When it comes to drag racing, PDRA founder Tommy Franklin has two loves. He loves eighth-mile drag racing, and he loves doing it in a Pro Nitrous doorslammer.
As many see it, Franklin has become a caretaker of both.
Franklin helped build the Professional Drag Racers Association into a home for eighth-mile professional drag racing, and more than a decade later, the three-time Pro Nitrous world champion finds himself protecting a combination that has fewer places to race than it once did.
Franklin doesn’t particularly care for the savior label. He does, however, understand what could happen if those still committed to nitrous racing don’t protect what they have.
“Well, I don’t look at it like that, but we want to keep going what we love doing,” Franklin said. “And nitrous door slammer racing has a spot, for sure.”
That spot, Franklin believes, doesn’t have to be determined by which category produces the quickest elapsed time. He once received a lesson from longtime NHRA executive Graham Light that continues to shape how Franklin looks at Pro Nitrous.
“The boosted cars, we’ve seen some separation, but I look at it a lot of times … I’ll be honest, I had a conversation with Graham Light one time, and he’s talking about what you have, you have to promote what you have,” Franklin said. “And what we have out here is Pro Boost and Pro Nitrous.”
Franklin compares the relationship to Top Fuel and Funny Car. Top Fuel owns the bigger numbers, but Funny Car has never needed to be quicker to command its share of attention. His headline categories carry the same mantra.
“And I look at that as a lot different than Top Fuel and Funny Car,” Franklin said. “Funny Car’s not the faster class, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t one of the most popular classes, right? So Pro Nitrous can be that.”
There is also something about Pro Nitrous that can’t be manufactured with a rule book or replicated by another power adder. Franklin believes the personality of the category remains part of its value.
“And there’s a spot for it. There’s a home for it. Some of the best racing ever,” Franklin said. “Something about hood scoop and nitrous purges are something that needs to be in drag racing. So I’m going to continue that on as long as I can.”
Franklin wasn’t the first promoter to separate nitrous-injected Pro Modified cars from boosted combinations. That concept goes back to the early years of the American Drag Racing League, but the PDRA has made the split a central part of its professional program.
Today, the distinction holds true more than ever.
Franklin made clear before discussing the subject that he would not address details surrounding the sale of Virginia Motorsports Park or his dealings with the IHRA. Coincidentally, following the sale of the facility, IHRA discontinued its standalone nitrous category while PDRA’s Extreme Pro Stock division also went away.
Franklin’s focus remains on what he can control, and that is the PDRA. Sustainability has long been one of his favorite words when discussing the series. Franklin doesn’t believe a racing organization survives because of one promoter, one sponsor or one racer.
“We have some great sponsors out there,” Franklin said. “We have great competitors that really just make up a great racing organization. And I can’t even say that’s a formula that was made, but that’s what we have.”
The formula has kept Pro Nitrous racing while other forms of professional doorslammer competition have changed around it. Franklin remains one of its most visible competitors, finishing second in the 2025 championship after winning three career PDRA titles.
He also remains competitive enough that protecting the class isn’t some nostalgic exercise. Franklin won the 2026 PDRA East Coast Nationals in April and continues to race at the front of the category. But the strength of Pro Nitrous isn’t always reflected by the number of cars that roll through the gate at every event.
“We’re trying. Yeah. We’re definitely trying,” Franklin said. “There’s cars out there. Look, everybody’s got a busy life.”
Franklin understands many of the racers capable of competing in Pro Nitrous also have businesses and careers that finance their racing. When those responsibilities call, racing doesn’t always win.
“Our racers are successful businessmen in most cases and people that do well, whether they work for somebody or they work for themselves,” Franklin said. “But they do well, but their business is going to come first.”
Franklin believes the inventory exists for a healthy category.
“So we have some ups and downs on car counts at times where we can’t get it,” Franklin said. “But if we can get everybody there, we’ve got 25-plus cars. So we just got to all band together and protect the brand of Pro Nitrous to keep it going.”
That is where Franklin believes the PDRA’s responsibility begins. Racers have to show up, but the sanctioning body has to give them a reason.
“And PDRA’s job there is to make it exciting and make it the place to be so that people will come,” Franklin said.
The problem is that boosted Pro Modified racing has increasingly found another attraction: big-money independent races.
Nitrous combinations generally don’t fit those programs, at least not competitively in Franklin’s estimation. That creates a divide that no amount of optimism can erase.
“The boosted stuff has gotten a run here with having a lot of these big money races and stuff like that,” Franklin said. “And the nitrous cars don’t really compete in that situation.”
Franklin doesn’t see combining the combinations as a long-term answer.
“So my mindset’s a little different there,” Franklin said. “I look at it as if we’re going to do that for a boosted combination, we have to do that for a nitrous combination. I think it’s hard to say that you can mix the two. I think history has proved that that isn’t a viable situation.”
Nitrous engine builder and longtime Pro Modified racer Pat Musi is considerably less diplomatic about it.
“The nitrous cars have a place to race,” Musi said. “Anyway you cut it, the nitrous cars are three, four numbers behind in a combined Pro Modified setting.”
Musi has watched attempts to balance nitrous and boosted combinations for decades. His conclusion hasn’t changed.
“There is no way to combine them,” Musi said. “It’s just got to be nitrous, and let them do their deal. So long as it goes, I’ll stay in it.”
Musi’s position is rooted in a racer’s view of competition. If another nitrous racer beats him, he believes the answer should come from the engine shop rather than the rule book.
“If a nitrous car beats me, I’m going to go home and go to work,” Musi said. “Can I make it any plainer than that?”
Franklin sees the same problem from the promoter’s side, where economics can be every bit as unforgiving as the stopwatch.
“There’s not a whole lot of places for it to race,” Franklin said. “And there’s reasons for that. And it just financially doesn’t make sense to have two Pro Mod purses.”
That reality may explain why Franklin’s role has become so important to racers who still want to hear the crack of a nitrous engine and see a hood scoop sticking through the front of a Pro Modified car.
“So from a promoter’s view, why am I going to have two Pro Mod purses just because of one power adder?” Franklin said. “So when you look at it from there … Luckily, I race Pro Nitrous. I have the love for Pro Nitrous and I know what it is. And so that’s why we protect it.”
Musi believes that protection deserves more recognition than Franklin receives.
“He don’t get enough credit for what he does,” Musi said.
Franklin would rather the attention stay on the racers and the product.
“Us, as the PDRA, all we do is provide the platform for sponsors to come out and sell their product and make money, and racers to come out and use those sponsors’ product and do it,” Franklin said. “And all I can do is provide the platform.”
For Pro Nitrous racers, that platform has become something more.
It is a place to race against their own kind without asking a rules committee to manufacture parity against a fundamentally different combination. More importantly, it is still there.
Franklin intends to keep it that way.
“Yes, if you have a nitrous car, we need to get behind it and support nitrous racing because it’s not easy,” Franklin said. “There’s not a whole lot of places for it to race.”
That doesn’t sound much like someone interested in being called a savior.
It sounds more like a racer who knows exactly what could disappear if nobody bothers to save it.
