The mini-slump is over for reigning NHRA Funny Car champion Austin Prock.
Prock’s four-race winless drought, which dates back to last season, came to an end at the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals on Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Prock’s 13th career Wally was his ninth in Funny car to go with four in Top Fuel.
“It feels really good, man,” Prock said. “Coming off the championship and then going to Bradenton (Fla.) for our season test and the match race we do down there and going to the final round and having a parts failure that kept us from (winning), and then opening up in Gainesville (Fla.) and it just wasn’t a great weekend. We just struggled in Pomona. Had a good weekend in Phoenix but just couldn’t put it all together.
“And you just want to hold one of these (Wallys) again. Like I said all last year, you got to celebrate these things like you’re never going to win again, because you don’t know how long it’s going to take.”
On Sunday, Prock, who qualified in the second spot, won his first quad with a 4.107-second elapsed time at 285.53 mph to defeat Cruz Pedregon, Ron Capps, and Jason Rupert.
He followed that up by winning his second quad with a 3.964-second elapsed time at 322.88 to outrun Dave Richards, Pedregon, and Saturday’s #2Fast2Tasty victor Spencer Hyde.
“We made a really nice run in Q4, got our stuff on the right track, and go up there for E1 and essentially got lucky – but we were better than everybody else in the other lanes and then made an outstanding run in the semis,” Prock said. “I figured we’d just go up there and repeat that” in the finals.
Then, in the final quad, Prock clocked a 4.009-second ET at 316.01 mph to edge Paul Lee (4.042 seconds), Richards (4.320), and Matt Hagan (7.965 seconds).
“We had a little bit of misfortune on thrashing in the pits, made a few mistakes, and ended up with the result that we had. But, once again, it was good enough,” Prock said. “I’m really proud of this win. It feels great to hold another one of these, especially the 25th anniversary (of the Vegas race). I remember when I was 25. I’m starting to get old now.
“It was just an outstanding weekend for the team. We battled a lot of adversity all year long, and everyone just kept their heads down and stayed strong and just kept picking at it. And we fired this thing up in the finals. I could see on my dad’s face something was wrong, and I was like, ‘I better cheat or chop the tree because that’s our only hope.’ And got a hold of it pretty good and it was enough to win.”
A year ago, Prock was in his first season driving in Funny Car as a replacement for Robert Hight, who was sidelined for medical reasons. He won a class-best eight national events with his final win of the 2024 season coming at the Ford Performance NHRA Nationals at the same track last November.
Prock acknowledged that his win in the final quad was difficult because of the team’s engine setup.
“We had a brain fart, essentially, setting the mags,” Prock said. “We wanted to go one way with the mags, and they accidentally went the other way, so then they were really off. But she hung on. I think it had three or four cylinders out down track because that thing was doing anything but going straight.
“It left nice and obviously slow because all the ignition isn’t set right, but it was good enough to win. I said this morning after E1, ‘If they’re all ugly like this, put that blinking light on, I don’t care. As long as we’re better than everybody else in the other lanes.’ That’s the name of drag racing. You don’t have to be perfect all the time, you just got to be better than everyone else.
“I believe our team is great. We haven’t had the success that we had last year, but we’re still the same team, excluding one guy. We got a young kid in there that shows a lot of potential. … It’s his first Funny Car win. To get a win for him, and this whole Cornwell Tools team is really special.”
Although on paper it looks as though Prock has been struggling in 2025, there is a method to the madness of Jimmy Prock, Austin’s father, and legendary crew chief.
“We always expect to show up and win. Everyone always asks, ‘What are your expectations?’ ‘Well, we want to set low ET every round, and we want to win every race.’ When we’re not doing that, we’re trying to get to that point, and we’ve been far from that. Our race car has been really fast and really quick – as quick and fast as it was last year or even quicker and faster. It’s just that consistency that we’ve been missing. He’s been pulling his hair out over it; all of us have. It’s hard to keep your head up when things aren’t going well, especially when your expectations are so high.
“The first three qualifying runs, they weren’t satisfying for us. Q4 showed a little bit of hope, and we just kept getting better and better. It’s like … E1, it was trucking right down there, but you sit around up there, we had that delay. The track got worse. It was really nasty down the track. That sure was fun to drive though. It looked good for a while till it dropped cylinders and it was kind of nasty.”
Shortly after Prock won, he was at the top end of The Strip to witness NASCAR legend, and NHRA team owner Tony Stewart capture his first Top Fuel victory.
“That was pretty cool. I think I was the first person he saw. One of the reasons I’m at the point in my career is because of Tony Stewart,” Prock said. “He gave me an opportunity when I was a lot younger than I am now and allowed me to race out of his race shop at Tony Stewart Racing in Brownsburg (Ind.) – got to race a midget out of there and learn from some of the greats in the sport. Jimmy Carr and Ricky Warner and Michael Lewis – he names go on and on.
“I always had a gut feeling that when Tony got his first Top Fuel win, we were going to double up with him, so it was cool to see that come through. Really proud of his team. Tony, he’s outstanding in anything that he gets in, and all he needed was a race car close enough to win, and he could make up the rest. He had a good race car under him.”
