Jordan Vandergriff came to Las Vegas needing help to keep his Funny Car championship hopes alive. He got it from J.R. Todd, took care of his own business and left the MOPAR NHRA Las Vegas Nationals just 39 points behind Matt Hagan with one race remaining.
Vandergriff defeated Ron Capps in Sunday’s final at The Strip at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway, running 3.873 seconds at 331.36 mph to Capps’ 3.921, 335.15. The victory was his fourth of the season, and suddenly a championship that appeared to be slipping away is very much within reach.
Doug Kalitta kept his Top Fuel title defense alive with his fifth victory of 2026, while Dallas Glenn continued his late-season Pro Stock demolition job with another win. Excessive winds prevented the Pro Stock Motorcycle final from being contested, pushing the Richard Gadson-Gaige Herrera showdown to the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif., in two weeks.
Vandergriff’s championship prospects improved considerably when Todd eliminated Hagan in the second round. The John Force Racing driver did the rest, defeating Julie Nataas, Spencer Hyde, and Todd before putting away Capps, who reached his fifth final of the season.
“This is the biggest win [of the year],” Vandergriff said. “Today literally worked out as I envisioned it this morning. It was, ‘How do we need today to go? We need the day to go a certain way. We need somebody else to lose. We need this. We need that,’ and it literally played itself out the way I imagined.
“This fourth win, I think, is obviously huge, just because we’re 39 points back now of Hagan, and coming in today we were a really, really long shot. It felt like we were far away and we needed him to go out early, and he did. Now we can go to Pomona with a chance, so that’s all I wanted.”
Kalitta faced an even steeper championship climb, but he wasn’t about to surrender his crown without a fight. He defeated points leader and teammate Shawn Langdon in the semifinals before delivering a 3.658-second, 338.60-mph run to beat Leah Pruett, whose dragster slowed to a 5.751.
The victory was Kalitta’s 64th career triumph and left him 107 points behind Langdon heading into the points-and-a-half Pomona finale. Kalitta defeated Will Smith and Justin Ashley before winning the semifinal matchup he desperately needed against Langdon.
“It was definitely a sigh of relief to see that win light come on against Shawn, to finally get by those guys,” Kalitta said. “That was what I was hoping for, to get a shot at Shawn in the third round and hopefully beat him, and so it worked out well. I have to admit, [the championship] feels like a long shot, but anything can happen with points and a half at Pomona. Pomona is really one of my favorite places to race.”
In Pro Stock, Glenn has gone from chasing a championship to threatening to run away with it. Two races ago, he trailed Greg Stanfield by 71 points. Now, after consecutive victories and No. 1 qualifying performances, Glenn now leads Matt Hartford by 87.
Glenn completed another dominant weekend by defeating Troy Coughlin Jr. with a .002-second reaction and a run of 6.587 at 206.26 mph to collect his sixth victory of the season and 27th of his career. Stanfield, meanwhile, suffered another first-round defeat, continuing a two-race swing that has transformed the championship standings.
“When [Stanfield] lost first round of Dallas, it definitely caught our attention,” Glenn said. “Like, we have a really good shot to make up a lot of ground. We knew we could really put a hurting on them. I didn’t know it was 87 [point lead], so that kind of makes me happy that it’s kind of close to that 90 mark. If I can get enough points in qualifying over Hartford, then maybe we can squeeze another round against him there, and that will kind of take a lot of the pressure off for Pomona.”
The Pro Stock Motorcycle championship will have an unusual wrinkle when Gadson and Herrera settle their postponed Las Vegas final during Saturday’s third qualifying session at Pomona. Gadson holds a 55-point lead over his Vance & Hines teammate, with the delayed final scheduled for 1 p.m. PST on Nov. 14.
