Competition Plus’ Water-Cooler Topics From The NHRA IN-N-OUT Finals in Pomona, Ca..
1 – RAIN RULES BUT CHAMPIONS NAMED – Not one pro car went down the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip at the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals the entire weekend. But Doug Kalitta (Top Fuel) and Austin Prock (Funny Car) became two-time champions, and Dallas Glenn (Pro Stock) and Richard Gadson (Pro Stock Motorcycle) claimed their first titles as rain spoiled the party for the third straight day Sunday.
Despite the NHRA Safety Safari’s exhaustive effort Sunday to dry and prepare the storied Southern California racetrack in a feverishly dwindling window of time, NHRA President Glen Cromwell announced the sanctioning body had canceled the race and would declare champions based on the standings entering the weekend.
“While we explored every possible option to complete the event this weekend, the safety of our competitors, teams and fans remains the highest priority, which led to this difficult decision to cancel the event,” he said.
So as the Finals caved in to a stubborn storm front that loitered over Southern California and with more rain forecast for the next couple of days, safety factors played a part in the NHRA doling out championships Sunday to Prock, Glenn and Gadson. Doug Kalitta was granted his second Top Fuel title Saturday because when qualifying was washed out, he was seeded No. 1 for Sunday’s hoped-for eliminations as the points leader, and that sealed the deal.
Kalitta called the cancellation “kind of disappointing, really,” adding, “We were definitely hoping to get a shot at the track, but unfortunately, it needs a lot of work after all that rain. Even though the sun came out, the forecast still just isn’t looking good. It’s disappointing, because this is definitely a race everybody wants to win, including me, at the end of the year. It’s just one of those deals.”
Top Fuel racer and two-car team owner Tony Stewart, whose Funny Car driver, Matt Hagan, will never know if he could have upset class phenom Prock for a fifth crown, summed up the feeling for most racers.
Stewart said, “There is one thing that is undefeated in this world, and that’s Mother Nature. It’s unfortunate, but it is the right decision. I don’t think you are going to hear anyone in the pit area get upset about this call. This is one that is out of our control, and, as racers, we always want to be in control of everything.”
2 – KALITTA TEAM 1-2 IN TOP FUEL – Shawn Langdon, the 2103 Top Fuel champion, finished second to Kalitta Motorsports champion Doug Kalitta, making the organization only the second in the sport’s history to finish 1-2 in the final Top Fuel standings. Don Schumacher Racing was the first to accomplish that in 2012, when Antron Brown won the title and Tony Schumacher was runner-up.
Langdon, the Kalitta Air 25th Anniversary dragster driver, said, “We finished as well as we could as a team. It’s awesome to see – we’re all very happy for Doug and his team. Second is no reason to hang our heads. We had a great season and only lost to our teammate, which is a good problem to have. We’ll be excited to come back next year and go after that No. 1.”
It was Langdon’s best pro-level finish since his 2013 title.
3 – PROCK, TEAM ‘ALWAYS WANT MORE’ – Austin Prock said he and his Cornwell Tools Chevy Camaro team at John Force Racing “never let up. I feel like none of us on the team were ever satisfied. When we’re holding the trophy, it’s awesome, but you always want more.” He earned more victories this season than last en route to his second straight Funny Car championship. He won nine times in 12 final rounds and started first seven times – and marveled at it all after Sunday’s eliminations were called off because of unrelenting rain and unsafe track conditions.
“To win one championship is one thing, and to win two is another and it puts you in a select group,” he said. “I think there’s only seven of us who have ever done it, and to add my name to that list …” He joined Don Prudhomme, Raymond Beadle, Frank Hawley, Kenny Bernstein, John Force, and Ron Capps as multiple Funny Car titleists. Prock is the 11th Funny Car racer to earn two or more championships, and the list includes Cruz and Tony Pedregon, Matt Hagan, and the driver whom Prock replaced, Robert Hight.
“I wish my entire team could be added to that list. I get all the praise and the glory from the media and from the fans, but it’s not just me,” Prock said. “I couldn’t accomplish what I’ve done in the last two years without the people behind me, and I’m really proud of them.”
“Everybody on the Cornwell Quality Tools team is doing a phenomenal job, and they’re putting in that 110-percent effort,” he said. “We had a dominant race car all year long. Last year, a lot of people told me, ‘It’s not going to come as easily next year after the season that you had.’ We came in there and ended up getting the championship. I think that says a lot about this race team, and says a lot about me as a driver, and I’m looking forward to 2026 already.”
4 – GLENN BLAZES TO ‘SPECIAL’ TITLE – Dallas Glenn parlayed eight victories in 13 final rounds across 17 races into his first Pro Stock championship, besting his mentor and boss Greg Anderson, a six-time champion. “It definitely feels good. I get to race all next season with No. 1 on my car. I get to take it from Greg, take it off of Greg’s car and put it on mine. We get to swap numbers.” That sounded especially gratifying to hear, as he came away from Pomona last year disappointed about finishing second to Anderson. This time he might leave Southern California disappointed that he didn’t get to duke it out with Anderson on the race track. But he certainly can’t be upset about posting a 50-9 eliminations record for the season or team with Anderson to give KB Titan Racing 14 victories in the category’s 17 appearances on the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series tour.
Glenn took the RAD Torque Systems Chevrolet Camaro to victory in the season-opening Gatornationals, as well as a sweep of all three four-wide events. He was victorious at his home track at Seattle, won the regular-season crown, and triumphed at four of the five completed Countdown races.
“It’s definitely really special, especially getting so close last year,” Glenn said. “It feels good. I honestly don’t think it’s really hit me yet. Maybe it will hit me on the long four-day drive home later in the week. But it feels really good right now. You know, there’s a lot of just a lot of stuff, a lot of emotions, and you’re just trying to process everything.
“It’s almost one of those seasons that you don’t really want to end, even though you’re in the points lead, and, you know, ending means you’re the champion. We’ve had the car to beat. We’ve had the team to beat. We’ve been doing our job, on and off track,” he said.
5 – ‘I CAME HERE TO GO TO WAR’ – Newly crowned Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Richard Gadson said he and tuner Eddie Krawiec are “just finding our stride, finding our groove.” And the formidable tandem has something significant in common – each claimed his first series crown in non-traditional way. Krawiec earned the first of his four championships without winning a single race that year, and it motivated him to prove it wasn’t a fluke. Gadson just might want to prove that he doesn’t need to do any rain dances to keep his title-winning ways intact. However they claimed their first titles, they’re champions – and a winning combo in the class.
“Me and Eddie are starting to have a really good chemistry,” Gadson said, comparing it to the relationship that Vance & Hines teammate and champion for the past two seasons, Gaige Herrera, has with Andrew Hines. Gadson called Herrera “an amazing rider. Andrew [Hines] is an amazing tuner [for Herrera], but them together are like a match made in Heaven. And I think me and Eddie are kind of getting that kind of stride, too. He’s doing a phenomenal job tuning. It just takes time.”
But Gadson wasn’t fooling around. “The mentality was kill or be killed. That was it,” he said. “We talked about me and [Herrera] meeting in the finals, but it didn’t have to go that way. We had two sides of the ladder that we had to get through, and none of those people owed us any favors. I didn’t want anybody to take it from me or stop it. And I was willing to lay it all on the line out there. So, you know, I came here to go to war with my friends, with my teammate. It was that mentality the whole weekend.”
6 – HAGAN PHILOSOPHIC ABOUT RESULT – Matt Hagan was pragmatic about how the Funny Car championship chase played out.
“As a competitor, you want to run this thing out. We just wanted our shot to go for the championship. We wanted to fight for the championship that we have been working towards all year long,” the four-time champion driver of the Direct Connection Dodge Hellcat said. “The end result was they [Austin Prock and team] were three rounds ahead of us. The NHRA came to our team owner, our marketing partners, and the crew and asked what we wanted to do today. The decision was made across the board that this was the proper decision with the weather. It was best for safety with the sand trap full of water.
“It definitely stings,” Hagan said. “You come here to Pomona as a competitor, and you want to have a shot at the title. We just ask for that opportunity, and we had that. Mother Nature didn’t give us that chance this weekend. It would be awful to see someone go out and crash a car or get hurt. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
7 – EMOTIONAL WARM-UP – Brittany Force warmed her Monster Energy dragster up late Sunday, putting a punctuation mark on her two-championship, speed-record-setting career. The timing of her departure as a full-timer competitor coincides with that of her father, 16-time Funny Car champion John Force.
“I really love NHRA, but I am officially done with driving,” John Force said. “I’ve said so many times, ‘Until this race car kills me, they’re gonna have to drag me out of the seat.’ But the truth is, I was dragged out of the seat at Richmond, and they thought it killed me then. So, I’m lucky that I’m back walking. They always say never say never, but I have grandchildren with Courtney and Graham, with Ashley and Danny, and now Brittany’s retired because she wants to have children.
“It’s time for me to retire. I had medical stuff that I had to address. And do I want to get back in the car and get hit in the head? I don’t. So, I guess it’s official: I’m done. I won’t say I won’t ever get in a car to warm it up or maybe even make a burnout. Don’t know. I guess it’ll be the response from the fans. If they cheer loud enough, I’ll hear ya.”
Brittany Force announced Sept. 12 that she would be stepping away from competition to focus on starting a family with husband Bobby Lyons Jr. John Force Racing announced Oct. 15 that five-year veteran Top Fuel driver Josh Hart will be driving for its Top Fuel team in 2026.
8 – CAPPS FINDS POSITIVES – As let-down as he was by the three-day rainout this weekend, Funny Car three-time champion and team owner Ron Capps has as much to be excited about for next season. He called Sunday’s cancellation of the event “an unfortunate situation” and said, “Every time you get to Pomona, a championship is all you think about. We always feel like we have a championship team, and we strive for that. With that being said, it was another great year. We won Bristol and we finished in the top five again.”
Maybe most of all, he said he’s eager to see Maddi Gordon graduate from the Top Alcohol Funny Car class to the Carlyle Tools dragster by the March season opener at Gainesville, Fla.
“There’s a lot of exciting things coming up with adding the Carlyle Tools Top Fuel car with Maddi,” Capps said. “We always wait for the banquet, and then you can start focusing on next year, and that’s what we’re going to do. It’s unfortunate we didn’t get to make runs in front of our Pomona crowd and all the fans, but we’ll be back here in April.”
Capps and his team will join their colleagues Monday at the Pechanga Resort Casino at Temecula, Calif., to celebrate the 2025 season.
9 – BROWN BIDS GOOD-BYE TO TOYOTA – Top Fuel’s Antron Brown finished eighth in the final standings, a disappointing end to his 2025 championship reign. But it marked his 28th consecutive top-10 finish that includes his Pro Stock Motorcycle days. He said Sunday’s cancellation was a “tough decision, but with the circumstances at hand, I completely understand. After sitting through the rainstorms for the last three days, it just feels good to call it a wrap in 2025 so we can get prepared for 2026. Congratulations to all of the champions.” For Brown, it was a farewell to longtime supporter Toyota, which had announced earlier that it would not be involved past 2025. “I also want to thank our great Toyota partners. Wishing them farewell after our 18-year stint with them,” he said.
10 – BOWLING ‘EM OVER – Alexis DeJoria will participate in the Rev n Roll charity bowling event benefitting Riley Children’s Foundation at Indianapolis. The event will take place Wednesday, Dec. 10, from 6-9 p.m. at Western Bowl in Indianapolis. Lane and individual registration is live via give.rileykids.org/revnrollforriley.
