Competition Plus’ random water-cooler topics from the NHRA Reading Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway, near Reading, Pennsylvania
1 – KALITTA-STEWART CRASH UPSETS ACTION – Tony Stewart said he had no recollection of his 325-plus-mph Top Fuel collision with Doug Kalitta during the second round of eliminations Sunday at the NHRA Reading Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway.
The violent, high-speed accident occurred between Stewart, who entered the race atop the Countdown to the Championship standings, and No. 3 Kalitta, upsetting psyches and the standings.
For unknown reasons, the front left wheel of Kalitta’s Mac Tools dragster collapsed at the finish line following his winning 335.73-mph pass. That triggered the scariest incident of a wild day at the Countdown to the Championship opener, held at the appropriately nicknamed “House of Chaos.”
That sent Kalitta from his lane into the right side of Stewart’s Dodge Direct Connection dragster. Stewart, who just had completed a 326.71-mph run on the 1,000-foot course, took the brunt of the impact. His car flipped onto its left side but rebounded upright onto its tires and struck the left guardwall. Kalitta’s car slid back over the center line and came to a stop in its right lane.
Kalitta climbed from his dragster right away, but Stewart took a bit longer to exit his car. NHRA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Phil Surface consulted with each driver onsite before releasing them. The ever-calm Kalitta, who rushed over to check on Stewart’s condition, appeared only slightly shaken and spoke about his team pulling out the back-up car for its semifinal appearance.
However, Stewart clearly was subdued and implied that he had been knocked unconscious, at least for a short moment. He said he had no idea what happened.
“I don’t have a damn clue, honestly. I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember any of it. Just the first thing I remember, they were waking me up here, so not sure what happened,” Stewart said. “But it appears to be pretty massive.
“So, I mean, looking at Doug’s car and my car, I’m glad PBRC [Precision Built Race Cars, of Brownsburg, Indiana] builds our cars. We got safe race cars, obviously, but I’m as curious as everybody else as to what happened,” he said. “I just know we’re not where we’re supposed to be at the end of a run here. So … just confused.”
He added, “I’ve got one hell of a headache, and it banged my left hand up. But, yeah, I mean, I’ve been through sprint-car crashes way worse than this, I’m pretty sure. So we’re good. We’re fine, I promise. We’re fine.”
Stewart said he definitely plans to race this next weekend near Charlotte, when the Countdown continues with the 4-Wide Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway.
“I’m not going to miss that,” Stewart said.
Kalitta – who in the 1990s raced Stewart in USAC sprint cars, where both were champions – said his tire “was down or blew or whatever. So, yeah, it was just unfortunate, really. It just happened so quick that there was nothing I could really do.
“Just glad we’re going” to the semifinals, he said, “We’ll drag our other car out, and see if we can keep this thing going here. But fortunately, Tony and I are good. So that’s really the main thing.” He added, “That’s probably the worst [wreck] that I’ve had, but, yeah, it’s been very fortunate over the years. It’s all part of it.”
Clay Millican, the No. 1 qualifier who defeated Brittany Force in the next pairing after Kalitta-Stewart, said, “My heart was not in the race car at that moment.”
And Rob Wendland, crew chief for Shawn Reed, who ran after Millican, said, “Seeing something like that has you crapping razor blades.”
2 – REED’S TOP FUEL VICTORY ONE OF DAY’S HAPPY STORIES – Top Fuel winner
Shawn Reed turned his troubles into triumph with his first NHRA Top Fuel victory Sunday at the Countdown to the Championship-opening Reading Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway.
He defeated new points leader Doug Kalitta in the final round on the historic eastern Pennsylvania dragstrip that was marking its 40th NHRA visit.
It has been less than eight weeks since Reed broke five ribs and had his left index finger amputated following a qualifying crash at Seattle.
But after hiring Jordan Vandergriff to substitute for him at the next three races, team owner Reed has made a storybook rebound. He entered an IHRA race near Columbus, Ohio, to see if he was comfortable in the car yet, and won. Cleared medically to return to NHRA competition, he fulfilled his goal to race all six Countdown to the Championship events – and won Sunday’s playoff opener. It vaulted him from 10th place into a tie for fifth with this weekend’s No. 1 qualifier, Clay Millican.
“I know it’s a hard road, but what I will tell you is that No. 10 will not be on my wing next year,” he said.
“Man, it’s crazy. It’s hard to keep my composure,” he said, cradling his first Wally statue. Remembering that he didn’t qualify for this event last year and vowed “We’re going to be part of the conversation next year,” Reed thanked his crew, saying they have “put up with a lot of gunk.”
He said, “This car has been running good for a while now and has been steadily getting better and better throughout the year. Hats off to Rob Wendland, Ryan Elliott, and our whole Reed Trucking & Excavating team. We dragged this bucket of bolts up there every weekend for a year and a half, and we finally got a Wally. I’m just so happy for these guys, even more so than I am for myself probably, and I’ve waited six years to get one of these.”
3 – ANGRY HAGAN BLASTS BODY TETHER RULE – The start to an abysmal day for Tony Stewart Racing came in the opening round of Funny Car eliminations. Matt Hagan launched a tirade against the NHRA’s Funny Car body tethering rule after an engine concussion split the body of his Dodge Direct Connection/American Rebel Charger in his match-up against Blake Alexander.
“This NHRA tether rule is ridiculous. It’s going to get a driver killed,” Hagan said. “I couldn’t see where I was at. I couldn’t see where the other driver’s at. Couldn’t see anything. I was just along for the ride. It’s like, ‘What are we doing?’ I’m a four-time world champion, and I probably should walk away from the sport because of stupid stuff like that. We got guys making rules that have no idea how to drive one of these things. I get it, there’s no great answers, but this ain’t it.”
Hagan was vocal a year ago at the same race about the rule, which requires Funny Cars to have one tether per side. It’s a safety effort to prevent a carbon-fiber body, which weighs nearly 90 pounds, from sailing into the grandstands and injuring spectators.
“Crawling into these things, knowing that I put myself at a massive risk of getting hurt and injured, and we’re just one run away from being John Force, you know what I mean? There’s not a single person out here that crawls that car that can deny that with these bodies the way they’re tied down. They’re unsafe now,” Hagan said last September, referring to John Force’s high-speed wreck in June 2024 at Richmond that effectively has ended his driving career with a traumatic brain injury diagnosis.
“So what can be done to make you safer? I don’t know,” he said. But for starters, he pleaded, “Take the tethers off.” As for the suggestion about a booster rev limiter, he said, “A lot of crew chiefs and a lot of guys don’t like that, but it shuts the car off before it ever gets to where it blows up, you know what I mean? But that doesn’t work when the body’s all crinkled up and the lines don’t work. So what happened with Force’s car when the body blew up? The tethers pulled it up and then it fell back down, so then there’s all this slack in the line here. So basically what happened, even though the thing might’ve worked, it never pulled the slack out of the line because the body was still all crunched in, pulled down on top of it. So you put all the safety stuff on there you want, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t work, you’re just along for the ride.”
He continued, “It’s one of those things where it is very concerning. I want to live another 30, 35 years, but I don’t want to do it burned up or crippled up or maimed up because of optics that we’re trying to protect the fans. I love our fans, but we’ve been launching bodies off of these things for decades and nobody’s gotten hurt. So why are we putting our drivers in a situation to where it’s really, really bad for us?”
He quickly clarified, “Not saying that I want anything to happen to our fans by any way, shape, or form. But I definitely have made a career out of this, and I have no choice but to crawl in these cars to pay my bills. And now I feel like I’m in a situation to where it’s unsafe for me to be in there. You’re never going to make a Funny Car safe. They’re Funny Cars, but we’ve increased the opportunity to get hurt in one now by four or five times the amount by just bodies not coming off, ’chutes are not coming out. Fire is greater when the body stays on there. More chance getting trapped in the car, not being able to see when the firewall comes up, and the windshields up out of here. I mean, that’s five examples right there, right off the rip.”
Hagan said he understands that “everybody has their own opinion. And mine is that, that we should find a different way to do this other than the tethers. I’ve been driving one of these things for 15 years, and I’ve been in a lot of situations where I’ve been on fire so bad that you blister your legs up and you want to jump out when it’s still running 150 miles an hour. I’ve been through it, so it’s not like I’m sitting here preaching to someone that hasn’t been through the ins and outs and the bad boomers and the explosions and all the other stuff. So, I mean, I just know what happens at 300 miles an hour when you’re doing that, and it’s not good.
“What happens when we’re holding these bodies down [is] you’re asking for all that energy to stay underneath the car there. When you put a firecracker in your hand and you open up your hand, it’ll burn you pretty bad, if you’re lucky. But you close your hand around that, and it’s going to knock your fingers off. That’s just simple physics. Any person that understands physics understands that’s going to happen. But that’s what we’re trying to do with these cars. Even with the burst panel up front, you’re trying to hold that energy down on top of the driver, and that’s a massive concussive force that you can’t even explain to someone. It’s just a lot of energy. And then what happens is these tethers stretch a little bit, so then the firewall is up in front of your face instead of the windshield. So then you’re running blind.”
The same has happened to fellow Funny Car driver Daniel Wilkerson, who has called for an investigation into the matter.
“I get it,” Hagan said. “That’s the responsibility we take on to drive. But that’s not the responsibility I took on when I first started driving. One is I decided to make a career out of this and kind of put all my eggs in this basket kind of thing. So things evolve and things change, but I just feel like … I don’t know why I’m the only driver that’s really talking about this.”
4 – WILD ROUND 2 IN FUNNY CAR – Sunday simply was not Austin Prock’s day.
The No. 2 Funny Car qualifier did beat Joe Morrison in the opening round, but fell to eventual winner Cruz Pedregon in an uncharacteristic mistake in the quarterfinals. He was being a bit hard on himself, as he was battling a dropped right-side cylinder early in the run.
He had said after his first run that “this Countdown is so stressful. You’re trying to make it not stressful – but, damn, it is.
“Not turning on the win light’s one thing, but when you look like a d—head and you mow over cones, that stings as a race car driver. That’s the first thing I’ve ever hit in since 2018, when I started driving these cars. So, definitely frustrated. The thing left, had a hole out, had my hands full, then it’s come loose, and I tried pedaling it and it just hung a left on me. So really frustrated that not only did we lose, we lost more valuable points. So we’re going to have to get our stuff together – me, as well – and we’ll be fine. You can afford to lose an early matchup when you come in as a points leader. So, sorry to all my sponsors – Hendrickcars.com, Cornwell Tools – for letting you guys down. I should be able to catch that thing and still turn on the win light. So we’ll get ’em next week.”
Pedregon was happy, but not boasting about his round-win over Prock, saying, “They kind of beat themselves.”
It was just one part of a wild second round in which No. 1 qualifier and surging rookie-of-the-year candidate Spencer Hyde lost against eventual finalist Blake Alexander (the driver Hyde succeeded at Jim Head Racing).
And then Ron Capps was mystified rather than elated after he defeated Jack Beckman by 14-thousandths of a second – and blew up his engine and damaged the car’s body at the top end of the course.
5 – FINALLY BACK IN WINNERS CIRCLE – Funny Car winner Cruz Pedregon defeated Blake Alexander to win for the first time in 56 races – since the November 2022 NHRA Finals at Pomona, California. And when he advanced to the final round Sunday, the two-time champion declared, “I haven’t been a champion for nothing.” He proved it, earning his third victory at Maple Grove Raceway and his 40th overall that has him sixth on the class’ all-time win list.
“I was emotional earlier, and I said, ‘We’ve won a couple of championships – I haven’t forgotten how to do it.’ So as long as the Raiders are back, the Cruzer’s back, baby,” Pedregon, an avid Las Vegas Raiders fan, said.
He is three victories behind brother Tony Pedregon, also a two-time champion, who left the seat of his Funny Car to become a TV analyst for the FOX broadcasts. Cruz Pedregon said, “Man, this is big, 40. I used to kid Tony … He’s got like 40-some wins [43] and it’s taken me a lot longer. He quit like, I don’t know, 100 years ago, and he still has me beat with the Wallys.
“Man, this is a big one. These things are hard to win. I tell my buddies that drive sprint cars all the time, ‘You need to be in shape to do this, too.’ I’m wore out. It’s just been a process.”
He praised Jason Bunker, his young crew chief who used to work with Paul Lee, and his longtime sponsor Snap-on.
He took a brief moment to allude to the Charlie Kirk shooting that has been in the news since Wednesday: “And a lot of not-so-good things going on in our country right now. I want to send the best to the families, folks in Utah. Nothing political, just human beings, right? “ Pro Stock Erica Enders also has written on the back of her windshield, “TPUSA. We love [heart] you, C.K.”
Pedregon, now sixth in points the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, said of Sunday’s triumph, “This is very special, very special. You know, you start to doubt yourself — as an owner, as a driver — and I’ve done that a lot the last couple of years. I thought, ‘Maybe this is it.’ But we took the hard road. I hired young guys who weren’t already on other teams. It was like a draft.
“We went through the growing pains, but now I’ve got a good group. They’re still learning, but they’re hungry, and now here we are. This morning, I told the guys, ‘There are six races left, including this one. I’ve won this race before and sat in the winners circle, wondering how we did it. We can do that again — just be mistake-free, be aggressive, and stay the course.’”
6 – ANDERSON’S ERROR LEADS TO GLENN’S WIN – Dallas Glenn capitalized on a mistake by KB Titan teammate and 111-time winner Greg Anderson in the semifinal and went on to win the Pro Stock trophy. He claimed his fifth victory in 11 final-round appearances this season and his 18th overall by defeating Cody Couglin in the all-KB Titan showdown.
Anderson, the current champion, was disqualified in the semifinal because of burnout/staging procedure violations. Anderson faltered on the first burnout attempt, crossing the starting line beams, and on his second attempt, he crossed the beams again.
“I messed the burnout up the first time, and honestly, I didn’t even realize I crossed the starting line on the first drive,” Anderson said. “So backed right up and tried to do it again. But obviously my mistake. Got to know the rules. I didn’t think I crossed the starting line on the first drive, but obviously I did. Couldn’t have been by much, was it? It didn’t matter. A miss is as good as a mile.” He said he doesn’t use an in-car radio. “I don’t. And there’s one time that it would’ve come in handy. Lesson learned.”
Glenn said after winning, “You definitely come in here and my goal every race in the Countdown is to leave with a little bit more of a lead.” And he did just that in what he summed up as “a crazy day.” He said, “Having Cody Coughlin in the final, with me taking out Erica Enders and Eric Latino taking out Aaron Stanfield — it was just a wild weekend. They call [Maple Grove Raceway] the ‘House of Chaos’ for a reason. The car is working fantastic right now. My car is so good, I just need to make sure I don’t beat myself. I definitely have the car to beat right now. I just need to continue what I’m doing, keep riding the wave, and see how far we can go with it.”
7 – NO HALL PASS FOR HERRERA – For Pro Stock Motorcycle dominator Gaige Herrera, the class’ No. 1 Countdown seed and two-time and reigning champion, the Maple Grove Raceway jinx continues. It’s the only track at which the Vance & Hines headliner has not won, and he was hoping this would be his year to break that short streak.
But John Hall had other ideas. Hall, from just up the freeway at Hamden, Connecticut, eliminated Herrera in the second round and went on to beat Matt Smith, his team boss, in the final round. It was Hall’s second victory of the season – the first came at Norwalk, Ohio – and fourth in all.
Crew chief Michael Ray said, “I just want to bring that [championship] trophy to North Carolina [where Matt Smith Racing is based]. I’m tired of it going to Indianapolis [headquarters of Vance & Hines]. We ain’t done yet. We’re just getting going.”
Hall noted as he looked at his Wally statue that Smith, a six-time champion, has 42 trophies. “By the time I’m 90, I’ll catch him,” Hall joked.
8 – ‘YOU WON’T REGRET THAT’ – Steve Torrence, who opted out of four regular-season races this season, said he shared some advice with Brittany Force after she announced Friday she will move out of the seat of her dragster at season’s end.
“I’m super happy for Brittany,” he said. “She made the decision to step back, and I told her, ‘You won’t regret that at all. The time I spent at home with my family and kids this summer made me think about it pretty good, too. We’re having a good time.”
9 – POINTS RACES TIGHTEN – Although Doug Kalitta defeated him, then accidentally crashed into him, Tony Stewart kept the loss of his points lead to his longtime friend in perspective. Stewart said, “The silver lining is that everyone around us [in points] had problems in the second round. Even though Doug took over the points lead, we’re all close to each other in points heading into Charlotte, so we can rally from there.”
Kalitta has an 18-point edge over Stewart, with that duo and Shawn Langdon, Justin Ashley, and Clay Millican all within 67 points as the series heads to Charlotte for the first four-wide race in the Countdown’s 19 years.
In Funny Car, Austin Prock still leads the standings, despite dropping out with a second-round mistake – but teammate Jack Beckman as well as Ron Capps, are within two rounds of points. Matt Hagan, who is fifth after Reading, said that seeing Blake Alexander and Cruz Pedregon in the final “was the best scenario we could have hoped for points-wise.”
Beckman, who is now second, said, “It’s just going to be whoever takes advantage of every opportunity, including qualifying sessions. Those bonus points likely could decide a championship. To win this championship is going to take the team that best takes advantage of opportunities.” Beckman earned the Funny Car championship in 2012 by a mere two points over runner-up Capps, then lost the 2019 title to Robert Hight by eight.
Dallas Glenn extended his Pro Stock points lead, defeating Cody Coughlin in the final round and recording his fifth victory of the season and 18th overall.
And in Pro Stock Motorcycle, John Hall knocked off class dominator and reigning two-time champion Gaige Herrera in Round 2 and went on to win the race. Matt Smith assumed the PSM points lead, with he and his next three rivals (Hall, Herrera, and Richard Gadson) separated by just nine points.
10 – SPORTSMAN WINNERS – The Lucas Oil Series winners Sunday were Jamie Noonan (Top Alcohol Dragster), Brian Hough (Top Alcohol Funny Car), Mark Hopkins (Competition Eliminator), Louis Gill (Super Stock), Michael Iacono (Stock Eliminator), Dave Long (Super Comp), Michael Reynolds (Super Gas), Vincent Fourcade (Top Sportsman), Taylor Dietsch (Factory Stock Showdown), Lenny Lottig (Factory X), Johnny Pluchino (Mountain Motor Pro Stock), and Daniel Spotts (Jr. Dragster Shootout).
