This year’s NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series offered four unique paths to the championships, even if the winners were familiar names.
Winning a racing championship is never easy. They’ve been won by ties, by single digits and, of course, by voluminous mandates. This season’s NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series produced winners in Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle that could appear pre-ordained to some fans of NHRA’s 22-race campaign. They weren’t. It’s never easy, no matter whether the champion is crowned one race before the end of the year or in the finals of the finale.
At the close of the “regular” season at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park on Labor Day weekend, Brittany Force had a commanding lead in the Top Fuel title run, eclipsing reigning four-time champ Steve Torrence, Justin Ashley, Antron Brown, Mike Salinas and a host of others who were clamoring for the season champion’s white hat – and big trophy, along with that big check. It wasn’t until the penultimate race of the year, on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, that Brittany Force found her true footing, head down and win-light on.
She regained the points lead at Sin City from Justin Ashley, by a slim seven points. With points-and-a-half on offer for the second time this year – Indy was the first – Force knew she had to lead, not follow. With her David Grubnic- and Mac Savage-led team firing on all eight, she earned the No. 1 on Friday night, kept it through a late Saturday qualifying session and then waited as her competition imploded in the first round of competition. Josh Hart beat Doug Kalitta, bringing up the question of whether hiring Alan Johnson and Brian Husen was the right thing?
After Force beat No. 16 qualifier Steve Chrisman, she stayed glued to the television monitors at top end as first Krista Baldwin handily beat an up-in-smoke Mike Salinas and Antron Brown dispensed with an off-his-game tenth qualifier Justin Ashley. That last 1000-foot race gave Force the championship she’d been hunting since 2017 – and since her big blow-up in the first race she ran, at this same track, the following February of 2018. The looks of relief were palpable. She had a good race against Clay Millican in the second round but fell to teammate Austin Prock – the race winner – in the semifinals, both of them turning 3.6-sec runs, with Prock earning a .0315-sec margin of victory.
“We have been working at this all season long,” she admitted. “We never gave up, and then we struggled in the Countdown. But we recovered and we recovered when we needed to in Vegas and here in Pomona. This just seems unreal – it just seems surreal. I can’t believe it ended up this way… I believed, coming into today, I was motivated, pumped – we all are – and we got the job done. Just needed to get past the first round,” Force declared. Once her competitors became flies on the wall, her coast was clear.
Next year, Top Fuel’s most successful racer, Schumacher, with eight titles and 86 national event wins, will have a new crew chief on the Maynard Family Racing rail, as Mike “Zippy” Neff and “The Sarge” reunite for 2023. There had been rumors all weekend that Neff was gone from Bob Tasca III’s Funny Car after tuning the driver to six of his 12 national event victories. Jon Shaffer, who has been with Neff at Tasca’s operation, is joining him to work with Schumacher. Neff was the crew chief on Schumacher’s U.S. Army dragster in 2018, before the sponsor redirected its motorsports marketing money away from drag racing. In that final year of full-time dragster competition before Schumacher’s return in 2022, he and Neff combined to earn six final round appearances, a single victory at Bristol, together with three No. 1 qualifier awards. “We only got one year together,” Schumacher said. “Ever since then, my intentions have been to team back up and win a championship together. He’s always wanted to win a Top Fuel championship and we finished No. 2 in points that year behind Steve Torrence,” who dominated that season for his first of four consecutive titles.
For repeat Funny Car champion Ron Capps, who earned his second title in 2021 (first was in 2016) with Don Schumacher Racing (DSR), the mission was different than that of Brittany Force’s ride to her title. Knowing The Don was shutting down his nitro competition for all but son Tony Schumacher, who had backing from Maynard Family Racing for 2022, Capps did what his good friend Antron Brown had elected to do: he announced the formation of Ron Capps Motorsport at the Performance Racing Industry show in December, working from DSR’s Brownsburg location. His loyal crew stayed intact, with Dean “Guido” Antonelli and John Medlen as co-crew chiefs.
At the start or the year, Capps was still somewhat affiliated with Stellantis’ Dodge brand, but it became quickly apparent they were dumping him in favor of three-time Funny Car champ Matt Hagan and Top Fuel racer Leah Pruett, both driving for Tony Stewart Racing in 2022, along with two-time Funny Car titleholder Cruz Pedregon. Toyota quickly came to the rescue and were suitably rewarded. Capps won five times in his new Toyota GR Supra, a car introduced last year by J.R. Todd and Kalitta Motorsports, together with DC Motorsports (for Alexis DeJoria).
Although Robert Hight owned the regular season as he marauded through the field, earning six regular season wins in his John Force Racing Chevrolet Camaro SS, Capps quietly built points and entered the six-race Countdown to the Championship in second place after his win at Indy in the Dodge Power Brokers U.S. Nationals. The first three – of six – playoff races saw Capps win in Charlotte, after Hight took Reading. Hight was victorious in St. Louis, Capps won Dallas, Hagan rebounded at Las Vegas, tightening the three-way battle immensely.
At Pomona, Capps had a tough Friday with issues on the car, on the business side of his enterprise, but after Medlen “saged” their pits on Saturday morning, everything turned around. This was John Medlen’s final race as a crew chief – and he wanted it to be right. After all, he’d bought some mint chocolate chip ice cream for the crew and friends of the crew to celebrate the season’s close. In Q4, after a long clean-up for Hagan’s ball-of-fire final qualifying run, Capps and Cruz Pedregon were the final pair down the track. Capps belted out a 3.837-sec pass at 337.33 to claim the No. 1 spot.
He prevailed through three rounds of eliminations, watching Hagan again implode in the first round, as both he, beating Jeff Arend and Hight (beating Mustang driver Chad Green) advanced. In the second round of eliminations, Capps beat the always-tough Mustang racer Tim Wilkerson by a .0444-sec margin of victory, going 3.865 to Wilk’s 3.905. Bob Tasca III would take out an up-in-smoke Hight, leading to a battle between Tasca’s Ford Mustang and Capps’ GR Supra. In the penultimate round of competition, Capps beat Tasca with a pass of 3.865/334.65 to the Rhode Island racer’s 3.905/327.11, while Pedregon defeated the Supra of DeJoria, in another squeaker (3.864 to 3.880 for a MOV of .0203-sec).
The championship came down to the final round between Pedregon and the reigning titleholder, who didn’t even have a team this time a year ago. As long as Capps didn’t cross the centerline, he could win the title by a very small margin. Cruz took the battle, 3.839/365.65 for a .0103 MOV, while Capps ran a 3.850/333.16 in a losing battle as he won the war. For the second straight season, the California native beat the rest of the best to claim his first title as a team owner/driver – by a three-point margin. While he thought he’d won after beating Tasca, the necessity to steer clear of that centerline was a pall on the proceedings, but Ron Capps kept his poise and, while he did get close to hugging the left-lane’s wall – instead of the centerline – he made it to the finish line.
Now holding second place all-time with 72 career Funny Car victories (and one in Top Fuel), together with three championships, Capps is on a roll. By starting his new team – at least not from scratch – Ron Capps took on a lot of responsibility most drivers never have to accept. By changing manufacturers after the season was already underway, he had even more issues to tackle. “To give Toyota this championship means so much,” he said. Capps had planned to shut off midway down the strip in this final round, after giving fans a long burnout, but he just couldn’t when he initially didn’t see Pedregon next to him. “I ran it to the finish line because that was a hard decision to make (shutting off). Anything you put your mind to, you can do with great people around you,” he said after becoming only the seventh Funny Car driver to earn at least three titles. “I can’t even begin to say what it feels like right now!”
Yes, Erica Enders cemented her Pro Stock title before the season ended, but what a season she had! In capturing her fifth title, the native Texan took Las Vegas by storm, earning the No. 1 and capturing the national event win, in addition to her fifth Pro Stock championship. She won 10 races in 2022 and was looking to hit the Winners Circle again in Pomona, but she came up short to fellow five-time champion Greg Anderson.
Next year will be a bit different for Enders and her Elite Motorsports team, as she moves from her familiar Melling sponsorship to be part of Jason Johnson’s Johnson’s Horsepowered Garage (JHG) crew, along with recently married teammate Bo Butner III. Johnson’s first full year as a Pro Stock sponsor so engaged the Tennessee garage owner that he chose to increase his participation to include the newly crowned five-time champion, along with Butner, who earned the Pro Stock title in 2017 while competing with KB Racing.
Anderson, too, will have a different team owner next season – and it’s him, together with longtime crew chief Rob Downing. After 20 years in the sport, Ken Black packed his tents and headed off to retirement following the Auto Club World Finals this past weekend on the Auto Club Raceway at Pomona dragstrip. Anderson sent him off with a 101st victory in his chosen class, as he accepts the responsibility inherent with owning the team.
Camrie Caruso, 24, turned heads with her first No. 1 qualifier in her fifth race (of 19 total in Pro Stock) at Houston, where she advanced to her first final round. After qualifying for every race she entered and qualified in the top half of her field six times, Caruso spent the second half of her year developing and improving her reaction times, while her first-year family team battled to stay in the Top Ten of this tough class. They entered the Countdown to the Championship as the No. 8 seed. On Saturday at Pomona, she was announced as 2022 NHRA Rookie of the Year, the ninth Pro Stock driver to win this NHRA honor. Since 1990, 15 previous NHRA Rookie of the Year winners have gone on to earn a Camping World championship, including Pro Stock standouts Jason Line, Jeg Coughlin Jr. (five titles), Tanner Gray, Mike Edwards and Kurt Johnson.
At the close of his fifth championship in Pro Stock Motorcycle, Matt Smith announced a technical partnership with Scrappers Racing and Jianna Salinas Evaristo for the 2022 season and stated he’d be riding a Suzuki, parking his trusty Buell. That didn’t last long – the motorcycle choice that is – because it’s difficult to find places to test a Pro Stock Motorcycle properly; NHRA competition is best for development, as the four-valve Suzuki runners have found. Smith runs his own operation while others use Vance & Hines’ development capabilities and still others go it alone. Smith hired Chip Ellis to do some riding for him and was pleased with “Tater’s” progress.
Once Smith reverted to his Buell, well before the Countdown to the Championship’s five events for this class, Smith was sniffing around for his sixth title, despite having Joey Gladstone’s Suzuki breathing down his neck. That fact alone would have caused many other racers to get back to what brought them to the dance, but Smith is still intent on making the Suzuki work, particularly to the 60-foot mark. In the meantime, it was back to 200-mph-plus runs on the Buell, victory in one playoff race (St. Louis) and lurking near the top of the standings, even as Gladstone picked up two wins and part-timer Hector Arana Jr. earned a pair of win lights in these playoffs.
By the time the tour arrived in Pomona, Matt Smith only needed to survive the first round of competition, which he did by beating Michael Phillips’ Reed Motorsports Suzuki from the No. 2 position, behind three-time champ Angelle Sampey’s Vance & Hines Suzuki. He had the title, despite Gladstone’s victory in the first round, but would race Marc Ingwersen in the second round. It was lights out to Gladstone in the semifinals, allowing Gladstone to race Matt’s wife Angie Smith in the finals, which she won for the second time in the last three season closers.
Earning his third consecutive Pro Stock Motorcycle title and fourth in five years, Matt Smith has cemented his destiny in this class. His four 2022 wins and this sixth championship tie him with Andrew Hines and Dave Schultz for the most titles in class history. “This Denso bike has been awesome this year. Angie’s had a great bike. We took my motor out from the last two races and put it in her bike because we had a shot of being one and two in points. To be the one Pro Stock Motorcycle rider who has won every Camping World Drag Racing Series championship – so far – is pretty amazing,” Smith said
Prizes were given out on Monday at Temecula’s Pechanga Casino and Resort. The 2023 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series season prep begins a day later, with the first race scheduled March 9-12: the 54th annual Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida, including the Pep Boys NHRA Top Fuel All-Star Callout.
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