one for his son, Kyle Petty, who was 12 at the time.

Ron Capps has a daughter, consequently autographs are not all the big. Little girls want to meet their idols and in Capps case that meant just about going to the ends of the Rock and Roll world to get backstage to meet a children's group called “The Wiggles”.

Capps himself is a collector of special memorabilia. Guitars, football helmets and stuff like that. But, when his daughter wanted to go backstage to meet “The Wiggles” the challenge was almost more than Capps could pull off.

Little did Paul Trussell realize when he was just 12 years old, how much the course of his life would change through one event.

"I remember when I was 12, and  my dad bought me my first car," Trussell said. "He bought me a 1932 Ford five-window coupe."

As the story goes, Trussell's father obtained the car to settle a $300 debt. To this day, Paul still owns that car and many, many more.

Technicoat Companies, a longtime associate sponsor with Kalitta Motorsports, will be the primary sponsor on the dragster driven by Doug Kalitta for the remainder of the 2009 Full Throttle Drag Racing Series starting with this weekend's NHRA Mid-South Nationals in Memphis, Tenn.  
 
Las Vegas-based Technicoat Companies specializes in hi-tech performance coatings and floorings, wearing surfaces for pedestrian traffic and vehicular traffic, as well as new and existing roofs. Technicoat’s President Bob Coffman and C.O.O. Glen Williams, a.k.a. “the Cowboys”, are fixtures in the Team Kalitta pit area at most NHRA national events with their trademark cowboy hats. Technicoat Companies and Kalitta Motorsports began their marketing partnership near the end of the 2002 NHRA season.