Competition Plus’ random water-cooler topics from the Lucas Oil Winternationals at Southern California’s In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip
1 – HAGAN HAS SWIRL OF EMOTIONS AFTER WINNING 1,000TH FUNNY CAR RACE – Matt Hagan, who’s normally chatty after a Funny Car victory, was out of breath and barely could talk after becoming the winner of the NHRA’s 1,000th Funny Car race Sunday night at the Lucas Oil Winternationals. But the first thing he said to mark the occasion was that the accomplishment is “unbelievable” and that “Christ is King, baby! All good things happen through God.”
Hagan had a mix of emotions after his history-making final-round run against Ron Capps. He said he had lost his aunt to cancer during the weekend, feeling her passing was weighing “heavy on my heart,” and he was bringing home the diamond Wally trophy home to Virginia in her honor. At the other end of the spectrum, he was euphoric at the realization he and boss Tony Stewart shared the podium, although Stewart won for another team besides his own. And the mountain of performance numbers was nothing short of mind-boggling.
Hagan used his 99th final-round appearance to record his first victory among the season’s three completed races, his 56th overall, his fifth at the Winternationals and eighth at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip. The victory improved his cumulative elimination-round record to 586-318 – just 14 round-wins away from reaching the 600 plateau.
He denied Capps his 59th victory and fifth at the Winternationals.
2 – STEWART THRILLED HE COULD TOP ASHLEY – Top Fuel winner Tony Stewart, overloaded with medals and lanyards bearing honors, said, “I feel like Snoop Dog.”
But he was Top Dog after gaining his career third NHRA pro victory and first Top Fuel trophy for his new Elite Motorsports organization in just his third race for team owner Richard Freeman.
Like Hagan, he was trying to catch his breath as he marveled at his feat of outrunning final-round opponent Justin Ashley. But he said, “I love Richard Freeman and everybody at Team Elite so much. What a cool feeling. You don’t get winded like this because you were driving the car. It’s the excessive celebration when you see that 99-cent damn light bulb on the wall come on.”
Stewart was especially impressed that he defeated Ashley, who had cut .025-second reaction times all day Sunday. He said he was “going up against the best guy in the class – and not by a little bit. He’s that badass by a lot.” He said he was happy that he could win with a .047 light, compared to Ashley’s .036, “just to run with him and get a chance [to win].”
It was Stewart’s seventh final-round appearance and his first victory at Pomona.
The match against Ashley carried some irony. Ashley eliminated Stewart’s wife, Leah Pruett, in the second round Sunday. And Stewart’s crew chief, Mike Green – who bragged about Stewart, saying, “That guy can drive about anything, can’t he?” – left Ashley’s program late last year to tune for Stewart.
3 – ANDERSON PICKS UP WIN NO. 113 – Greg Anderson keeps piling up the Pro Stock victories. He extended his NHRA-record for active drivers across all classes to 113, beating tough teammate and reigning class champion Dallas Glenn in the final round by six-thousandths of a second.
“He is is out of control. He’s a handful,” Anderson said of Glenn. The two KB Titan teammates were meeting in a final for the 10th time. Anderson is 9-1 against Glenn.
“I felt good all day. I knew I had the race car if I did my job. I did my job,” he said.
Anderson, the No. 1 qualifier this weekend and runner-up at Gainesville in the 2026 opener, ran his Pomona record victories to 17 and seven in the Winternationals. He also won here in 2006-08, 2012, 2016, and 2025.
4 – SEEN THIS ACT BEFORE – Doug Kalitta climbed from the cockpit of his Mac Tools dragster immediately after seeing Tony Schumacher lose the rear end of his American Communications Construction/Aloha Beauty Lounge entry – in almost a carbon-copy repeat of Saturday’s mess that took two hours to mop up. Kalitta was ready to go in the next pair, and Antron Brown’s Matco Tools team, set to close Round 1, was right behind Kalitta. Within five or six minutes, they all were back at their respective pits. Shawn Langdon’s engine let go with a fiery pop, as well, but any clean-up was minimal.
Kalitta returned to the track and reeled off a track-record speed of 339.74 mph. That eclipsed Brittany Force’s 338.94-mph mark from November 2022. (Clay Millican’s track elapsed-time record of 3.628 seconds from February 2018 remains intact.)
5 – PART-TIMER RUPERT KNOCKS OFF PROCK IN FIRST ROUND – Jason Rupert’s first-round victory over two-time and current champion Austin Prock was more than a boost for smaller-budgeted and part-time teams. It also underscored Prock’s frustratingly tough start to this season and to his tenure with Tasca Racing. As for Rupert, his pass wasn’t the prettiest – it appeared to be a bit wounded, then spun the tires – but it was enough to advance and deny Prock his first round-win of 2026. “I got out there. It was running pretty good and it started spinning the tires. And out of my peripheral vision, I looked over, didn’t see him and I thought I’d better get back on the gas and get to the finish line,” Rupert said. “So to beat a team like that is pretty special. Those guys are really, really good, and we’re a part-time team and we have a really good team also with Rahn Tobler leading us. And we have some support from Hot Probes and some other people out here and the Sand Drag Association. And I’m just happy to go to the next round.”
6 – TOP FUEL FINAL FOUR PUT ON A SHOW – The Top Fuel semifinals provided arguably the most thrilling and most intriguing entertainment of eliminations. The bottom line is that Justin Ashley defeated Doug Kalitta and Tony Stewart advanced to the final past Shawn Langdon.
But what made these two match-ups amazing were several stats. Kalitta and Ashley had identical elapsed times (3.705 seconds). But on that run, Kalitta reset the track speed record he had established in the first round with a 340.56 mph. It was the first Top Fuel class 340-mph clocking on this racetrack – and he lost by nine-thousandths of a second because Ashley cut his third straight .025 light. (Stewart, his final-round opponent, was massively impressed with Ashley’s reaction times. “I don’t even know if he’s mortal,” Stewart said.)
Kalitta said, “That was a close one. It was just a dead heat run against Justin. Apparently, the data for the computer may have been acting up a little bit with the clutch, so that was unfortunate. But for Alan [crew chief Johnson] to be able to make it run what it ran without having a lot of data, that’s pretty good. This Mac Tools team definitely has a good car, and we’re looking forward to dragging her out and going a little more on the schedule.”
Then, in the other semifinal, Stewart eliminated Langdon, respected as one of the two best leavers in the sport along with Ashley. And of the four semifinalists, Langdon had the slowest light, with a not-shabby .048 of second.
“We just lost a good race,” Langdon said. “The Kalitta Air Careers car was great, but we just ended up on the wrong end of a great drag race. We’ll leave Pomona No. 2 in points, so the Kalitta cars are one-two in points, and that was the end-of-the-weekend goal. It’s good racing.”
7 – BATEMAN EMOTIONAL AFTER TAD TRIUMPH – Top Alcohol Dragster winner Garrett Bateman finally won the Winternationals after more than 30 years of trying. But his mind first was on his fellow competitor, James Stevens. Bateman was in the opposite lane late Saturday night when Stevens rode out a particularly violent crash and suffered multiple serious injuries. He encouraged people to pray for Stevens and said, “James Stevens is going through my mind. I pray for him, that he recovers from those injuries. I pray for his family.” He also was overcome with emotion for his own achievement. “I’m trying to keep it together,” he said, clutching his trophy, “but this is a really, really big one.”
8 – DOUG GORDON BACK IN WINNING GROOVE – Three generations of the Gordon family, from Paso Robles, Calif., have raced together for years. Now bubbly young Maddi Gordon has taken the sport by storm since stepping out of the car in which her dad Doug won three Top Alcohol Funny Car titles and into the Carlyle Tools Dragster for Ron Capps Motorsports. But Sunday was Doug Gordon’s day. He slipped back into the family-owned race car and won the Top Alcohol Funny Car final round against Annie Whiteley on a holeshot. Gordon is 11-2 against Whiteley and 4-1 against her in final rounds.
9 – TODD LOSES BUT WINS, IN A SENSE – Funny Car driver J.R. Todd advanced to the semifinals and lost when he smoked the tires early against eventual winner Matt Hagan. But the DHL Toyota Supra driver had a productive and satisfying weekend nonetheless. He was No. 1 qualifier for the first time since 2021, and he established low elapsed time and top speed of the meet in the first round with a 3.889-second, 337.16-mph pass. Moreover, he earned a spot in the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge at the next race, at Concord, N.C., near Charlotte. During Saturday’s qualifying sessions, the drivers who reached the second round at Pomona will run the four-wide semifinals and final to earn additional money and Countdown to the Championship bonus points. He’ll enter zMAX Dragway in a couple of weeks in third place.
“We obviously wanted to win the 1,000th Funny Car race, but at the end of the day, it was a great weekend for us,” Todd said. “We’re definitely in the hunt. We just stumbled there in the semis, but when the track gets cool like that, it kind of narrows up your [tuning] window, and with this combination, we really don’t have a lot of notes yet. Either way, this DHL GR Supra team is trending in the right direction, so it’s a good momentum for the rest of the season.”
10 – HE SAID WHAT?! – We’re pretty sure this isn’t scientific, but Rick Ware Racing crew chief Jon Oberhofer said, “A win light, it damn near cures cancer.”
