NHRA’s Amalie Motor Oil Gatornationals are always a must-see event. This year reverting to its status as the third race in a 22-event campaign, the Gators promise action from start to finish on the track and in the pits.
Last year the Gatornationals began a 20-race sprint from Florida to California, where NHRA’s 2021 Camping World Drag Racing Series season was completed. This year it returns to its status as the third race of the year and the first contest for Pro Stock Motorcycle, Pro Mod and Factory Stock Showdown. In addition, a full complement of Lucas Oil Sportsman classes will fill the fields surrounding this historic, tree-lined drag strip. In fact all but one of the nine sportsman classes is either close to or over quota. The Gatornationals are that important for anyone involved in straight-line racing.
Local racer Josh Hart won Top Fuel last year in his first professional Camping World race; he followed that victory with a second at the fall Caroline NHRA Nationals in Charlotte, NC. He might not have an easy time replicating that this year with a renewed grouping of Top Fuel racers. Still, with extraneous activities taking the attention of eight of his competitors, Hart can concentrate on the task at hand: winning the race.
There are 21 names on the Top Fuel entry list, a grouping that includes Doug Foley, Krista Baldwin (who debuted here last year in this class, racing her grandfather Chris Karamesines’ dragster), Spencer Massey, full-timereturnees Austin Prock and Tony Schumacher, Lex Joon, Arthur Allen, Ike Maier, Tripp Tatum III, Alex Laughlin and Billy Torrence.
All eyes, though, will be on the Great Eight who have qualified for the first race-within-a-race since before the COVID-19 pandemic turned the world upside down. The Pep Boys NHRA Top Fuel All-Star Callout takes place on Saturday and features the cream of the Top Fuel crop: four-time and reigning titleholder Steve Torrence, 2017 champ Brittany Force, three-time champ Antron Brown, 2020 Rookie of the Year Justin Ashley, who won the season opener in Pomona, 2022 Phoenix victor Mike Salinas, nine-time race winner Leah Pruett, 49-time race winner Doug Kalitta and 2013 Top Fuel champ Shawn Langdon. The winner’s take is $80,000 from the $130,000 purse. “Everybody wants a piece of that check,” Steve Torrence said. “You’ve got to be amped up and go for it!”
These eight racers will have the opportunity to choose by call-out their first- and second-round opponents in this special contest, with Torrence getting the first opportunity to choose his opponent. If he doesn’t choose Force, she gets the next opportunity, and so on until the field is filled on Friday afternoon. Five of the contestants have ties to Toyota, as the Japanese manufacturer conducts its third decade in NHRA drag racing.
At this time, Mike Salinas owns the top of the Top Fuel ladder, with Justin Ashley 22 points back, Torrence 29 behind, followed by Brittany Force (-42), Josh Hart (-56), Austin Prock trailing Salinas by 58 points, Clay Millican, Tony Schumacher, Shawn Langdon and Antron Brown comprising the top 10. Brown has a 101-point tally to make up, while Doug Kalitta and Leah Pruett hold 11th and 12 spots in the dragster class.
Even though it lacks the showtime aspect of Top Fuel’s planned weekend, there’s plenty of activity in a 16-car Funny Car gathering that will whet the appetite. It was apparent, in 2021, that missing the previous year’s abbreviated schedule wasn’t the best idea for John Force Racing’s Funny Car duo of John Force and Robert Hight, at least from a driving perspective. While Force was in the thick of things leading up to the final two races last year, Hight and his Jimmy Prock-led team were definitely off their game in 2021.
That changed the moment the 2022 Camping World season began, as Hight grabbed the Wally trophies for both Pomona and Phoenix after qualifying No. 2 at both events. Consistency at the top of the field in drag racing is king, as Ron Capps has discovered. In a 2021 season that saw multiple winners, Capps was at or near the front of the grid and in eliminations most every weekend to earn his second Funny Car World Championship last year.
Hight, Force and Capps need to use their rear-view mirrors as 2021 Gators winner J.R. Todd is ready to rebound this year with a new GR Supra Toyota body on his flopper. Todd’s been known to sneak up on his competitors and now, lying ninth in the standings, he is going to need all the savvy he can muster. Hight leads, of course, followed by Matt Hagan, whom he vanquished at Phoenix (-65), the guy he beat in Pomona, Capps, holds third-place points (-88), with Cruz Pedregon fourth and Tim Wilkerson fifth, 137 points behind Hight.
Following a strong finish to her 2021 season, Alexis DeJoria is sixth, John Force seventh, Bob Tasca III eighth, followed by Todd and Jim Campbell, the latter 183 points behind Hight. Everyone in the top 10 is on the entry list, joining Paul Lee, Terry Haddock, Dave Richards, John Smith, Blake Alexander and Chad Green. It’s good to see Jim Head’s group back in the pits with Alexander driving Jim’s Mustang. While Force’s duo is tied to Chevrolet and Hagan is the official Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat factory driver at Tony Stewart Racing, there are six Dodge cars, a brace of Camaro SS cars, the two GR Supras for Toyota’s DeJoria and Todd, together with six Mustang race cars.
Just a couple of days before the Gatornationals get underway, DSR Performance announced a contingency program for nitro and Pro Mod NHRA teams already using its Made-in-Brownsburg products. DSR Performance is the manufacturing arm of Don Schumacher Racing and boasts a good number of clients for its products. For the upcoming 20 races in Top Fuel and Funny Car, eligible participants showing the DSR Performance logo prominently can, if they are national event winners, runners-up and No. 1 qualifiers earn credits to their accounts for their next parts order. Teams can opt into the program at all NHRA Camping World and E3 Spark Plugs Pro Mod Series events.
The battle in Pro Stock is going to come down to who’s best on the tree and who’s got the most horsepower. In other words, nothing changes from last year, the year before and the one before that. Both KB Racing’s stable and the Elite Motorsports squad are aching to beat the other and win the title. With 20 door-slammers on the grounds for the Gators, the stakes rise incrementally. First off, make the field.
A flush field it is with everyone in the top 10 onboard for this trip. Erica Enders, searching for her fifth title won the first race at Pomona while teammate Aaron Stanfield took the second race in Phoenix. His runner-up result in Pomona1 places him atop the standings with Erica 36 points back, 99-race winner and 2021 champ Greg Anderson is third, 91 points behind Stanfield and the first of the KB Racing entries, followed by Phoenix runner-up Troy Coughlin Jr. in fourth place, racing an Elite Camaro. Running with KB input, Kyle Koretsky and Deric Kramer are fifth and sixth, followed by independent Mason McGaha, Elite’s Bo Butner III, rookie Camrie Caruso and last year’s Rookie of the Year, KB’s Dallas Green.
A word about Caruso, 24, who earned her first round win in Phoenix. Picking up new partners as she goes after the Rookie of the Year honor in 2022, Caruso has a new red-and-black look on her Camaro this week, with Right Trailers is backing her. Caruso is using Titan Racing Engine power to earn starting positions in the top half of the field and her first win light in only her second race; this makes her the fastest starter of any woman racing in Pro Stock. With mentoring by crew chief Jim Yates, Caruso is earning her stripes. “That girl can drive a race car,” Yates said. “I’m totally impressed with her.”
While most of the combatants in Pro Stock are keeping company with the Chevrolet Camaro that’s won the class at least the last half-decade, there are some aberrations and some returning drivers about whom to take note. Alan Prusiensky will have two Dodge Darts on the grounds, one for him and the second for Stefan Emryd, while the Cuadra family, Fernando, Fernando Jr. and Cristian continues to race Ford Mustangs with Elite assistance. In addition to the [likely] full-season return of Rodger Brogdon, Larry Morgan is making a part-time return to the class, both of these gents racing Camaro race cars.
There are 16 Pro Stock Motorcycle racers on the first entry list of the season for this class, which had a great deal of movement in the off-season. Andrew Hines, the six-time champion for his family’s Vance & Hines Racing team has stepped away from riding and will now crew chief Angelle Sampey and Eddie Krawiec, both of whom will be racing V&H Suzuki four-valve motorcycles. The Suzuki crowd have been gifted with an extra ten pounds of ballast by NHRA – despite the championship victory by [then] Buell-riding Matt Smith, who earned his fifth title in 2021.
Smith is no dummy. He believes the Suzuki, even with extra weight, will be a winner in 2022 and he’s changed affiliations to prove his theory. He joins Sampey, veteran Steve Johnson, Krawiec, Karen Stoffer, Chris Bostick, Jerry Savoie, Jimmy Underdahl, Joey Gladstone and Kelly Clontz riding the Suzuki 113, as NHRA has labeled the Hayabusa. That leaves Angie Smith, Ryan Oehler, David Barron, Marc Ingwersen, Michael Phillips (racing a Buell for the first time) and Lance Bonham in the Buell/EBR class. Missing from this grid are Scrappers Racing’s Jianna Salinas and Cory Reed, who’s still recovering from last year’s racing injuries.
The biggest hurdle for everyone at this year’s Amalie Motor Oil Gatornationals is going to be weather-related. It’s not unusual to have rain in Gainesville, but this weekend’s activities could be severely curtailed – including the Pep Boys NHRA Top Fuel All-Star Callout. Scheduled to begin Saturday at 11:45 with the first round, it might go off as planned, since morning rain is predicted. Temps will definitely be on the cool side, with thunderstorms on Friday and a high of 73 degrees, 68 on Saturday and a rather chilly – but clear – 59 on Sunday.
Those conditions will challenge drivers, crew chiefs and fans in Gainesville but could produce some rather interesting competition. There will be a pair of concerts on the grounds, with country music’s Eddie Montgomery of Montgomery Gentry on-stage at 2:30PM on Friday with BoomTown Saints opening. The latter group takes the stage on Saturday at 2:45PM; both concerts are included in fans’ admission.
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