The testing is over, the publicity photos shot, the wraps applied to NHRA’s Camping World Drag Racing Series’ Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock bodies and the pits are filling with 17 dragster competitors, 20 floppers and 20 door-slammer cars, in addition to nine categories of Lucas Oil Sportsman racers.
It’s the Lucas Oil Winternationals presented by protecttheharvest.com on tap this weekend at historic Auto Club Raceway in Pomona, as NHRA begins its 71st season of drag racing with enough changes in teams and personnel to make most any fan sit up and take notice.
Looking over the Top Fuel entry list, there are a few entries that catch the eye. While there are no rookies entered in the class for this first of 22 races in 2022, it’s interesting to see what equipment each team is using. For instance, there are three MLR chassis for four-time and reigning champion Steve Torrence, last year’s rookie sensation Josh Hart and for Mike Salinas, who has the talented Rob Flynn as his crew chief in 2022.
Former NHRA Rookie of the Year standouts Brittany Force and teammate Austin Prock are using Force and American chassis, respectively, with the latter likely a Force-built front and rear. Don Schumacher Racing’s manufacturing arm has Justin Ashley, Antron Brown, Clay Millican, Tony Schumacher, Leah Pruett and Doug Foley riding with its chassis, while both Doug Kalitta and Shawn Langdon are running team-built Kalitta chassis. There are two McKinney chassis for Buddy Hull and Ron August Jr., while James Maroney has a Hadman chassis and Scott Farley’s chassis is simply noted as a “Dragster.”
Nearly all of the top competitors in Camping World competition, absent Pro Stock Motorcycle, which doesn’t race at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, gathered at the Phoenix-adjacent site of NHRA’s second pro race of the year, in order to participate in PRO Nitro Spring Training last weekend. With team adjustments taking place throughout the pits it was important for many to see just how well their newly-formulated squads worked in a real-world environment.
Some were looking for consistent runs down the drag strip, others needed to find out if equipment swaps, crew re-engagements or overall team changes were working sufficiently to make certain each driver and their team starts the season with the kind of results that can add momentum to the challenge of earning a championship.
The biggest story in Top Fuel is that, once again, Steve Torrence has the target on his back as a four-time consecutive titleholder. To say that former champs Brittany Force and Antron Brown would like nothing more than to knock off the Texan would be simplistic. Force has spent the past three months plotting revenge, while Brown and Leah Pruett have changed teams, Brown starting AB Motorsports and Pruett gone to husband Tony Stewart’s eponymous squad, along with her former DSR Funny Car teammate Matt Hagan. Kalitta and Langdon now have the talents of Alan Johnson at their disposal, as team owner Connie Kalitta opened his wallet wide to make his team more competitive.
We mark the return of Tony Schumacher to a single-car Don Schumacher Racing, with Todd Okuhara turning the knobs; he’s been working with Leah Pruett until this time. Schumacher has won the Winternationals twice and is a four-time No. 1 qualifier at the Pomona track in this midwinter classic. Overall, the 85-national event-winner kicks off his first full season since 2018 looking for a ninth Top Fuel championship in his orange, blue and white dragster, which would give his father’s team 20 total championships in NHRA competition.
NHRA’s 2019 rookie of the year, Austin Prock is back again as a driver for John Force Racing, giving that squad two full-time Top Fuel and a brace of Funny Car entries for the full year. Prock used his time out of the cockpit learning more about the team, how it works, how the cars perform and, of course, staying in shape by being a back-up guy for father Jimmy Prock’s driver, Robert Hight. To say that he missed driving is akin to stating he misses cooking for family and friends, an activity at which the younger Prock is quite proficient!
This year the 2021 Gainesville Top Fuel winner, Josh Hart is planning a full-season run with R+L Carriers adorning the green-black-and-white wrap of his Morgan Lucas Racing dragster. Ron Douglas continues as his crew chief. Clay Millican is back with Mike Kloeber at Stringer Performance and has Mainline Sales back for a fourth year as one of the team’s many supporters, including long-time partner PartsPlus. Buddy Hull returns for a second year, and James Maroney brings his American Flowtech rail back to Pomona. Ron August Jr. and Scott Farley complete the Top Fuel field.
For the past few years, Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) has been the go-to team for Dodge//SRT and Mopar fans, but now that it’s a one-car, Top Fuel squad, that status belongs to Tony Stewart Racing, the new team formed by the three-time NASCAR champion and former USAC/INDYCAR titleholder. Leah Pruett in Top Fuel and Matt “Hulk” Hagan for Funny Car are sporting new Dodge Power Brokers and Direct Connection primary branding on their 2022 contenders.
A three-time NHRA Funny Car world champion, Hagan is looking for a seventh Wally winner’s trophy on the Pomona track while Pruett is looking for defend her Winternationals victory last July. In Funny Car, Hagan will be challenged by at least two other Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat racers: reigning 2021 champion Ron Capps and fellow two-time titleholder Cruz Pedregon. This year marks Capps’ 28th season of racing but his first as an owner/driver, a switch the Californian announced at December’s PRI show. While Capps won’t have a teammate as he did last year with Hagan, he does have the skills of crew chiefs Dean “Guido” Antonelli and John Medlen.
Hagan’s former DSR team moved to his Tony Stewart Racing headquarters along with their driver, led by Dickie Venables. Pedregon’s late-season surge was orchestrated by crew chief John Collins, another ex-DSR tuner, who continues with the Cruzer this year. Jim Dunn Racing’s Jim Campbell is also in a Dodge Charger, while there’s a small platoon of Ford Mustang racers, including regular championship contender Tim Wilkerson, Terry Haddock, Chad Green, Gary Densham and Tony Jurado.
Toyota has two superb racers driving its new Supra GR Funny Car. Alexis DeJoria’s late 2021 exploits have her pumped for the season at hand. Her DC Motorsports team managed its way to the semifinals – or beyond – at eight of the 20 races contested in 2021, but her Countdown to the Championship performance, which included a victory, a runner-up result and two No. 1 qualifier awards at the final three races of the year, showed this team has gelled since the driver returned from a two-year hiatus.
In 2022, 2018 Funny Car champion J.R. Todd celebrates 15 years with primary sponsor DHL as he brings the new Supra GR to the water box. While the 2021 season opener wasn’t held at its traditional Pomona track, Todd did pick up the trophy for a pedal fest at Gainesville; he was runner-up at the July Winternationals, where he succumbed in the final round to eventual champion Ron Capps. Todd’s team had some personnel changes over the winter, so it’ll be interesting to see if everyone’s on the same page. In addition to DeJoria and Todd, Toyota cars are being campaigned by Jeff Diehl and Alex Miladinovich, both of whom race Camry models.
Then there’s John Force Racing, its 16-time championship-winning owner John Force and his son-in-law Robert Hight, both of them racing 2022 Chevrolet Camaro SS floppers. Both drivers are returning with their Funny Car teams intact and both had good results in the PRO Nitro Spring Training test sessions last Thursday through Saturday. After several shut-off passes on Thursday, Force and his Danny Hood-led squad produced four full runs in the 3.8-second neighborhood. Hight secured a Jimmy Prock-tuned 3.8 right out of the box and the team then worked on different programs to prepare for the season starter.
In Pro Stock, five-time champion Greg Anderson locked in his 99th class victory at the season closer in Pomona last November and he’s hungry to place his Chevy Camaro in the winner’s circle again this week, which would give him breathing room over some of his younger competitors who have a lot more years of racing ahead of them than Anderson does. With 19 challengers on the grounds, it won’t be easy but that four-letter-word isn’t one in Anderson’s vocabulary.
Anderson has all the usual characters looking to knock him off in their own Camaro race cars (and some are his teammates): Erica Enders, 2021 Rookie of the Year Dallas Glenn, Kyle Koretsky, Troy Coughlin Jr., Chris and Mason McGaha, Matt Hartford, rookie Camrie Caruso, returnee Alex Laughlin, Deric Kramer, Bo Butner, Aaron Stanfield, Steve Graham, and John Cerbone
It might have been easier to note the non Camaro Pro Stock cars, but there are a few entered for this race, including the lone Dodge Dart of Alan Prusiensky, and the Mexican Cuadra family of Fernando, Fernando Jr and Cristian, all of whom are racing Ford Mustang cars again this year.
Laughlin is doing a bit of Pro Stock racing and a bit of Top Fuel competition in 2022; he’s starting the year in a doorslammer entry but will be in a Top Fuel car throughout the year, prepped by Scott Palmer. Camrie Caruso, making her professional debut in the class this year, has PowerBuilt Tools along for the early-season ride as she becomes only the second woman in this highly-competitive class. The 23-yeaer-old North Carolina-born driver has worked her way through sportsman categories to make her debut at Pomona. She has the support of esteemed former driver and crew chief Jim Yates helping her along.
This weekend’s schedule at Pomona includes a single, late afternoon Friday qualifying session and two more on Saturday, before racing resumes on Sunday morning at 11AM PT. It’s going to be one of those Chamber of Commerce weather weekends with temperatures edging up to 75 degrees on both Friday and Saturday under clear skies, with mostly sunny conditions on Sunday and a currently-forecast temp of 68. These conditions should foretell some excellent racing for the Camping World combatants and for their Lucas Oil Sportsman contingent, as NHRA’s 71st season gets underway.
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