Pro Stock is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and NHRA has plans for the class that will celebrate its past, as well as Pro Stock’s current competitive nature and its future.
With most racers in the class using the Chevrolet Camaro race car, it’s nostalgic to remember when many different manufacturers were exceptionally active in Pro Stock and were able to use the “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mantra.
This year, beginning with the season-starting 60th annual Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals on the Auto Club Raceway at Pomona dragstrip, NHRA partners with the Midwest Nostalgia Pro Stock Association for both static and on-track exhibitions of significant Pro Stock racecars, many of them tributes to race- and championship-winning racers and their cars.
There are expected to be between six and eight such exhibitions throughout the year, beginning with the season starter and the Midwest Nostalgia Pro Stock Association expects to have between eight and ten running exhibition cars at each of those contests.
Some of the cars – on display at PRI this week – include Darrell Alderman’s championship Dodge Daytona, the Harold Denton “Party Time” tribute car, Lee Shepherd/Reher Morrison tribute car, a Warren Johnson tribute and a Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins tribute.
These cars represent what many consider the golden years of Pro Stock racing, although with the kind of competition we witnessed during the 2019 campaign, it might be fair to state that, even though all 10 cars in the Countdown to the Championship were Chevy products, Pro Stock today is a healthy class.
What a great reminder of what incessant whining by the Chevy guys has caused the Pro Stock to become. Take away the big hood scoops and the big Goodyear slicks on the back and the Ford Fairmont and the the Dodge Daytona looked exactly like the cars for sale on the dealer lots. They were highly modified professional stock cars or Pro Stock. Now try that with the stretched, narrowed, chopped jellybean things that are supposed to be a copy of a Camaro. The lone remaining “car” left in the class looks like nothing that can be found on ANY dealers lot. Now the worst class in drag racing with the exception of super comp because there’s nothing like watching a couple hundred dragsters all doing the same thing run after run after run: launch-idle-takeoff again
You hit the nail directly on the head!