Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Tenn.
1 – ANTRON’S WALKING THE WALK – The scariest thing in Top Fuel at this moment might not be the two-car Kalitta juggernaut. It might just be Antron Brown no longer sinking.
Jesus walked on water. Brown walks on quicksand.
For much of the 2026 season, the four-time NHRA Top Fuel champion felt like he was fighting his way through a swamp while Shawn Langdon and Doug Kalitta stacked wins, points and trophies. The performance was often close, but close doesn’t count when you’re accustomed to competing for championships.
“You feel like the quicksand is making you sink, sink ’til you get down to where your head is almost below the quicksand,” Brown said. “Then, finally, you start taking little steps where you start coming up and coming up. Now we’re at feet level now. Now we’re there, now we got to start walking, and then we can start running.”
On Sunday at Bristol Dragway, Brown defeated points leader Shawn Langdon in the final round of the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals with a 3.788-second pass at 331.61 mph. The victory was his first of the season, the 82nd of his career and, remarkably, his first at Bristol.
The win carried significance beyond another trophy.
To reach the winner’s circle, Brown defeated Will Smith, Shawn Reed, and reigning NHRA champion Doug Kalitta before stopping Langdon in a side-by-side final round. In one afternoon, he beat the two drivers – Kalitta and Langdon – who have largely controlled the Top Fuel narrative this season.
“I tell you what, man, that Kalitta team is no joke. I’m telling you, no joke,” Brown said. “They are definitely the giants out here. And to sneak and get around them and get a win out of this race here, and we started off with a great qualifying and getting up in the top five like we wanted to, ended up No. 2 – that’s just transcendent where we just kept on getting runs and getting better and better.”
Brown never lost confidence that his team would eventually crack the code to victory. The challenge was surviving the frustrating weeks before the breakthrough arrived.
When asked how dangerous it is for competitors to count him out, Brown delivered the answer that should resonate throughout the Top Fuel pits.
“I knew once we hit our stride, I know how consistent our team can be,” Brown said. “We’ve done it before, but you have to get to that realm first. Right now, the Kalitta team’s been showing everybody the way, brother. They can qualify wherever they want to qualify. You’ve got to get that dangerous to compete against them. And I’m feeling that we’re coming there. We’re getting there. We’re there, we won today, and we won in a good fashion, but we’ve got to keep that going and we’re going to stay humble and hungry.”
The first half of the season was spent searching for answers. Brown said crew chief Brian Corradi and the Matco Tools team kept digging even when results suggested futility.
“What I’ve known from all the experience that we’ve been in, the only way you beat resistance is with persistence,” Brown said. “You got to stay persistent and you got to stay the course.”
Brown isn’t talking about championships yet.
The veteran understands the points reset changes everything, and he knows Langdon and Kalitta remain the teams everyone is chasing. What changed Sunday was the feeling inside his camp.
For the first time all season, Brown looked less like a team trying to find itself and more like a team preparing to make a championship run.
“And once we start running, then we’re going to be up there,” Brown said. “We’re going to get dangerous. And I think we’re getting to that point right now.”
2 – THE OLD PLOW HORSE GETS IT DONE – Before Matt Hagan had a chance to carry his NHRA 75th Anniversary Wally to the winner’s circle at Bristol Dragway, sponsor Jason Johnson had already absconded with the commemorative trophy.
The trophy may have briefly disappeared, but Hagan never lost sight of the job at hand.
The four-time Funny Car champion put together a workmanlike performance Sunday, defeating Daniel Wilkerson in the final round of the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals with a 4.125-second pass at 310.91 mph. The victory was Hagan’s second of the season, 57th of his career, and his first Bristol win since 2015. It was also his 100th career final-round appearance.
For Hagan, the day was less about dazzling performance numbers and more about doing what he has done throughout a Hall of Fame-caliber career.
“Man, I always call myself, you know, when you hook to that old plow horse,” Hagan said. “You know what I mean? I’m just that old plow horse that goes out there and gets it done. I’m not pretty like Leah and famous like Tommy, but I just … You go out there and you look at the end of the day and the field’s plowed.”
That approach carried him through a difficult race day.
Hagan never posted a run quicker than 4.079 seconds during eliminations, but he consistently made the right moves at the right times. He defeated Jon Capps and reigning two-time NHRA champion Austin Prock before stopping Wilkerson’s bid for a first career Funny Car victory. Hagan had a bye run in the second round thanks to his No. 1 qualifying position.
The win also capped a successful weekend for Tony Stewart Racing.
Leah Pruett won the rain-delayed New England Nationals on Friday in Top Fuel, and Hagan followed with a Bristol trophy two days later.
“I tell you, to have Leah win this weekend on Friday to finish up the deal here at Bristol, and then us come out here and win with JHG here and then us just beat the rain,” Hagan said. “It was a special weekend for TSR.”
Bristol remains one of the most meaningful stops on Hagan’s schedule.
“It’s been a minute since I won here,” Hagan said. “And last time I won here, it was like Father’s Day weekend and I was crying like a freaking sobbing kid. It was so emotional.”
3 – LONE WOLF HOWLS AGAIN – Matt Hartford pulled into Bristol Dragway with a four-person team, a leased KB-Titan engine and a race car that has become one of the hottest in Pro Stock.
He left with another trophy and more evidence that his operation belongs squarely in the championship fight.
Hartford defeated defending event winner Greg Anderson in Sunday’s final round of the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, posting a 6.672-second run at 205.60 mph in his Total Seal Chevrolet Camaro. The victory was his third of the season, 11th of his career, and first at Bristol after racing there since the early 2000s.
The win completed a standout weekend for Hartford, who also claimed the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge on Saturday.
“To win at Bristol is something … I’ve raced here since the very early 2000s, never been able to actually win Bristol,” Hartford said. “So to win at Bristol, it’s an awesome feeling. We had a great car all weekend this weekend.”
Hartford’s route to the winner’s circle required victories over Shane Tucker, Cody Anderson, and Aaron Stanfield before facing Greg Anderson in the final. Beating the winningest driver in Pro Stock history added another layer of satisfaction.
“Greg’s beat me a lot more than I’ve ever beat him,” Hartford said. “I think there’s still a few more that we’re going to try to do.”
The victory continued what Hartford believes is the strongest start to a season his team has ever produced.
“I was really bummed after last weekend because I thought we could have won the final last weekend too,” Hartford said. “To win a round is difficult, let alone to win a race. To win three is … It’s our best season that we’ve ever had right now.”
What makes the run more impressive is the size of the operation behind it. While larger teams bring extensive personnel and resources to the racetrack, Hartford prefers a close-knit approach centered around four people who know their responsibilities and trust one another.
“I love the fact that we’re a four-person team,” Hartford said. “We each have a job to do. No one does anybody else’s job and it’s a routine, so that way we always know every step has been completed.”
Even though Hartford leases engines from KB-Titan, he says there is no sharing of tuning information or race-day data between his team and the powerhouse operation.
“I couldn’t tell you one thing about any part of their tuneup, set up, anything,” Hartford said. “There was not one ounce of data shared on any level between the two teams.”
The biggest difference this season, Hartford said, has been learning what information to ignore. It has allowed him and crew chief Eddie Guarnaccia to achieve the desired result more frequently.
“What we’ve done is we’ve taken certain things off my plate and certain things off [Guarnaccia’s] plate to where we actually don’t communicate about them,” Hartford said. “We give each other all the high-level notes, everything that we need for the run, but we don’t get into all the minutia to get ourselves confused, so to speak, and it helps me keep my head clear.”
4 – NOT AS EASY AS IT USED TO BE – Not long ago, Gaige Herrera made winning in Pro Stock Motorcycle look routine. These days, even the rider who transformed the category understands every trophy must be earned.
Herrera drove around defending NHRA world champion Richard Gadson in Sunday’s final round to win the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway. The victory was his second of the season, 30th career national event win, and second career Bristol triumph.
His 6.838-second run at 198.47 mph overcame Gadson’s starting-line advantage and delivered a result that carried more significance than another addition to an already crowded trophy shelf.
“After Maryland, me and Andrew [crew chief Hines] both were kind of beating our heads against the wall, wanting to know what happened or who’s got some voodoo doll and just doing stuff, whatever,” Herrera said. “But we just had a bunch of bad luck. All in all as a team, Richard’s got the points that he’s doing good, but I’d just been struggling. So to come here to Bristol, and I wouldn’t say I’m back, but it feels good to get the win.”
At Bristol, they found the form that made Herrera the dominant rider of the last three seasons.
Gadson left first with an .018-second reaction time to Herrera’s .033, but Herrera chased him down by half-track and pulled away for a victory margin of .0308 seconds, or roughly nine feet.
The all-Vance & Hines final brought a familiar dynamic back into the spotlight. Herrera and Gadson have become one of the sport’s most competitive teammate pairings, with the riders pushing one another while continuing to raise the level of the category.
“Especially with me and Richard in the final there, it was kind of like last year when he got his first win,” Herrera said. “We were in the trailer, and last year was always a joke. He’s like, ‘Just give me at least a .30 light.’ But, unfortunately, I was in the trailer. I said, ‘Right, now you owe me, give me a 30 light,’ but I still had a .30 light against him.”
Herrera believes today’s Pro Stock Motorcycle class is stronger because competitors were forced to respond to the standard his team established in 2023.
“When I came out here in ’23 we kind of, I would say, wrecked class to a point,” Herrera said. “But I feel like it was good. It gave the whole class a facelift as far as all the different competitors coming in, people stepping up the program.”
That is why victories carry a different meaning now.
“It’s almost like getting these wins now almost feels like when I win on my other bike, that there seems so much harder to come by so you can’t take it for granted for sure,” Herrera said.
5 – WELL HE DID HAVE A MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB – Movie scripts have been more believable than what played out for Jason Collins on Sunday in Bristol.
The JBS Equipment NHRA Pro Mod Series driver damaged his car in the second round, nearly crossed the centerline in the final round and still left Bristol Dragway with a trophy, a playoff berth, and one of the strangest victories of the season.
Collins defeated Mike Stavrinos in the final round of the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals when the No. 1 qualifier fouled by .005-second on the starting line. Collins’ Camaro then got loose and drifted toward the centerline before he gathered it up and drove to the finish line.
The victory was Collins’ second win in the last three races and his third consecutive appearance in a final round.
What made the win remarkable was everything that happened before the final.
In the second round against Travis Harvey, Collins lost control during the burnout and struck the center guard wall near the starting line. The incident appeared certain to end his day and potentially damage his playoff hopes before the postseason field was finalized.
Instead, Collins backed up, staged, and won the round.
He followed with a semifinal victory over Stan Shelton and suddenly found himself racing for another Wally in a category where survival can sometimes be as important as performance.
“I wasn’t supposed to win today, but my car was really good,” Collins said. “I didn’t mean to tear it up and that was a little close in the final. This one is all because of my crew. I had some luck and my crew did a great job.”
Collins admitted the day felt more like a dream than a race.
The veteran credited his team for keeping the car together after the wall contact and giving him a chance to continue racing when many would have loaded up and headed home.
“I’m just out here chasing a dream and it was unbelievable,” Collins said. “Now, we’re in the playoffs and who knows what can happen.”
Stavrinos reached the final round by defeating Alex Laughlin, reigning series champion J.R. Gray, and veteran Rickie Smith. Despite the runner-up finish, he heads into the postseason second in points behind regular-season champion Derek Menholt.
Collins enters the five-race Road to the Championship playoffs in fourth, but with momentum few drivers can match.
5B – WHAT DID WE JUST WATCH? – Pro Modified has a history of producing moments that seem too bizarre to be real.
In the category’s NHRA debut in 2001, one driver crashed into another during the burnout, and both racers backed up and made the run anyway. Years later, three of four racers were disqualified in a Four-Wide final round, creating one of the strangest outcomes in NHRA history.
Then came Jason Collins at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.
Collins entered Saturday’s quarterfinal round against Travis Harvey needing points and round wins to strengthen his position in the race for a spot in the NHRA Pro Mod championship playoffs. What unfolded looked more like a blooper reel than a playoff push.
The steering wheel came off Collins’ Scott Tidwell-owned Camaro during the burnout.
Without steering control, Collins slid into the concrete barrier surrounding the Christmas Tree, damaging the front end and appearing to end his day before the race even started. Instead, crew members helped get the steering wheel back in place, and Collins backed the wounded Camaro to the starting line.
Then things got stranger.
Collins accidentally double-bulbed Harvey during the staging process, creating confusion before the race was underway. When the tree dropped, Harvey drifted toward the centerline and lifted, allowing Collins to drive away with one of the most unlikely round wins of the season.
“This is crazy. I’m really embarrassed to be honest,” Collins said. “The steering wheel came off in the burnout and I can’t blame nobody but myself because I’m the one that had it off, and obviously I didn’t lock it on. I’ve never had that happen in all my years of racing.”
Collins admitted the situation left him helpless.
“The steering wheel came off in the burnout and all I could do is lock the brakes up,” Collins said. “I couldn’t get the steering wheel back on. I was trying to get it back on and I had to call [a crew member] on the radio to come over there and help me put the steering wheel back on it.”
The front-end damage only added to the frustration.
“Chris is going to be so mad,” Collins said. “He just fixed this front end from where it was pushing down in the big end. He just fixed it. And now I’ve tore it up again.”
Questions quickly followed about the double-bulb, but Collins insisted it wasn’t intentional.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Collins said. “I was sitting there holding the brake and then it was creeping and I kept mashing it harder. When I saw it stuck the second one on, I just grabbed the trans brake. I was like, all I can do is just sit here and do it.”
6 – IT’S RAINING, IT’S POURING – Race officials moved up Sunday’s start time by two hours – an unprecedented move at Bristol Dragway – in an attempt to get one by Mother Nature, who reportedly has season tickets for the track located in the rolling hills of eastern Tennessee.
The first round of thunderstorms, complete with heavy rains and wind, rolled in at about 11:15 a.m., stopping action after four pairs of Pro Stock Motorcycle. Two hours later, racing resumed with Top Fuel.
6B – NO PUNCTUATION NECESSARY – Just a spoiler alert for those who have never witnessed a Maddi Gordon interview after a win, there are usually no commas, semi-colons, or periods … just an exclamation mark at the end of the excitement-filled response.
Her first-round win came when she drove around a quicker reacting Billy Torrence with a 3.817, 329.26 when his dragster slowed.
QUESTION: You guys seem to do so well in the opening round where a lot of drivers will admit they have a lot of anxiety. Do you?
ANSWER: Oh, heck, yeah. Getting into the race car, of course, it gives you anxiety, but breaking out the cowboy hats only for good runs and that’s what this is. So, car’s been giving us little struggles, but you know what? We got Rob [Flynn] and Troy [Fasching] and I got all the confidence in them – so just so pumped, man. I love stepping on that gas – I’m so happy to get back out there, do it again and man, good run – that’s just cherry on top!”
Then she exhaled.
Meanwhile, her male counterpart, Dan Wilkerson, was all words and no punctuation following his semifinal win over Ron Capps.
“I’m almost losing it, dude,” Wilkerson said. Do not give [father] Tim [Wilkerson] too much time – he’ll figure it out. This is supposed to be our jam ride. It’s hot. It’s nasty. We’re up at altitude. These boys have worked their asses off, they’ve dealt with me screwing up in the past. I can’t say enough about these gentlemen that tune me up and keep me safe. My family’s at home, they’re supposed to come and they wussed out at the last second because of the rain. I love my family, my kids. My dad, Randy Glady and Maria are like family now to me, they’re more than a sponsor-owner. I mean, this is everything, dude. This is everything.”
6C – HE SAID WHAT THE FANS ARE THINKING – Neal Strausbaugh, the crew chief for No. 1 qualifier Leah Pruett, made a profound statement rarely heard from crew chiefs in starting line interviews. Though his driver benefitted from a short-field bye run, they likely would have won a head-to-head match up with anyone.
Pruett ran a 3.770-second time at 332.43 mph to briefly hold low elapsed time of the opening round. They were clearly going for lane choice.
“That makes it a little easier on us not having an opponent there, but we need more cars out here,” Strausbaugh said. “I was calling out Scott Palmer the other day via text and just said, ‘Get your butt out here.’
“He said that he wasn’t going to come out to be a filler. He was going to wait ’til he was ready to come out and compete, but I agree with that, but we need more cars.
7 – WE NEED MORE TOP FUELERS, BUT NO STINKIN’ BURNOUTS – Leah Pruett’s first-round 3.77 would hold as low E.T. for five pairs until Shawn Langdon’s 3.764, 335.40 stole the show in more ways than one. The drama wasn’t at the finish line. It was on the starting line, where Langdon rolled through the water to do the burnout, whacked the throttle on his Kalitta Air Services dragster and nothing happened.
Per NHRA rules, according to Langdon’s crew chief Brian Husen, the throttle arm, which is designed to combat any issues when there is an oil-pan pressure problem to automatically shut the car off, wasn’t latched in the full throttle position, Husen said. After it was re-engaged in the proper position, Langdon performed a very abbreviated burnout.
Credit Langdon’s sportsman experience for creating the proper response that not only resulted in a round-one victory, but also low elapsed time of the event through that point.
“Normal procedure, everything was fine, and I went to hit the gas and there was nothing there,” Langdon explained. “So at that point I just stopped because I’m like, ‘Alright guys, I’m waiting for instruction. What do we do here?’
“So I kind of backed up a little bit just to get them back, trying to speed everything up so we’re not holding up Jasmine [Salinas] and their team. But they tell me to do the burnout, I was worried that I was out too far and the tires were dried up, in case it hooks the tire. So there’s so much stuff going on. Luckily, I had a little bit of a sportsman background, so I’m used to the short little burnouts like that. Got it back. Great job to the guys for picking up on the problem, getting it done, getting the round win.”
7B – NOW WHAT???? – Langdon’s oddball Sunday continued in the quarterfinals, when another apparent throttle arm problem caused a staging issue for Langdon as he matched up against Leah Pruett.
As Husen thrashed on the dragster, Langdon was feeling the pressure of needing to stage.
“They were setting the idle, and I was getting my foot rested at my spot on the pedal,” Langdon explained. “And then, at one point, I just felt the pedal go away. So, at that point, I know Brian is going to tell me to go in at some point after he sets the idle. So, I was waving my hands at him just to get his attention, and I was pointing at the pedal trying to tell him what it was, and fortunately they got it. He told me to go in, and at that point, I didn’t think I even had a [clutch] pedal going into pre-stage.
“We didn’t want to lose to that team twice this week, and that would’ve been pretty devastating, but we also don’t want to win that way either. Everything was within the rules, and we try to keep it that way. But we got lucky there.”
8 – NOT A GOOD WEEKEND FOR THE CRUZER – It wasn’t the worst weekend Cruz Pedregon has ever endured, but it certainly wasn’t the best-ever for the Snap-on Tools-sponsored driver. He made the field at 11th with a 4.304, 224.51.
After starting the weekend Friday with an oildown on the burnout, Pedregon’s Funny Car developed an unusual idle that resulted in the two-time champion being shut off on the starting line in Sunday’s first-round race against Spencer Hyde.
“If it wasn’t for bad luck, we probably wouldn’t have any at all,” Pedregon said. “But driving these cars, veteran like I am, when these cars start revving up and start going lean, what you don’t want to do is go out there and blow it up, and you’re literally playing with fire, literally and figuratively. So I just decided as a driver, I’m either hallucinating or this thing’s revving up like it’s running out of fuel. So I just decided, ‘Hey, man, I’m going to shut this thing off,’ as much and as bad as we wanted to win that round.
“We felt like we had a 3.98, .97 in the car, but we just decided to be safe and go back and see what happened.”
8B – REMEMBERING CHRIS – On January 28, 2026, CompetitionPlus.com lost a beloved team member and drag racing lost a goodwill ambassador. Photographer Chris Haverly was killed in a single-car accident in Wytheville, Va., while performing a rescue-pet transport.
The NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals was Haverly’s home race, and teams adorned their cars and race trailers with memorial stickers
Haverly was a longtime contributor whose work reflected a deep respect for drag racing and its people.
By his own description, Haverly was “just an average guy” who grew up in the coal camps of eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia. His love for animals began while working in the coal mines, where stray dogs were a constant presence on job sites.
9 – OFFICIALLY A LEGEND – In Sunday’s pushed-up schedule, Ron Capps was officially named to his place in the Legends of Thunder Valley fraternity. Capps was quick to point out his was not a solo accomplishment.
Now the winningest pro racer at Bristol Dragway, Capps loves the place and didn’t need a Legends appointment to appreciate the drag strip carved out of the mountains.
“I said years ago, maybe the fourth or fifth win, I’m just going to buy a little house here somewhere because I feel like this is kind of a home,” Capps said. “It’s the people, man. It’s the people that come here, it’s the people around this place, it’s the people in the grandstands right now watching. It’s just, I can’t explain it. I’ve done it with some fantastic legendary crew chiefs, and two awesome owners, I did as a team owner myself. It’s been crazy. …
“I feel like I should crawl up in the grandstands with a Sharpie and just write in every crew member, every crew chief, every team owner up on my name because I’m not as good as I am perceived to be with all these Wallys. I’m really not, just surrounded by fantastic people.”
10 – THE SPORTSMAN REPORT – Jonathan Allegrucci continued his winning streak Sunday, leading a group of sportsman champions crowned at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway.
Allegrucci claimed his third consecutive FlexJet Factory Stock Showdown victory and fourth career Wally after defeating Raymond Nash in the final round. Jacob Delaune, Michael Brand, Chris Childress, Lauren Freer, and Gerard Milette also secured national-event victories during the final day of sportsman competition.
Allegrucci used a .024-second reaction time and a 7.851-second pass at 176.14 mph to defeat Nash, who encountered trouble after a wheelstand. Nash’s car moved toward the centerline and struck the centerline markers, while Allegrucci drove straight down the groove for the victory.
The win further strengthened his position in Factory Stock Showdown competition. He qualified second and defeated Michael Lloyd, David Davies, and Matt Hartman before advancing to the final.
In Super Stock, Jacob Delaune earned his first Wally in just his second final-round appearance. Delaune’s .016 reaction time and 9.824-second pass at 135.44 mph were enough to hold off Hayden Trumble.
Michael Brand collected his sixth career Wally and second of the season in Stock Eliminator. Brand took the win when Doug Lambeck fouled with a red light in the final round.
Chris Childress captured his first national event victory in Super Comp. Childress sealed the win after opponent Colby Fuller left the starting line too soon, giving Childress a free ride to his Wally.
Lauren Freer earned the ninth Wally of her career in Super Gas after defeating Rob Stigall. Stigall held the starting-line advantage, but took too much finish-line stripe, allowing Freer to drive around for the victory.
Gerard Milette closed out the day in Top Sportsman using a near-perfect .001 reaction time to defeat Jeff Brooks and earn his second career national event Wally.
