Photos by Rhonda McCole, Robert Richard, Dewayne Culpepper, NHRA
Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.
1 – MOVE, GET OUT THE WAY! – Chad Green’s most crucial victory Sunday was in not running over someone as his tow vehicle blazed a path through the pits and the staging lanes en route to his semifinal match against Matt Hagan. Beating the multi-time champion to the finish line minutes later was just a bonus.
Winning the event? Priceless.
Green drove away to victory early when Ron Capps struck the tires. Green went 3.921 seconds at 329.18 mph in his Bond-Coat Ford Mustang to score the victory.
“This race is so special,” Green said. “I mean, it’s the Gatornats. So much historical things have happened at this race for so many years, and I was saying in my [top end] interview, my very first race down the racetrack in an official race car was here at this track. So it means a lot to me, and I’ve always said it’s so important to start off the year, especially the first race to do good or you’re behind the eight-ball, and this just takes the cake right here. I mean, start off with No. 1. That’s really awesome. I’m so excited.”
For the first time in his career, Green leads the NHRA Funny Car points. It was a milestone victory he admits was made possible by his team’s refusal to quit, especially when his Funny Car kicked a rod in the second round against Buddy Hull, and was faced with an abbreviated turn-around time to beat incoming weather.
With the horn blaring and the car with Green already strapped in, he refused to let the nerves get the better of him. Oh, did we forget there were crewmembers hanging off the car still getting it ready and a golf cart by Alexis DeJoria’s team that almost bit the bullet for nothing more than being on the tracks when a train was coming?
“That was nerve-wracking,” Green admitted. “Let me tell you, we threw a rod out on the run before, so we had to do a complete motor swap, and it was just tight. For example, when we had our second crew from next door coming over to help us, I had to just jump in the car and go 90 miles an hour to the water box. But when I got there, everything was calm, everything was good, I felt good, and we made a monster run that was really a monster run.”
In the end, Green credited crew chiefs Dean Marinis and Joe Serena.
“I can’t be more proud of those two guys,” Green said. “Dean’s been with me forever, since back in my Pro Mod days. He was on my Pro Mod crew team. I told him to come with me to the Funny Cars. He wasn’t a Funny Car guy. He’s like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing over here. I don’t know how this is going to go.’
“I was like, ‘Come on, buddy, just come stick with me.’ And he did. This is our sixth year now, and Dean has grown so much as a crew chief for these Funny Cars. And Joe, he’s been with me the same ever since I’ve been driving Funny Cars. … They really have stepped up. I had all the faith in the world that they could do it, and they just proved today they’re champs.”
2 – ANTRON’S FABULOUS FIRST-ROUND DAY – If Antron Brown has heard it once, he’s heard it a million times: It’s impossible to win a race without winning the first round. The reigning NHRA Top Fuel champion would like to have a chat with the one responsible for coming up with the phrase because Sunday in Gainesville was like no other first round he’s been a part of.
In six pairs, tire smoke affected all of the matches. Only one driver, Tony Stewart, made it to the finish line under power, and the rest proved entertaining. There were four lane swaps and one crash. And eventually, Mother Nature provided a bit of mercy when it started raining.
For the record, likely in the history of drag racing, never have so many drag racers cheered for liquid sunshine.
“You got to remember, when we get in the cars, we’re like gladiators,” Brown explained. “We don’t know any better. We’re just the nuts behind the steering wheel, the loose nuts. They got to tighten us up every once in a while.
“So when we go up there, I’m just looking at it through my past experience and going, ‘Alright. The track is weak.’
“When I did my burnout, I saw all the bald spots. I saw bare concrete. Rubber’s coming right off the racetrack. And I’m like, ‘Alright, well, should I leave with my hand on the brake?’
“That’s what I’m telling myself. But I didn’t. I was like, ‘No, I better not do that because they might slow it down too much and do some different stuff.’ And then I said, “Alright, I just got to be ready for it.’
“So, as soon as I hit the gas pedal, I was ready for any rattle that I felt. You didn’t even see smoke come off my tires. I felt a rattle before it spun. And as soon as I felt that rattle, this was one of those things in your mindset where you went, ‘Alright, what do you do?’”
Patience turned into his long-lost friend as he admitted to rolling into the throttle off of the starting line and worrying about popping the supercharger when he heard opponent Krista Baldwin having a time in the other lane.
The track came around after the weather delay, and it was business as usual when Brown beat Clay Millican, Steve Torrence, and then Shawn Langdon in the final round. It was his second career victory at Gainesville Raceway.
“We can race with anybody on race day, especially when it gets warm, hot, tricky,” Brown said. “It gets good, we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, we’re very methodical at racing. That’s what Brian Corradi is. Brad [Mason] is at the helm, where he’s been working. And then this offseason, our main game plan was that we needed to pick our package up where we could run and qualify No. 1, like we did this race, go out there, and drop low ET in the final round like we just did.
“We just want to let people know that we’re here to play. We’re very competitive, and we want to have a shot. And when you’re making a run like that in the final, and you have to be on time. Justin Ashley has picked the whole class up like that, where .030s and .040s are going to become the norm.”
3- I GOT HIM THIS TIME – It’s no coincidence that beating Greg Anderson led to Dallas Glenn’s 14th career NHRA Pro Stock victory. From Day One of the weather-plagued NHRA season-opener, Anderson had established himself as the driver to beat.
“Looking throughout the rounds, I don’t feel like I always had the best car, but I had a very good car, and they were just kind of picking away at it, picking away at it, trying to get it to run,” Glenn said. “We laid down a really good lap there in the semis against Corey Reed, and he’s got one pretty bad hot rod right now. I probably got lucky that round that he pushed it just a little too hard against me. But to go up there in the final, we wanted to go up there and try to throw one down, and Greg got a little bit more aggressive than mine did.”
Anderson was part of an aggressive quartet of Pro Stockers that claimed the top four qualifying positions.
Anderson has had Glenn’s number in the final round more times than not. Knowing this, Glenn said one of his strengths has been staying out of his own head and focusing on the task at hand.
“It’s like I’ve got a lot of runs in the car now I know what I need to do,” Glenn said. ‘I know I can beat Greg even though I hadn’t done it in a final. I’ve beaten him before, and then you go look, even when he set the national record there Friday night, I still got the win light, so I can still hold that over him.”
4- GAIGEVILLE RACEWAY – Gaige Herrera continued his dominance at Gainesville Raceway, winning his third consecutive Gatornationals with a run of 6.722 seconds at 200.23 mph. The back-to-back defending world champion defeated rival Matt Smith to extend his unbeaten streak at the facility.
This victory marked Herrera’s 22nd win since the start of the 2023 season, a remarkable run that began with his first career win in Gainesville. He advanced to the final by defeating Geno Scali, Kelly Clontz, and Chase Van Sant before facing Smith.
“This was a good day for me and a great day for Vance & Hines,” Herrera said. “We made three straight runs that were 6.76, and I’m amazed that Andrew [Hines] can do that. I didn’t expect a 6.72.”
Smith finished the final round in 6.723 seconds at 203.19 mph, marking his 82nd appearance in a championship round. Earlier, he defeated Lance Bonham, John Hall, and his wife, Angie, to reach the final.
5 – ANGELLE DISQUALIFIED – Getting disqualified is a disheartening experience. However, the loss is magnified when that disqualification comes on a run where you would have had a single.
During a pre-run check in the staging lanes, Angelle Sampey was disqualified in the first round when her A/Fuel Dragster measured a temperature lower than the NHRA’s 50-degree rule. Because cooler nitro can create more oxygen and lead to more power, the NHRA adheres strictly to its rule with no margin of error. For instance, if a reading comes up 49.9 degrees, the run is tossed, or if it comes in eliminations, the driver is disqualified.
Sampey was to race Dan Dietrich, but he could not make the first-round call.
6 – THE TOP FUEL ROUND FROM HELL – In the first six races, four of those races featured lane swaps. And in the end, it didn’t make a difference.
The first pair with Clay Millican and Josh Hart presented bountiful amounts of smoke. Tony Stewart ran a 3.72 in the first round in the right lane while Brittany Force smoked the tires. Watching what transpired ahead of him, Shawn Langdon made a lane swap and took the right lane against Justin Ashley – but both smoked the tires. Antron Brown swapped lanes into the left lane, and once again, a double-smoker that Brown went on to win. The next race, same thing – smoke on both sides.
“I have my personal thoughts on this thing,” said Matco Tool Top Fuel crew chief Brian Corradi. “This could have been avoided by starting on this thing and dragging earlier and putting down some rubber because they know how to do it. I don’t know what you want to call that, but I have a name.”
Shawn Langdon said in a top-end interview that he saw rubber peeling up from the track.
Following Langdon’s interview, in the next pair, Trip Tatum lost control of his dragster and crashed into both walls. The car continued down track with the engine still under fire, but eventually came to a stop in the shutdown area. Tatum exited the car under his own power and no apparent injuries were reported.
Then, almost as if in a merciful move, the rain started to fall.
7 – BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! – NHRA’s Safety Safari went to work on the much-maligned racing surface, not only drying it, but adding rubber to some of the bald spots caused by two days of rain.
Just moments before the race was to resume at 1:30 p.m., Alachua County’s power grid servicing Gainesville Raceway suffered a power failure, per an NHRA spokesperson. The power outage made the tower go dark in addition to the track’s timing system. Racing resumed 30 minutes later with a conclusion not as challenging as the first round.
8 – TOP FUEL MUD-FLAPS OPTIONAL? – Racers commonly refer to the canards on the side of Top Fuel dragsters as mud flaps. After this weekend, they will be called something else – optional.
NHRA notified its Top Fuel teams that the canards are not required equipment. There’s a good reason, according to a top crew chief, because the canards have very little influence on the car.
One outfit might beg to differ, though, as Brittany Force’s Top Fuel team, in a pre-Gatornationals test run recorded a 302-mile per hour run to the eighth-mile, with a 2.936 elapsed time. The canards were reportedly not attached for the run.
9 – PRO MODIFIED TABLED FOR THE WEEKEND – Eliminations in the Congruity NHRA Pro Mod Series, originally scheduled for the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals, have been moved to the Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals in Chicago. This change is due to time constraints Sunday at Gainesville Raceway.
The first two rounds of eliminations will occur during the initial two qualifying sessions Friday, May 16. The semifinals and final round will take place during the third and fourth qualifying sessions Saturday, May 17.
The Congruity NHRA Pro Mod Series is set to resume action March 21-23 at the NHRA Arizona Nationals, held at Firebird Motorsports Park near Phoenix.
10 – YES, THEY SAID IT – Drag racers sometimes say the darndest things, and at the season-opening NHRA Gatornationals, they had plenty to say Sunday.
“I want to thank every one of these Gainesville fans for coming out at the butt-crack of the morning and then staying through all of this rain and stuff. I appreciate you guys very much. We are out here to put on a show for y’all. Thank you guys for that. We’re going to get this thing turned around and go some rounds with this CAPCO dragster. It’s hard when you are fighting the organization.” – Steve Torrence.
“We took the high road. The ready line is back there; [Matt Smith] should have had his stuff ready. But we took a chance at the tree.” – Vance & Hines crew chief Andrew Hines on waiting for his team’s rival to fix an issue on his bike.
“Well, it’s not an ideal situation…” – Shawn Langdon, when asked what it was like to have a driver put a holeshot on them like Justin Ashley did in their first-round match.
“Even though he’s an old guy, he’s still got it.” – Pro Stock winner Dallas Glenn on beating teammate Greg Anderson in the final round.
“These are the kind of days I wish I was driving.” – Del Worsham on driver Bobby Bode getting his first round win in the DC Motorsports Funny Car.
“I want to say it to the fans: I’m very disappointed with Fox Sports. All winter I got to hear, ‘The fastest motorsports in the world,’ and I looked up and I didn’t see the PPG Mustang. And I didn’t see (Austin) Prock’s car, I saw an IndyCar. And the fact is that we are the fastest motorsport in racing. And I think it’s an insult to the drivers and the fans. And truthfully, I didn’t think Fox was the Fake News Network.” – Bob Tasca discussing IndyCar’s ad campaign on Fox Sports proclaiming it’s the fastest motorsport in the world.
