Heat was on everyone’s mind during the fifth annual American Rebel Light Virginia NHRA Nationals, making the two-day race meeting even more challenging than a standard race weekend. There was also the aspect of a return to Virginia Motorsports Park, site of 16-time NHRA Funny Car champion John Force’s near-deadly accident at this race in 2024.
Force was on-site this year and grateful to all the fans who came to pay tribute to his return after a first-round accident that halted the 157-time race winner’s surge towards a prospective 17th national title. Force stood on the starting line throughout the two days, watching as daughter Brittany Force earned the No. 1 qualifier mark, as his personal car’s substitute driver, Jack Beckman did the same.
Brittany Force, who became the first dragster driver over 340mph – just as teammate Austin Prock did the same last year after earning his first Funny Car title – didn’t make it out of the first round against points leader Tony Stewart. It was an all-John Force Racing final round in Funny Car, with Prock earning a repeat victory as he drove around his teammate after the 330-foot mark when they were even up.
Prock, the No. 2 qualifier to Beckman used his Chevrolet SS to drive past the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat of Cruz Pedregon, was awarded the second round victory when opponent Bob Tasca III’s Ford Mustang clutched the center line, then defeated Epping winner J.R. Todd’s Toyota GR Supra to meet Beckman in the final round. Prock’s margin of victory over Beckman was a scant 0.0153 seconds.
The heat of these two days was difficult for every team on-site. It affected everyone’s ability to work between rounds and affected the mechanical setups required to make it down both the 1,000-foot and 1,320-foot dragstrip. At the end of the day, Prock was joined in the Winners Circle by 2025 three-time Top Fuel victor Shawn Langdon of Kalitta Motorsports and by Gaige Herrera’s Vance and Hines Motorsports’ Suzuki Hayabusa3 in Pro Stock Motorcycle.
None of these three racers aced Saturday’s Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, with those wins going to Bristol Top Fuel winner Steve Torrence (over Langdon), first-time winner Daniel Wilkerson’s Ford Mustang defeating Bristol winner Ron Capps’ Toyota GR Supra and rookie Brayden Davis defeating Bristol winner and Vance and Hines Motorsports teammate Richard Gadson. This trio gets extra money and Countdown points – as well as bragging rights for a week – for their efforts.
Earning his 15th career victory, Prock acknowledged his team owner and leader in the Winners Circle and pretty much summed up how everyone in the NHRA pits felt about this weekend and the vertical return of John Force to the Richmond racetrack. “Getting to win last year, that was huge and being able to take the Wally to John as a team, that’s what we wanted to do again today,” Prock said. “I’m happy that we could go back-to-back and get the job done for him.
“He does so much for me,” Prock continued, “and he’s given me an opportunity in a lifetime to live my dream, so to win for him again today and be able to celebrate his health and have him back out at the racetrack, doing good and getting better every day, means a lot for our team and all our partners and even NHRA. This sport is not the same without John Force. We’re very blessed to have him at the racetrack.” With his final round result, Beckman moved back to No. 2 in the standings, the same spot John Force held before his injury.
Prock leaves Richmond and heads for next week’s halfway point of the season with a 60-point advantage on teammate Beckman. Paul Lee (Dodge), Ron Capps (Toyota), Matt Hagan (Dodge), J.R. Todd (Toyota), Daniel Wilkerson and Chad Green (both driving Mustangs), Alexis DeJoria (Dodge) and Bob Tasca III complete the top 10 in the Funny Car class.
The heat and humidity in Richmond kept nitro speeds down for the weekend. And it might have changed the competition a bit with crew chiefs straining to find the right combination that would allow them to tackle the race track without overpowering it. Langdon, who was runner-up to Kalitta Motorsports teammate Doug Kalitta at the 2024 edition of this race, earned his 22nd career victory on this smoldering afternoon. Crew chief Brian Husen helped the Californian work his way past Cameron Ferre, Dan Mercier and fouling points leader Tony Stewart in the semifinal round before getting a clean run against Justin Ashley. Langdon was the No. 5 qualifier.
It’s been 12 years since Langdon won his first Top Fuel title. Last year he made seven final rounds but only won twice. This year he’s the first dragster driver to bring home three Wally trophies before the halfway mark in this 20-race campaign. “This team’s been ready for a day like this for a long time,” he said. “It’s not easy running guys like Tony (Stewart) in the semifinals and Justin (Ashley) in the final. I could see Justin poking out a little bit when he was starting to drive away, and then something happened. He disappeared and I saw the win light. Obviously that’s a good thing on Sunday!”
Langdon reminded that the weather played a huge part in every aspect of this race meeting. “Today was a matter of surviving the heat and surviving the track. [Virginia Motorsports Park] is a beautiful facility with the smoothest track we go to on tour – it’s just the hot temperatures that make it a little tricky. You have to navigate that, and fortunately we did that four times today.” Husen acknowledged that this event was “a survival weekend for us. We just tried not to smoke the tires and do the best we can. To be honest, we just kind of got lucky and made the right decisions. We tried not to push too hard and it worked out for us!”
While Tony Stewart continues to lead Top Fuel, he’s got a slight 31-point advantage on Shawn Langdon as the 10th race of the 20-contest campaign takes place next week. They’re followed by Justin Ashley, Doug Kalitta, Antron Brown, Brittany Force, Steve Torrence, Clay Millican, Josh Hart and Shawn Reed. Brown, Force, Hart and Reed were packing up after the first round, while Millican was gone after two runs on Sunday.
Gaige Herrera continues to be class of the field in Pro Stock Motorcycle, much as he has on race days for the past two-plus seasons. While he didn’t earn the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge on Saturday and didn’t earn the No.1 qualifier seed, it’s apparent that racing is what Herrera does best. And he never seems to lose his cool when things don’t go his way. The Californian just picks himself up and goes for the next one. And on Sunday he beat one of the best Buell motorcycles on the grounds, that of Angie Smith, who beat her husband Matt, the six-time class champion, in the quarterfinals, then disposed of Herrera’s regular teammate Richard Gadson, the Bristol victor.
In three rounds leading to the finals, Herrera put Ron Tornow’s Buell back on the trailer, then took out Steve Johnson’s Suzuki to meet his part-time new teammate Brayden Davis, who won’t exit his teen years until early December. The multi-time PDRA champ who came up through the Jr. Dragster ranks, Davis joined the Pro Stock Motorcycle class at the season-opening Gatornationals this March, racing a WAR Suzuki. He joined Vance and Hines Motorsports with a two-race deal and promptly earned the No 1 position at both Bristol and Richmond, taking the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge in his second race with the team. Will he be back a fourth time?
There was another trailblazing Pro Stock Motorcycle rider at Richmond, as Dystany Spurlock made her series debut, only the second Black woman – after Peggy Llewellyn – to race in NHRA’s prime two-wheel class. She’s been working towards this debut for four years and, in her first appearance as teammate to part-timer (at least this year) Hector Arana Jr., made the field of 16 on her Buell and raced well against eventual runner-up Angie Smith, posting 6.990/192.17 to Smith’s 6.853/196.30 in the first round.
There’s no rest for these three NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series classes: from Richmond they go to Norwalk, OH and the vaunted halfway race of the season, the 19th Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals at Summit Motorsports Park, where they’ll be joined by Pro Stock for a full house contest.
Late Monday afternoon, it was announced that Langdon’s final-round run was disqualified, after a post-race safety inspection found bolts missing on the bell housing inspection cover once his run was completed. “Some of the bolts rattled loose during the run and fell into the belly pan,” explained Chad Head, Team Kalitta general manager. “The bolts were in place before the run, but some were not in place after, because they came loose and fell into the belly pan. That’s on us,” he said.
“We respect NHRA as the sanctioning body and understand that safety is always the most important thing. We certainly apologize to our corporate partners, the race fans and our competitors. We did not win yesterday’s race, but we’re moving on and are now focused on the next race. On behalf of our entire organization, this statement will be the only Kalitta Motorsports moment on this issue.”
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