A familiar face from the modern years of Mountain Motor Pro Stock racing will return to competition this year.

Pete Berner, who won IHRA championships in 2006 and 2008, reached 13 final rounds during his time racing in the class while winning five times. When the sanctioning body disbanded its professional racing series, he held five IHRA track records for the Mountain Motor Pro Stockers.

“I wasn’t really even thinking about making a return, but after talking to my wife and a few of my old racing friends, we decided it was a great opportunity,” Berner said. “This is a great team that Richard’s put together with J.R. Carr, and it’s an excellent program. Getting to race with them again is going to be an awesome experience.

When it comes to the NHRA's new Factory X class, Geoff Turk has been the first at a few things. He was the first to display a completed race car at the 2022 PRI Show in Indianapolis, and almost four months later, was the first documented of the next level of Factory Stock Showdown cars to hit the track.

The first two out of three aren't bad. It's just the third one of the firsts that has Turk kicking himself.

Turk also became the first to crash a Factory X car.

"Very dubious honor," Turk admitted. "It wasn't one I was looking for. I would have been happy to let somebody else have that first."

Astonished seems like such an inadequate word to describe the feeling the New Yorker Mike Cerro, but that's exactly the term he used to describe his new Pro Modified Camaro rolling out of the RJ Race Cars/Quartermax Race Cars shop.

"They blew it out of the park," Cerro said. "This is going to take awhile to get used to. This car is on a different level. It's just incredible."

The slick Camaro features a RJ custom built 10" fabricated 4130 floater rear end housing with Strange axles and pro carbon fiber brakes, all Quarter-Max suspension featuring their Extreme 1/8" Adjustable Billet 4-Link Chassis Brackets with titanium plates, QM 2" Anti-Roll Bar, QM 1-1/4" Extreme Pro Series Wishbone, QM 1-5/8" 4-Link Bars, QM 4130 wheelie bars, Weld Racing Delta wheels, and PRS rear shocks.

Ashton Hudson admits he's supporting his drag racing habit by dealing soap. Hudson smiles as he points out how proper handwashing goes hand-in-hand with the right kind of soap when it comes to his day job as an emergency room physician.

As if Hudson's day job isn't complex enough, he also races Competition Eliminator in a Super Modified Ford Escort, which delivers additional complexities of knowing when to lean on the index and when not to, as well as just making his hot rod run the index.

Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA Vegas 4Wide Natinals.

1. Tony Stewart adds “drag racing winner” to his crowded resume, says he’s ‘having fun living my life now’ - By three ten-thousandths of a second, Tony Stewart added “NHRA drag-racing winner” to his already resplendent résumé Sunday at the Four-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Minutes after Stewart claimed the Top Alcohol Dragster trophy, his Funny Car driver, Matt Hagan, put the team’s Haas Automation Dodge Hellcat into the winners circle, establishing his command over the class with his third triumph in the season’s first four races.

Well, he did say it was tougher to qualify No. 1 than to win.

And that's fine with Dallas Glenn, who wasn't good enough to qualify on the pole but had more than enough to win his second consecutive national event by putting a holeshot on Gainesville winner Troy Coughlin Jr. and leading him, Cristian Cuadra and Deric Kramer through the lights en route to the sixth career victory of his relatively short career.

"I think even though I was definitely not the best today, I was just barely good enough to get it done, and that's kind of what matters in four-wide," said Glenn, who was good enough to hold the provisional No. 1 spot on Friday. "You don't have to win the first two; you just have to win the last one.