This year the Dodge Hemi Shootout enters its 20th year, and regardless of your manufacturer identity, one must respect the revered Hemi in all of its beauty.

It's one of the greatest displays of high horsepower pageantry, and it's a tradition at drag racing's most prestigious event.

Each year the Dodge Hemi Shootout gathers the best of the best, of drag racers running the special Hemi-powered blend of 1968 Plymouth Barracudas and Dodge Darts. Sit back and crank up the speaks as we bring you the sights and sounds of one of the best drag races all year.

Past Mountain Motor Pro Stock champion John Montecalvo has a vision, and he wasn’t going to stop pressing until it became a reality. 

Montecalvo, who resides in Center Moriches, NY, wanted to bring back drag racing to Long Island. Last Saturday, he watched the effort spearheaded by Peter Scalzo become reality. There hasn’t been legal, sanctioned racing on the island since Westhampton Drag Strip closed after the 2003 season and was replaced by a senior living complex. The event drew over 1,000 to Enterprise Park in Calverton. 

Last Saturday, while Montecalvo’s Mountain Motor Pro Stock counterparts were racing at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals, he was at the historic drag race.

​​Following the success of the inaugural Twisted Shifterz Nitro Chaos event held July 30-31st at Iowa’s Eddyville Raceway Park, event promoter Chris Graves has announced the return of the all-nitro extravaganza to Eddyville on June 3-4th, 2022. In addition, a second event has been added to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Mo-Kan Dragway in Asbury, Missouri outside Joplin on July 15-16th, 2022. 

​​​As NHRA teams gear up for the Countdown to the Championship playoffs, Camping World Drag Racing Pro Stock competitors will look to compete at the Bellagio of Drag Strips at zMAX Dragway at the 2021 DeWalt NHRA Carolina Nationals, Sept. 17-19.

After coming close on a number of occasions in his young Pro Mod career, rising star Joey Oksas broke through for his first victory in the Summit Racing Equipment Mid-West Drag Racing Series presented by J&A Service, racing to an impressive win at the Great Bend Nationals at SRCA Dragstrip.
 
Oksas’ win was one of a number of highlights during the MWDRS’ first trip to Great Bend, Kan. With a standout track surface and a facility that drew rave reviews, the teams put on a spectacular show, with defending MWDRS world champ Sean Bellemeur (Top Alcohol Funny Car), Mike Secret (Pat Musi Racing Engines Top Sportsman), Lee Ramey (Race Star Wheels Top Dragster), Alden Peres (Summit Racing Pro Jr.) and Tyler Wells (Zimmerman Properties Construction Sportsman Jr.) all picking up victories in the series’ first race in more than three months.
 
The weekend was certainly memorable for Oksas, who raced past Keith Haney in the Pro Mod final round, going 3.699-seconds at 214.55 mph in his turbocharged ’67 Mustang. It was the first run in the 3.60s of the weekend and came at the perfect time as Oksas picked up his first career victory in the Mid-West Drag Racing Series in his young career.

Rust-Oleum Dragster driver T.J. Zizzo has coined a phrase for the racers like him who compete on a part-time basis and know how to go rounds.

“I call us ‘super part-timers.’ Super part-time is really what we are,” he said. “We led the charge in competitive part-time teams. Now I’m seeing it more and more, where there’s a handful of guys who go out on a part-time basis but you count ’em in when they’re on the entry list.

“And I take great pride in probably our team being able to get fulltime team members fired from their position – because ‘How can these Zizzos come in here on part-time basis, and guess what? They outqualify us. That’s not right. I’m paying you guys full-time salaries to make our team the best it can be, and these super part-time guys come in here and [outshine us].’ We take pride in stuff like that,” Zizzo said.

Christine Chambless-Foster has been competing in the alcohol ranks in NHRA's Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series for more than a decade. She's enjoyed her time in a dragster, but now the Southwest Kansas-native is ready for the next step of her career and a move over to where she wanted to be all along: racing a fiercely challenging Top Alcohol Funny Car.
 
"I've always really liked that the Funny Car class is just blown cars. There's nothing cooler than two alcohol Funny Cars revving it up and leaving the starting line," said a jubilant Christine, who is set take possession of the Chevrolet Camaro Top Alcohol Funny Car that Shane Westerfield drove to the 2017 NHRA championship and will have it equipped with one of the Chambless Family Racing's supercharged alcohol-fueled engines.
 
The sport of drag racing has always been linked closely to family for Christine, who has raced with parents Curtiss and Tracy from the beginning. Her son, Hudson, is well-known as her trusty sidekick at the racetrack, and now she'll be competing alongside husband Chris Foster – they married in March of 2021 – as a two-car team, sharing data as they race the NHRA circuit in 2022.

Weldon High Performance announced today the release of two new broadcast TV spots to be aired during NHRA's Sportsman coverage of the US Nationals, September 1st through the 5th on Fox Television Network, FS1 and FS2.The new national broadcast spots feature NHRA Sportsman racers from a range of classes. For nearly fifty years, the racing division of Weldon Pump has proudly brought its General and Military Aviation expertise to the engineering and manufacture of its entire pump, regulator and filter lines for both Carbureted and EFI applications.

 Don Schumacher has no specific timetable when he plans to hand over the reins of his multi-car NHRA operation to stepdaughter Megan Schumacher. 

And if one were to ask the 30-year-old with the MBA from Florida’s Lynn University to describe her typical day as Vice-President of Don Schumacher Racing, or who she interacts with most, or whether she thinks more about keeping DSR solvent and competitive or about how DSR can be a leader in growing the sport, she’ll say, “It depends.” 

That doesn’t mean she’s indecisive. It’s just the opposite. Her responsibilities are complex, fast-paced, and multi-dimensional. Somehow, she’s juggling everything with aplomb, especially considering she and husband Chad Osier, vice-president of Don Schumacher Motorsports Precision Manufacturing, are expecting their first child, a daughter, in October. 

When Bo Butner exited Pro Stock at the conclusion of the 2020 season, he made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of "retiring" from driving. In fact, he was planning to get back to his Sportsman racing roots and compete when and where it made sense for his hectic work schedule at his family's used vehicle dealership in Clarksville, Indiana, Jim Butner Auto Group (JBA).
 
Since that time, Butner has been as active as ever at both the dealership and on the dragstrip, and at the upcoming Dodge // SRT NHRA U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, he'll be rolling a Competition Eliminator Pontiac G5 out of the trailer to compete in the category in which he has thus far claimed six national event wins and the 2006 Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series championship.
 
"Lee Sharp approached me and asked if I'd like to run his Comp car at the U.S. Nationals, and it just felt right," explained Butner, the 2017 NHRA Pro Stock world champ. "We've actually been racing a lot this year, and it's been great. I got to jump back in a Comp car in Topeka a couple of weeks ago for Richard Freeman, and it was a lot of fun. I got to race against my buddy Bruno Massel in the second round, and we used each other up. It felt like home, in a way, getting back in a car like that, so I'm looking forward to this race – for more reason than one."