Competition Plus’ random water-cooler topics from the New England Nationals at Epping, New Hampshire’s New England Dragway
RAIN PREVENTS TOP FUEL, FUNNY CAR FINAL ROUNDS; GLENN CLAIMS THIRD PRO STOCK WIN OF YEAR BEFORE NHRA MOVES FINISH TO BRISTOL
1 – NHRA fans will have to wait until Friday to discover who their Top Fuel and Funny Car winners are from the New England Nationals.
Rain showers couldn’t hold off at Epping, N.H., until Leah Pruett and Shawn Langdon finished their Top Fuel showdown and John Force Racing teammates Jack Beckman and Jordan Vandergriff squared off in their Funny Car final round. So officials announced this eighth of 20 races on the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series calendar will be completed Friday at the Supergrip Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol, Tenn.
Pro Stock’s Dallas Glenn was the lone pro winner Sunday at New England Dragway, defeating Matt Hartford.
2 – TOP FUEL FINAL INCLUDES ANOTHER KALITTA CAR – Dating back to last season’s rain-shortened conclusion, a Kalitta Motorsports dragster has appeared in 30 of the past 31 NHRA elimination rounds. Leah Pruett, of Tony Stewart Racing, will try to break the cycle of Kalitta supremacy as she faces Shawn Langdon and tries to prevent him from recording his fourth straight victory and fifth in eight events this year. She’s seeking her first victory of the season after reaching the final quad at the Charlotte Four-Wide Nationals and the Arizona Nationals earlier in 2026.
3 – ALL-JOHN FORCE RACING FUNNY CAR FINAL SET – South Georgia Motorsports Park Funny Car winner Jordan Vandergriff is aiming for his second victory in his class-rookie season in the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet Camaro. Final-round opponent Jack Beckman, driver of the PEAK Chevrolet Camaro, is eyeing his 38th overall victory but first in 22 races; the last was last year’s Chicago triumph. This will be the first all-John Force Racing final of 2026, and it’s the first time since last September’s U.S. Nationals, when Austin Prock defeated Beckman. Beckman said, “I don’t want to say we’re overdue. We just need to work harder. We need to go out there and earn this, because that Cornwell team’s going to make us.”
4 – GLENN GETS THIRD PRO STOCK VICTORY – KB Titan Racing’s Dallas Glenn lived up to his “Double-0 Dallas” nickname, cutting a .002-second reaction time to defeat Matt Hartford in the Pro Stock final for his third victory of the season and 24th overall in the Rad Torque Systems Chevrolet Camaro. Hartford, driving the Total Seal Camaro, responded with an excellent .021-second light, had said, “We either win the race or lose in the first round.” But he didn’t do either Sunday. Meanwhile Glenn, the winner also at Phoenix and at South Georgia Motorsports Park, set his sights on this coming weekend’s race at Bristol, Tenn., where he hopes to tame the Thunder Valley dragstrip for the first time.
5 – ‘BIZARRE FIRST ROUND’ IN FUNNY CAR – Ron Capps said after his first-round victory against Dan Wilkerson, “What a bizarre Round One!” He was so right.
Matt Hagan and Del Worsham started things with some double trouble. Worsham, a series champion in both Top Fuel and Funny Car who unquestionably knows how to stage and race, fouled out with a -.171 reaction time, then hit a couple of timing cones on his way downtrack, flirting with the center line along the way. It admittedly was “a gift” for Hagan, who lost traction immediately and fought a blanket of pollen and his own Dodge en route to the second round, where he lost to Jack Beckman.
Afterward, Hagan said, “Del Worsham’s a great driver. I got a lot of respect for that guy. I look up to him. He’s obviously a world champion, but, man, I thought I was dead-late when he was red like that. I was like, ‘He had to go red.’ And then to see him hit a cone.” As for his own handful of issues, Hagan said, “It smoked the tires so hard that we had that front ‘death wobble.’ It ripped the wheels out of my hands, and I was like, ‘Oh, man, do I grab it and try to pedal again!’ and then they shut me off. But what a wild deal, man. I’ve never in my life drove to the racetrack and it looks like a sandstorm but it’s pollen. I’m just glad my eyes aren’t puffy and shut and I can see the tree and hopefully go a few more rounds.”
Wow, i guess pollen annoys people late up north, huh? Aren’t you glad you aren’t there?
Two pairs later, Phil Burkart knocked out two more timing blocks. In two more pairs, Cruz Pedregon crossed the center line and demolished four cones against Alexis DeJoria, who drove despite getting a faceful of nitro when her clean-air supply malfunctioned on the launch.
So officials had to replace a total of eight foam timing blocks in just that one Funny Car round.
Finally, Chad Green’s bproauto Ford advanced on a solo pass because opponent Dave Richards’ SCAG/Bluebird Turf Mustang was cut off at the starting line. It had lurched forward when the crew tried to start it and the crew couldn’t fix whatever the problem seemed to be. Richards, puzzled about what his car did, “We had no neutral, or something was going on. I’m sure something silly broke, because it’s not from lack of an effort or assembly with my guys. I bet you we’re going to find that little $2 part that bit us for some reason.”
But Green, who had a body-destroying engine detonation Saturday that cost him 10 points, had trouble getting his engine to fire after waiting on Richards. And co-crew chief Joe Serena, who said he was “trying not to cuss,” said he was “pissed off at some of the guys – they’ve been messing up left and right.” He apologized to sponsor bproauto, because he had to revert to the back-up body with Bond Coat livery. “I just want to first apologize to bpro. This whole weekend has been great. I apologize for not having another body ready with stickers but didn’t plan on doing that Q3. Come up here, it’s like our first day. I’m trying not to cuss. But we’re going to keep coming back up here and represent bpro the rest of the weekend. Then if we win, we’re going to throw that blown up body on there and take pictures with it.”
6 – JFR CARS ON A ROLL – JFR Funny Cars seized the top three starting spots in qualifying and fought their way to an all-JFR final round. The only team Funny Car driver missing from the semifinal (and the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty competition next weekend at Bristol, Tenn.) was Alexis DeJoria, who lost in the second round to Ron Capps by 18/10,000ths of a second (.0018). Beckman, who reached the final round against teammate Jordan Vandergriff, said, “John [Force] didn’t come out this week. He didn’t want to do all three in a row. We miss you, Boss. We qualified one, two, three, and three [the last with Josh Hart in Top Fuel], and we got two Chevys in the final,” he said. The last time JFR cars started 1-2-3 in the Funny Car class was in 2017, at the Four-Wide event at Charlotte, with drivers Courtney Force, Robert Hight, and John Force.
7 –THEY SAID IT – “Pollen” replaced the early buzz phrase “pucker factor” during Sunday’s eliminations. But a couple more memorable quotes from the New England Nationals came from the Tony Stewart Racing Nitro team:
“This track is a little hairy.” – Top Fuel’s Leah Pruett
“That team needs to get an award for the hardest-working team. They were out here later than us, and they were here before us. I’m just glad to see him out there.” – Tony Stewart Racing crew chief Neal Strausbaugh, referring to Scott Farley’s ScottRod independent Top Fuel team that repaired its car after a spectacular engine explosion on the starting line during qualifying.
8 – LOCAL RACERS JOIN LIST OF SPORTSMAN WINNERS – Ava Meloni, appearing in only her second race, earned her first trophy in Top Dragster competition, and New England Dragway racing friend Eric Cabral, who captured his first victory with the Top Sportsman trophy, told her, “These are hard to come by, so enjoy it.” Others enjoying their Diamond Wally statues Sunday were Joe Carnasciale (Comp Eliminator), Todd Bednaz (Stock), Shane Oakes (Super Stock and also runner-up in Stock), Jason Mazzotta (Super Street), Jack Sepanek (Super Comp), Charlie Knopic (Super Gas, winning for the first time in eight years), and Marco Philippon (Pro Stock 800 Sled).
CLICK HERE – READ THE QUALIFYING TEN
9 – CREW CHIEF CONFIDENTIAL – Four-time championship-winning crew chief Brian Corradi, Antron Brown’s tuner for the Matco Tools dragster, shared his strategy about this second half of the regular season. Corradi, who owns several pizza restaurants in suburban Cleveland, used a “foodie’s” metaphor to explain his approach. He had said early in the day that he figured every race at this stage of the season is “going to be a test session all the way to Indy,” when the Countdown to the Championship fields are set. Then he said, “Even though Indy’s a big one to win the season leading up to the championship run, I like to just test to the end and then put it all together like good soup.”
Brown has mentioned clutch discs, which announcer Joe Castello called “the secret sauce that is in drag racing. The challenge, no matter who you are, what you do, how good you are, how good you’ve been, if you get one that is a little mysterious, it’s hard to figure out.”
Corradi said, “That’s for sure. That’s what we’re fighting. We had to make about three disc changes this year, and we ran out of some of the stuff that we ran for a couple years. And that’s where we’re at. So trying to get the personalities right in the bellhousing is a big thing. And when you get them, you want to have them for as long as you can. And one of the things with having a multi-car team, you can test a bunch of different discs. Well, we don’t have that. We just got the one car that we’re running.
“That was one of the benefits at Don Schumacher Racing. Not only you’re buying them in bulk, so if it’s like something that you like, you got a lot of them as a independent team. I know Ron Capps made a big deal about this and has talked a little bit about this. They had that problem a year ago or so. At Don’s, it was a list you got to pick. He made your pick and if you didn’t like them, you fought for another pick and then you went and ran. I mean, then you have all these other cars that you can talk to about it,” he said.
As for his current dragster, he said, “We’re going to get it sorted out. I think we’re pretty close – a couple here and a couple there. Then maybe we can catch these Kalitta guys and Leah and all these other guys that are ahead of us.”
Castello tried to get Corradi to describe what the “old-school Don Schumacher Racing ‘clutch disc draft’ was like. Corradi said it “was pretty fun.” Castello asked about how the order of clutch-disc selection was determined – “Like world champion first? Or what was the order? How was it determined?” Corradi said, “I don’t know.” Castello pressed: “Random draws?” Corradi said, “No, I don’t think it was like that. Now, there was some backdoor stuff going on. But it was some uniform[ity] to it. Wasn’t who was the best got the best.” And they left it at that.
10 – TODD CREDITS IHRA FOR HIS START – Kalitta Motorsports’ DHL Toyota Supra Funny Car driver J.R. Todd spent a decent amount of time in the International Hot Rod Association before getting his break in the sport’s elite series, with the NHRA. Since then, Todd has made some history in both the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes, and the IHRA has undergone at least four ownership changes with varying degrees of sustainability. But Todd said this week that the time he spent in IHRA competition has helped shaped his career, and that he sees potential for the NHRA and the latest iteration of the IHRA to work together or at least to develop a way to enhance drag racing in general.
“I like the idea of it,” said Todd, the 2018 NHRA Funny Car champion. “I mean, when I ran there, it was back in 2000, when Bill Bader Sr. was involved with it. And for us it was good, because you could be a big fish in a small pond, and I think it was an eight-car field. So they’re kind of on that path now. It’s just different, but I like the idea of it. It gives the lower-funded teams that can’t run all 20 NHRA events a place to go race and race for some decent money.
“Those cars definitely need a place to go race, and that’s good. And then in the end, I think competition is good. I’m not saying that IHRA is good or bad, but in the end, I hope it makes the NHRA better,” Todd said.
“I thought that was the perfect opportunity for me to get my feet wet and not dive head-first in the NHRA, which I didn’t have an opportunity to go race NHRA back then. We didn’t have funding or anything like that. And IHRA was more affordable, and that’s how I got my start,” he said. “So without the IHRA, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.
“NHRA definitely needs a series like that for these entry-level teams and what have you to go race and get their feet wet before going head-first into the big show. And I kind of wish they would work together. I don’t want to see one or the other thinking they’re better than the other and trying to outdo one or the other. Big picture: It’d be great if they could work together.”
