Two-time NHRA world champion Del Worsham has grown up in the world of drag racing and throughout his professional career the Funny Car category has been a driving force in his development as a driver and crew chief. Worsham announced today his team will be competing in the upcoming Funny Car Chaos event with the support of long-time rod and piston supplier CP Carrillo.

This weekend at the inaugural Nitro Madness Funny Car Chaos event at Texas Motorplex Worsham will also be getting back to his roots and honoring his father, Chuck Worsham, with a throwback look on his race car. With 68 Funny Car entered Funny Car Chaos is shaping up to be the biggest Funny Car race in over 50 years and should prove to be the signature event of the early 2021 drag racing season.

NHRA Drag Racing was not prepared for a global pandemic, which shut the sport down for four months and vastly changed how the sanctioning body did business.

A year later, drag racing’s premier series appears headed in the right direction. At least, this is the indication given by the opening event in the 22-race NHRA Camping World Drag racing Series.

The NHRA Gatornationals experienced higher attendance and significantly higher television viewership than last year’s rescheduled fall event.

An NHRA official could not confirm Atlanta Dragway has been sold, but sources close to the situation tell CompetitionPlus.com the process has reached the point where "it is as good as done."

With the loss of the drag strip located closer to the Greenville/Spartanburg [SC] market than Atlanta itself, it doesn't mean the NHRA loses the market altogether. The market with events in Charlotte [NC] and Bristol [Tenn.] was already bordering on oversaturation.

Oversaturation doesn't appear to be an issue now. Right now, there is no update on Bristol Dragway as NHRA and SMI, owner of Bristol Dragway, for this season's event.

NHRA and Atlanta Dragway announced that the 2021 NHRA Southern Nationals, April 30-May 2, will be the final NHRA national event at the historic track.
 
As this chapter of drag racing history comes to a close, Atlanta Dragway invites racegoers to take in the final NHRA Southern Nationals.

Summit Motorsports Park and Michalek Brothers Racing (MBR) have announced a joint partnership with The Empowerment Alliance beginning in the 2021 racing season. The Empowerment Alliance will become the official “American Energy Independence” partner of Summit Motorsports Park and a major associate sponsor on the MBR A/fuel dragster at 5 races in 2021.

The Empowerment Alliance seeks to educate racing fans about the important issues surrounding the mission to secure America’s energy independence and, with it, Americans’ prosperity, freedom, and security. Low cost, clean, domestic energy is the energy birthright of Americans. Today’s most important issues include:

Carl Stevens just took delivery of the beautiful hot rod from the Jerry Bickel Race Cars hot rod emporium. While Stevens cars in the past have been turbocharged, we are told this car will have a centrifugal supercharger combination which appears to be taking over the NHRA Pro Modified division. 

In early summer of 1972 I made the change from driving for the Hoover Wheel Alignment T/F team to the Chi-Town Hustler funny car.  At that time the “Chi-Town” team was struggling with the transition from TorqueFlite to Lenco/Crowerglide.  By late summer Austin Coil had mastered the transition and we were able to divert some of our attention to the many promotional opportunities which existed.

One of the most interesting projects was a publicity gimmick for S-K Tools that would have us do one of the famous Chi-Town burnouts with Buckingham Fountain in the background.  A bit of Chicago lore for the uninitiated – the largest fountain in the world is Buckingham Fountain located in the center of Grant Park, downtown Chicago’s lakefront park.  It is the origination point of the fabled Route 66.  In later years it was a starting point for TV’s Amazing Race and it was showcased in the opening of every episode of TV’s Married With Children.

The plan was to do the burnout down Columbus Drive which runs through Grant Park with Buckingham Fountain, Lake Shore Drive, and the expanse of Lake Michigan in the background.  Upon arriving at the location in the midst of TV camera crews, newspaper photographers & reporters, and an army of Chicago policemen on security detail we observed that the asphalt on Columbus Drive resembled the North Atlantic during a winter storm.  We couldn’t even coast along that roadway without ripping the pan off the bottom of the engine.

Drag racing has lost a legend.

Ron Colson, a veteran fuel Funny Car racer, died on March 19, 2021. He was 80.

Colson grew up in Oregon, Illinois, where he developed his automotive skills working in his father Leo's automotive garage. This early exposure led Colson toward drag racing.

Colson's storied career began in the late 1950s, working his way up the ladder through Top Gas and into Top Fuel, where he won the 1969 United Drag Racers Association Top Dragster series championship.

Johnny West has been around drag racing since the 1970s, driving Funny Cars.

He drove for respected owners, including Roland Leong and fellow Arizonian Johnny Loper and reached three final rounds.

Harkening back to his days of racing is what’s driving West these days as he’s piloting a fuel altered.

“Three or four years ago a partner of mine and I decided to build a true fuel altered more like in the classic 1980s type of thing and go back to the plan A days when I first started out racing,” West said. “It kind of picked up from there and now we are trying to promote this classical type of fuel altered, a real fuel altered. We are trying not have a Funny Car type of chassis that has a whole bunch of wings on it and some sort of a makeshift body and call it a fuel altered.”

The Southeast Gassers Association (SEGA) began its tenth year of operations Mar. 20, with its 2021 season opener at Emerald Coast Dragway in Holt, FL. It marked SEGA's second trip to the eighth-mile strip on the Florida panhandle in just four months as it also hosted last year's final SEGA event.  

Four official SEGA classes ran down the track, where 62 total entries of strictly 1967 or older body styles were eventually narrowed down to winners Ben Christopher in A/Gas, Ken Rainwater in B/Gas, Larry Floyd in C/Gas, and Robert Peffley in Super Stock. Beginning at noon, in just over nine hours the typically tight SEGA show delivered two rounds of qualifying, all eliminations, and even winner's circle celebrations.

Elapsed times and speeds are not reported by SEGA, as founder and promoter Quain Stott prefers instead to focus attention on close, heads-up racing without creating pre-determined favorites based solely on stats.