Matt Hagan is still in the 2025 NHRA Funny Car championship fight.
The former champion made sure of that by winning the 25th annual Dodge NHRA Nevada Nationals powered by Direct Connection at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway Sunday.
Hagan clocked a 3.877-second elapsed time at 327.03 mph to defeat reigning champ Austin Prock who slowed to 6.424 seconds at 102.46 mph.
“Well, it was a must-win race, right? There’s sometimes in my career that you know pull your crew chief aside and say, ‘We gotta win this one man.’ And this was one, but I’m just super proud of my guys like [crew chief] Mike Knudsen. He was making the calls for the first time at every racetrack we show up to. And to be a first-time crew chief, I think that it makes me so excited inside to see the potential that this guy has. A lot of guys, they’ll come in and they’ll say, ‘Okay, give me a growing year. We can learn. We can do this.’
“And it’s one thing to look over the shoulder of a veteran like Dickie Venables and say, ‘Hey, yeah, that’s right. You’re making the right call.’ But it’s another thing when you come in, you go like, ‘My notepad ain’t as thick as it used to be.’ And I don’t know the gut feeling and all this other stuff. So super, super proud of my guys. Just unbelievable. Crew chiefs win races, man. And I’ll tell you how you can prove that it is Mike Ashley’s kid. I know Justin Ashley, one of the best leavers in the class, and hasn’t won a championship yet. There’s nothing to knock on the crew chiefs there, but I’m just saying as much as you want to think it is, you as a driver, you’re just keeping it in the groove and making it look good. So super, super proud of my guys, man. They’re doing a great job making the calls out here.”
With his victory, Hagan pulled with 101 points of points leader Prock with just one race remaining this season – the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals, slated Nov. 13-16 in Pomona, Calif.
This was Hagan’s sixth career victory at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. That ties him atop the track’s Funny Car all-time victory list with Ron Capps, John Force, and Robert Hight.
“Vegas has been very kind to me. We just have a good combo, man. Obviously, we stumbled a little bit in Dallas because we’ve had so many, I guess, parts failure blow-ups. It is so humbling because it’s out of your control,” Hagan said. “This whole season we’ve had, I think, six blow-ups and injectors. It’s like nothing that you can just say, ‘Oh, this is this.’ And it’s just a fuel Funny Car, man. You’re buying parts by the pallet and you’re cycling through them, and you’re just going like, ‘Well, what do we got to do?’ Sometimes you just feel like you got some bad luck. But that comes back to digging and overcoming adversity and not getting down and not letting it get the best of you. And I know there’s been a couple times where my crew chief is like, ‘Man, what do I got to do?’ And he is like, ‘This is my first year and we’re doing this.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, it’s not you. So, keep your chin up and things will get better.’”
The 101-point deficit is crucial for Hagan since at Pomona there is the potential to earn 150 points, and a runner-up finisher is worth 120.
Hagan is no stranger to coming through in the clutch. The veteran driver has NHRA Funny Car championships to prove it – 2011, 2014, 2020, and 2023.
“That comes back to just being proud of those guys. And I get my pom-poms out and we go in there and grab everything else and just have fun. It’s been such a fun year this year with those guys and just blessed to be here,” Hagan said. “We got great sponsors, man. Every one of my sponsors was here this weekend.”
John Force is the all-time leader in Funny Car championships with 16. He is followed by Kenny Bernstein, Don Prudhomme and Hagan, who each have four. Hagan also leads all drivers in all the pro categories with at least one victory in consecutive seasons at 13 – from 2013-2025.
On Sunday, Hagan disposed of Cruz Pedregon, Chad Green, and Daniel Wilkerson before taking down Prock.
“Jimmy Prock [Austin’s father and crew chief] is … he’s an animal. But I’ve also seen Jimmy struggle in the Countdown before where he didn’t win a round,” Hagan said. “So, that’s Funny Car, right? There’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And then some days you feel like you’re a manic depressive. It’s just like, ‘Man, where can I get my medicine at?’ And that race car is the medicine, man. It gives you your fixes every now and then, and it does what you need to do to keep you driven and motivated and humble and working hard.
“And my guys have been putting a great race car underneath me and parts and pieces have fallen off of it. They do a great job day in and day out. I know they’re very excited that we don’t have to test tomorrow because it was in the books. And now everybody gets to drink some American Rebel Beer tonight and kind of relax a little bit. So that goes a long way, but very humble to still be in the hunt. I’ve been very, very blessed my entire career to be in the hunt … except for maybe one year in my career, and we’ve been out here almost 18, 20 years or something, since ’09 doing it. And it’s incredible when you think about it, but that just goes to show you surround yourself with great people and great things happen.”
This was Hagan’s 55th career win and third this season.
“We’ve done a great job of putting a great group around us. And it’s cool to win three races with a brand-new crew chief,” Hagan said. “I think that’s three different crew chiefs I’ve had now, and I’ve won the championship with two of them. And I’d like to stick our fifth one on the books with this new one. And that’s like everybody talks about what do you want to do when you lead the sport? I would like to win a fifth championship. That puts me in a category with just John Force and no one’s ever going to catch John. But in this day and age with the rules the way they are and the things that we have to do, and the way things are so tight, I think that says a lot about just the type of racing that we’re doing over here and what we’ve accomplished over the last couple years to be able to even fight for that opportunity to be in a category with just John.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re rolling Pomona. See what we can do. Obviously, it’s theirs to lose. We just got to see if they stumble and we can do well.”
This was Hagan’s second win in the six-race Countdown to the Championship. He won the NAPA Auto Parts NHRA Midwest Nationals on Sept. 28.
The first time Hagan came up short in a points battle to the legendary Force it was a true learning experience, especially as he looks back on it now.
“[I was] saying, ‘No,’ to the cameras and, ‘Get out of my face,’ doesn’t work,” Hagan said. “Me, I grew a lot as a man … when that happened. I was still in my second year in the car, and I was still learning to drive the car and I’m out here competing for a championship. And all I had to do was show up and go two rounds and win the championship second year in a car.
“So as a young man and as a driver, I don’t think mentally you prepare yourself for those types of situations, and that pressure and everything else that happens. And I’m a very competitive guy. I don’t lose well. And I think I had to learn to lose well. And that’s not something that just comes naturally to you, but I grew as a man [and] I grew as a competitor.”
Rather than dwell on the lost opportunity, Hagan kept working to be the best at his profession.
“That drove me to work even harder. We came back the next year, and we won the championship,” Hagan said. “We were able to put ourselves in a position where it says, ‘Hey, okay, that stung.’ I mean, that hurt. That feels like someone rips your heart out and steps on it in front of you. … We back sided our piston on that run, and it didn’t run what it was supposed to and we got beat.
“And – long story short – I think you learn more from your losses than you ever do from your wins. You challenge yourself, you grow from that, you dig deep, you work hard. I’m down almost 25 pounds this year. And I’m really excited. I hear that they’re going to put 150 pounds on this. I’m like, ‘I get to eat.’ … But actually, the 150 pounds, I think, will come in the safety side of things and putting more padding around the driver and doing different things like that. … But we’ll see how that goes. I’m sure a lot of guys that have spent a lot of money to make their cars lighter are probably going to be upset with that. But at the end of the day, getting back to just doing whatever it takes. If we got to be lighter, you got to be lighter. If you have to do this and do that.”
Hagan said he’s going to do whatever he can to be an NHRA champ again.
“Digging deep, working hard. Those missed opportunities in life, you always learn from them, and I think you just grow. I grew back then and I’m still growing now,” Hagan said. “It’s one of those things where I want to do whatever it takes. I’ve just signed a four-year deal. So, in the next four years, I’d like to pull down a fifth championship. And I think it’s very, very doable with the group that we have here and the potential that we’ve shown with this new kid; with Mike Knudsen making the calls. It’s there. You talk to Jimmy Prock, he knows we’re there, right? So, I don’t think anybody’s taking anybody lightly. We just got to go out there and work hard and see where they fall.”
WHAT I AM THANKFUL FOR WITH FUNNY CAR BUDDY HULL