Top Fuel superstar Antron Brown had just finished mixing fuel for his next run during a private test session at Gainesville Raceway. He started walking towards his Matco Tools dragster, then stopped and looked left. The 11,000 horsepower race car is his occupation, but lately, the car on his left has become his high-speed fling. 

Manny Buginga's Pro Modified entry was parked under the canopy alongside Brown's dragster in an alliance of sorts. 

Brown, the two-wheeled standout who became a Top Fuel champion, has been acting on his doorslammer impulses lately, driving Buginga's PRO275 drag radial car most recently at Bradenton's U.S. Street Nationals. 

When the 2023 NHRA season-opening Gatornationals gets underway, last year’s NHRA Rookie of the Year Camrie Caruso will have plenty of new to deal with – starting with a new team KB Titan Racing engine program.

However, one thing that will stay the same for Caruso is she will have longtime marketing partners, Florida-based Right Trailers, along for the ride, starting with them being her primary sponsor at the Gatornationals, March 9-12 in Gainesville, Fla.

Caruso also will be wearing a Right Trailers branded firesuit and her Pro Stock team will wear Right Trailer crew shirts. 

There's one thing Andrew Hines has yet to grasp since he assumed the role of full-time crew chief, and it's different from the kind of challenge one would think. Sure, as a rider, he checked almost every box of knowledge, straddling his Harley-Davidson by winning six series championships and 56 national events, the most in the class.

As a crew chief, he still has one unmastered detail.

"I've been joking with everybody; I still don't know where to stand on the starting line," Hines admitted. "After being on the bike and knowing my position there for so many years, I'm like a butterfly bouncing around all over the place; I just don't know where to go.

Wesley Motorsports is expanding its role in providing pre-race vehicle prep and onsite chassis tuning for Challenger Drag Pak owners. The latest competitors running out of the newly expanded Wesley Motorsports facility are David H. Davies and Warren Walcher, two seasoned veterans who've competed in the NHRA Factory Stock Showdown and NMCA Factory Super Cars classes for the last two years. During the 2022 race season, both Davies and Walcher made significant performance strides as the team at Wesley Motorsports applied their knowledge and skills in chassis set up to make the Drag Pak’s suspension work more consistently when harnessing the supercharged HEMI’s 1500-plus horsepower.  

The last name of Pink is synonymous in drag racing. 

Ed Pink, nicknamed the “the Old Master,” was a popular American drag racing engine builder in the glory days of nitro racing. His company, Ed Pink Racing Engines, supplied motors to star racers like “TV” Tommy Ivo, Shirley Muldowney and Don Prudhomme.

Last month, Bill Pink, Ed’s son, tried his hand at drag racing at the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School in Gainesville, Fla.

Fourth-generation racer Gaige Herrera has been added as a rider for the Vance & Hines team in 2023, joining four-time world champion Eddie Krawiec as they will ride Suzuki Hyabusa entries tuned by Andrew Hines. Herrera qualified in four of six events last season.  

Herrera comes to Vance & Hines and the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle  division with experience in both Pro Street and Outlaw disciplines of bike racing. 

"This is such a tremendous opportunity," Herrera said. "I never expected to get a call with an invitation to join the Vance & Hines team, and when I told my dad [longtime drag racing fixture Augustine Herrera], he was as excited as me."

PremiAir Racing team owner-driver Peter Xiberras snapped a nine-round losing streak to defeat local racer Phil Read in the A-Final of the Atlantic Oils Top Fuel Slam meet at Sydney Dragway, January 27-28.

NHRA star Larry Dixon upstaged his Rapisarda Autosport International teammate Wayne Newby to win the B-Final and Shane Olive took out the C-Final on a solo when team boss Phil Lamattina was a no-show.

“It’s been a while,” said Xiberras, who also paid tribute to Sam Fenech, the much-loved Doorslammer racer who lost his life at Willowbank Raceway earlier this month.
“This one was always about Sam.” 

They aren’t exactly the Odd Couple, Tony Schumacher and Tim Wilkerson.

But the new NHRA teammates with the Joe and Cathi Maynard / SCAG connections seemed an unlikely pairing at first.

Schumacher, for example, has a Top Fuel-leading 86 victories and eight series championships. Wilkerson has won a respectable 22 Wally trophies but no Funny Car titles. Both have won the U.S. Nationals – Wilkerson twice but Schumacher an unprecedented 10 times. They were born nine years apart, almost to the day. One competes in the Top Fuel class, the other in Funny Car. Schumacher is a driver; Wilkerson is a team owner, tuner, and driver. Schumacher’s demeanor is more nonchalant, while Wilkerson constantly is tiptoeing that tightrope between high performance and high anxiety – Schumacher is breezy, Wilkerson intense.

Check out this slick new classic piece of American hot rod ingenuity from the Jerry Bickel Race Cars shop outside of St. Louis. The beauty is destined for Dean Marinis and Happy Pappas and is expected to see plenty of action in the PDRA's Pro Nitrous division as well as NHRA Pro Modified.