Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA Sonoma Nationals in Sonoma, Ca.

1 - SPEED MERCHANT TASCA SEALS THE DEAL — If not for a 10-mile-per-hour headwind Friday, Bob Tasca III's feet might still be off the ground following his latest magical win in Sonoma. He now has won two of the last three events.  

Tasca nearly made a clean sweep of the weekend by qualifying No. 1 and winning Sunday's final eliminations, beating Ron Capps with a  4.088, 277.15, for his third win of the year.

Tasca qualified No. 1 with a 338-mph run, added a weekend-best run of 338.77 in the opening round against Buddy Hull, and then drove past Paul Lee and points leader Austin Prock to reach the final round.

“It’s so hard to win these things, and that’s a testament to my crew, Todd Okuhara and Aaron Brooks,” Tasca said. “They pulled it back and still ran 337 mph. I was a bit surprised in the final. It was pulling great, and then it knocked the tires off. You have no idea how that feels. I looked out the side window because I expected him to come by me. Fortunately, I got it to recover.
 
“I thought if we could get the car to run like it ran in Q4, we could beat him, and I said that to Todd. I said, ‘Let’s run as quick as we can and if he beats us, I’ll be the first to congratulate him.’”

2 - MATT SMITH HAS CAN'T LOSE WEEKEND — For as much bravado as Matt Smith has shown this weekend, one could have easily assumed he'd have multiple wins this season. The six-time NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champion made up for lost time as he made a clean sweep of the weekend, qualifying No. 1, winning the GETTRX All-Star Call-Out, and then winning an all-Matt Smith Racing final round over John Hall. Smith stopped teammate Jianna Evaristo in the $25,000-to-win GETTRX event Saturday. 

In Sunday's final round, Smith stopped Hall with a run of 6.700 at 203.77 on his Denso Auto Parts Buell, his 39th career victory. 

Smith, now a two-time Sonoma winner, battled his way to the final with victories over Eiji Kawakami and Seattle champ Chase Van Sant. He had a bye run into the final round.

"This is very big," Smith said. "This is a Denso event, which is our sponsor, and we won everything there is to win. We put a lot into getting our bikes ready for this weekend. We're gaining ground on the rest of the field, and that takes a team effort.
 
"It's all in the 60-foot area. Our class is so dependent on that. The Suzukis stepped up their game, and we need to follow them. I learned to leave low and take power out to get the bike to leave the starting line. I'm 51 and I'm getting older, but I can still do this. To me, the magic number is seven. If I get that seventh title this year, I promise I'll get off the bike and put some young kid on it who can do the job."

Hall reached his second final round this year and the fourth in his career by defeating Angie Smith, defending world champion and points leader Gaige Herrera, and Hector Arana Jr.

3 - AB GOES A-TO-B BETTER THAN ANYONE -- Antron Brown wasn't the quickest and fastest driver in Top Fuel qualifying in Sonoma. Likewise, he didn't have momentum working in his favor after losing in the first pair of cars during the NHRA Northwest Nationals last Sunday.

Luckily, Brown didn't need any of those attributes on Sunday in Sonoma. What he did have was a Matco Tools dragster that could have gone down a dirt road. 

Brown wasn't fazed when first-time Top Fuel finalist Tony Stewart got the jump at the green. Brown tracked him down, going 3.746-seconds at 329.67 mph to earn his 77th career victory, third of 2024.

"Sonoma has a special meaning to me. It's like a piece of heaven out here and just being here puts me in the zone," Brown said. "Me and Tony know each other well. When I started as a team owner he was putting together TSR. We talked a lot about budgets and spreadsheets and all that.
 
"He was also a hero of mine when he ran NASCAR and IndyCar. I know how good of a driver he is. He understands the science, so as soon as he showed up, I knew what he could do. I did tell him to come on over, but there are a lot of sharks in the water here. His time is coming, and it won't be one win, it will be a lot of them, but this is a good win for us. My team stays poised and they were incredible all weekend. I'm super-pumped for all of them. We went down the track every single lap, and that was an awesome, awesome job to get a win like this."

His road to the winner's circle included victories over Shawn Reed, Steve Torrence and Brittany Force.

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4 - STANFIELD KEPT IT ALIVE — The biggest takeaway in Pro Stock might not be that Aaron Stanfield won his third race of the season as much as that he kept the streak alive for the Elite Motorsports team. Elite now has six consecutive race wins.

Stanfield's accomplishment of winning three of the last four races has him in elite company this season, joining teammate Jeg Coughlin Jr., who also has three wins. 

"This is a great win, but I want to shout out to Cory Reed for going to the final in his second race," Stanfield said. "This week, we lost a good friend, Tim 'The Iceman' Kelly, to cancer, and I wanted to get it done for him. I know Cory is fresh to the class so I would have been surprised if he played any games, so I just did my normal routine. I think I'm driving better this year, and I'd love to continue that."

Stanfield's final-round win over Reed marks his second victory at the facility.  He reached the final by defeating Mason McGaha, defending world champion Erica Enders and No. 1 qualifier Greg Anderson. 

"We didn't have a great ladder since all the hitters seemed to be on one side. I had to race Erica, and we're teammates, but we still want to beat each other. Then there was Greg, and you've got to be on your game anytime you race him."

Stanfield's win marks the eighth win this season out of 12 events for Elite. 

5 - WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARED – When motorsports icon Tony Stewart fired his Top Fuel dragster for Q1 on Friday, it wasn't the first time he'd ever raced at Sonoma Raceway. Stewart had three race wins heading into Sonoma, and if not for running into the Antron Brown buzzsaw in the Top Fuel final, he might have had four. 

Instead, Stewart left Sonoma Raceway with four runner-up finishes, three of which came from his NASCAR days. 

"This was a much better weekend than I anticipated," Stewart said. "We knew after last week's Seattle race that we were in big trouble. We sat around for hours after that race to work on a plan for this weekend. Dickie Venables from (Matt Hagan's Funny Car) team offered to help us, and we walked through many things with our Top Fuel guys and Dickie. We were trying to see if there was a 'smoking gun' we were missing. Really appreciated Dickie this week and through the weekend. We needed a day like today for the team guys. We didn't really win anything, but we didn't lose today.
 
"In the final, we did everything we could as we left on one of the best Top Fuel leavers. To leave on Antron (Brown) in the final is very big for me as a driver. We spit a couple of (spark) plugs out at the far end and, if they had any problem, we were right there for the win. It's a way better weekend than I thought. Actually, I was thinking we would go out in the first round because we had to regroup. We went two steps back on our setup and then went forward for the weekend.

"I'm so proud of the Rinnai team, and the morale is great. That was the key to the success today. No one got down. We gained speed this weekend and ran three 330s (mph). We are checking boxes one at a time. We'll take what we learned this weekend and try to make it better. We kept Antron honest in the final, and we made improvements with the car. It was my first two-car final, and I'm proud of how the weekend went overall."

Stewart was in the final round at Las Vegas' four-wide race in April, placing fourth behind winner Doug Kalitta, Justin Ashley and Steve Torrence.  

5B - CAPPS BOUNCES BACK – One week after blowing his No. 1 NAPA Toyota Funny Car to smithereens, two-time NHRA champ Ron Capps was back on the battlefield with a weapon that could have used a few updates. In a rematch of Capps' last final-round appearance two races ago, Capps left the starting line together with Bob Tasca III but drove into tire smoke. Capps moved up one spot to fifth in the Funny Car points standings with just two regular-season races left before the Countdown to the Championship.
 
After the first-round explosion at the Northwest Nationals in Seattle, crew chief Dean 'Guido' Antonelli and the team went to work preparing the team's backup car for Sonoma. The backup car, which carried Capps to the 2022 world championship and multiple race wins in 2023, showed promise despite not having all the bells and whistles of the car he crashed in Seattle.
 
"I'm so proud of our NAPA AutoCare team," said Capps, a four-time Sonoma winner. "We had a great event with GearWrench Tools, and to be able to showcase their car and have the weekend we did, it's why I brag about our NAPA AutoCare team. We went down the track under power in every qualifying session, we made great runs, and we had lane choice all day long. That's really something to brag about. I'm just really proud of Guido and the guys." 

Sunday marked Capps' 156th career final round. 

6 - FULL CIRCLE MOMENT - Sometimes life can have a way of coming full circle. On September 19, 2021, while racing at the NHRA Carolina Nationals, Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Cory Reed suffered a crash that left him with a compound fracture of his left leg above the ankle. Ironically, he was racing against his close friend Joey Gladstone. 

Last year, Reed and Gladstone bid adieu to the bikes and set their sights on a Pro Stock car. 

With Gladstone serving as his right-hand man, Reed, in only his second race on four wheels, reached the final round, losing a tough battle against Aaron Stanfield. 

Reed made his debut last weekend at the NHRA Northwest Nationals nearSeattle, qualifying No. 8 and losing in the first round.
 
Just as Pro Stock is a class where thousandths of a second can be the difference between winning and losing, Reed qualified two spots higher within one week and scored his first-round win over Deric Kramer. Reed secured victories over Eric Latino and Jerry Tucker to reach the final round.  
 
"This place is pretty high up in my books, to be honest [of lifetime achievements]," Reed said prior to the final round. "And if we can win here, get my first win here, too, like Joey did a couple of years ago, that would be so spectacular. [My team] is proud of me. I'm proud of them guys, too."

 

 

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7 – AUGUST'S INCREDIBLE DAY – Ron August Jr. had quite the day at Sonoma Raceway. He not only doubled his career round-win total, but also took out the No. 1 qualifier, Doug Kalitta, for a two-fer victory into the semifinals. 

August, who qualified No. 14 in a short field of fuelers, ran a 3.985 to fend off Kalitta's hard-charging 4.030

The win also gained him a bye run into the semis, a run that almost didn't happen when there were issues getting the car started for the freebie. 
 
Let the record reflect that two of August's three wins came against world champions. Headed into Sunday, he also had a round win over Steve Torrence.
 
"It's a blast," August said after beating Kalitta. "It's insane that the only two round wins I have are against Steve and Doug. I don't know what the odds were on that, but, nah, I'm having a real good time. The car, we're having a rough weekend mechanically. It's a good car. It runs consistent. But we're trying to go a little quicker, and sometimes that takes a little sacrifice and progress, so I'm having a blast. You hear people say it all the time, but I swear to God, this is the best crew I've ever had by far."

8 – HELL IN A HANDBASKET SUNDAY – The weekend started with much promise for Kalitta Motorsports' Top Fuel team. Doug Kalitta, the defending series champion, opened up with the provisional No. 1 that held through Saturday's qualifying. Then Shawn Langdon won the #2Fast2Tasty Challenge in an all-Kalitta final round. 

Sunday, it all went swirled down the toilet. 

Kalitta raced unheralded Ron August Jr. in the first round in a race that looked like a cakewalk -- until his Mac Tools dragster smoked the tires. The veteran performed a masterful job of pedaling the traction-challenged dragster, but came up short at the finish line.

Langdon raced Tony Stewart in the first round, but his dragster developed problems during the run and gave Stewart the round win. 

The weekend didn't hurt either driver in the championship points. As they head to the next event in Brainerd, Minn., on Aug. 15-18, Kalitta is holding onto the top spot, leading Langdon by 125 points. 

"I guess it's just one of those days. We just need to learn from our mistakes and these situations," Kalitta said. "I'm just relieved to get something like this hopefully out of the way before the Countdown, so we'll learn what we need to learn and move on."

 

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9 – BRITTANY FORCE'S REBOUND WEEKEND – Two-time NHRA champion Brittany Force needed a weekend like she had in Sonoma. After qualifying No. 3, Force started to fight back into championship contention by reaching the semifinals. 
 
Force was starting to show life in her bid to rebound from a first half of the season that included four first-round losses and a DNQ. That occurred when she reached the semis of the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol. Then came Richmond, where her father, John Force, crashed. She finished out Richmond, where she scored a round win, but sat out the next event in Norwalk, Ohio, 

Force made her return in Seattle, but fell in the first round. 
 
Because Force sat out the race, she must earn her way into the top 10 to qualify for the Countdown. She holds a 78-point lead over No. 11 Josh Hart with two races remaining in the regular season.  
 
"We need to [win] right now," Force said following her first-round victory over Hart. "Hart is right on our tail, so that was a huge first-round win for us. We really needed that. That makes all the difference right now, but we got to keep on track and keep on going. I'm very proud of this team. We qualified well. We've made some good runs."

 

10 - OVERHEARD — "That's above my pay grade. I learned a long time ago, I have a mouthpiece. You put it in and shut up." -- Matt Hagan said this when asked about a technical issue affecting his team. 

"We depend on Mother Nature to go fast, and when she shines on us like she did today, you lick your chops, throw it down, and see who brought the most." -- Greg Anderson on Saturday's favorable conditions. 

"I think if the Callout had been after qualifying like it normally is, they probably wouldn't have picked me. So I think it was a mistake on their part, and the way I look at it, I felt like we had the second-best bike of the whole shootout, and we knocked the best bike out first round." — Matt Smith after beating Gaige Herrera in the GETTRX Callout.

"I've never been so disappointed to run 3.83 and 338 mph. We really wanted to give the fans a 340-mph run." -- Bob Tasca III, after running only 338 miles per hour into a headwind Friday in qualifying. 

"Any day you can get around him is a good day," -- Greg Anderson said after beating Jeg Coughlin Jr. for the 62nd time in 110 races. 

 

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