Racing seasons always have their twists and turns. This 2024 one is no different for the Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series. While we had to wait – as usual – until the final race of the 2023 season to uncover most of our champions, it was still touch-and-go in a number of categories.
After all, Doug Kalitta didn’t earn his first-ever NHRA Top Fuel World Championship until the final run on the final day of the 2023 season, competing against Leah Pruett in that last race. He prevailed but it was close! Thus ended 26 years of despair for one of the most successful and competitive drivers in straight-line racing, a guy who can also pull his weight in bullrings and, in fact, any form of motorsport.
Kalitta’s 2024 season is continuing the driver and team’s ascendancy to the top of the Top Fuel mountain. Not only has Air Doug performed nearly flawlessly, but teammate Shawn Langdon is right there with him. There were plenty who scoffed when Connie Kalitta and Chad Head decided to hire Alan Johnson and Brian Husen as co-crew chiefs for Kalitta.
Thinking the duo were “old school” when Torrence Racing’s Bobby Laguna and Richard Hogan were winning championships like they were playing softball, earning four in a row for second-generation racer Steve Torrence, and as Johnson and Husen began understanding the culture of Kalitta Motorsports – which had been using Johnson-designed and built AJPE engines all along – was pure folly. They showed that last year and continue to show they’re on top of things.
Before the start of this 20-race 2024 season, Kalitta’s team announced that Husen would be the primary crew chief for Langdon. He rewarded them immediately by winning the Amalie Motor Oil Gatornationals at Gainesville, FL Raceway, the season starter. Langdon’s team was joined in the Gatornationals Winners Circle by Kalitta’s sole Funny Car squad for J.R. Todd, who earned victory in that class, the first time Kalitta Motorsports has doubled up. Ever!
When Doug Kalitta won his championship at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip last November, his final round opponent was Leah Pruett, racing for her husband’s Tony Stewart Racing nitro team. Despite her final round appearance, she finished third in the final standings and then, less than a month later, announced she’d stand down for the 2024 campaign and allow Tony Stewart to drive her rail as the duo tried to start a family.
Practice makes perfect and once her pregnancy was viable, it was announced to the world, even as her substitute racer continued to learn his newest driving craft, earning round wins and, finally, a first trip to an eliminations final round at Seattle in late July. Anyone who’s ever been in the sport or cared about any type of racing knows Tony Stewart is a wheelman. He showed he could take on the denizens of Top Alcohol Dragster in 2023, his first year racing in a straight line and finished second in that tough class. He hasn’t yet qualified for the Countdown to the Championship, but that’s a no-brainer at Indy this week.
Everyone in Top Fuel has to be making side glances at three-time Top Fuel champ and three-time 2024 event winner Antron Brown, who is looking for his sixth U.S. Nationals win. He owns two trophies in Pro Stock Motorcycle and three in Top Fuel, most recently winning the past two Big Go races. Brown is looking to become the first current dragster driver to win three U.S. Nationals in a row; the last driver to do that is Tony Schumacher, the class’ eight-time champion who has 10 wins at this event.
There were big changes in Funny Car this year, too. When Robert Hight announced he needed to step away from his John Force Racing driver’s seat to meet medical needs, Top Fuel teammate Austin Prock dove right in, winning the pre-season PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton Motorsports Park in Hight’s Chevrolet Camaro SS. Prock, tuned by his father Jimmy and brother Thomas, always wanted to drive in this class and has shown great skill. So much so that he became the No. 1 playoffs seed well before the Countdown final standings will be announced at The Big Go this weekend. Prock, 29, has four national event wins thus for in 2024 and is looking for revenge after a second-round departure in Brainerd after a tardy reaction time scotched another round win.
Matt Hagan earned his fourth Funny Car title at the 2023 season finale, giving Tony Stewart’s team one championship in only its second year of operation. Hagan’s Dickie Venables-led team came to TSR Nitro intact, which made this title not nearly as much of a surprise than it should have been. Hagan’s equipment and personnel are familiar and they know how to accomplish quick times, speeds and finishes together. It shows.
Before this season’s halfway point, there was an abrupt change in the Flopper ranks when 16-time champion and 157-race winner John Force had a horrific accident in Richmond, VA that sent him to hospital with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Force has survived plenty of previous incidents in his long career and, thankfully, he’s surviving this one as well. After only 15 days he was released and returned to the western part of the country for rehab; he’s now at home in Yorba Linda and recovering from his accident.
NHRA rules definitely work in Force’s favor, in that his team was able to designate another driver to race on his behalf for eight races; John Force Racing tabbed 33-race winner and 2012 champion in this class, Jack Beckman, to take over the reins of the GOAT’s Funny Car, which he did in Brainerd and will continue through the balance of the season.
For a guy who hasn’t driven an 11,000-horsepower car in anger since 2020 – when he won the U.S. Nationals – it’s quite a challenge, but one that Beckman appears ready to take on. This writer expects him to win – at least once – before he goes back to repairing elevators, something Beckman did before joining this tour in 2006 as a full-time Don Schumacher Racing Funny Car driver. At Brainerd, Beckman won his first round bout but fell to eventual race winner Blake Alexander, driving Jim Head’s Ford Mustang in a very tight contest. Will he be successful again in Indy? We’ll have to wait and see.
One of the most successful Funny Car racers at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park (IRP) is three-time champ Ron Capps, who has won this event the past two years – as has fellow team owner Antron Brown in Top Fuel. Like Brown a three-time titleholder in his chosen class, Capps considers this race one of his “home” events as his team is located just a couple of miles from the track – as are many in the class. Last year Capps sported the iconic Hot Wheels livery once used by the legendary Don “The Snake” Prudhomme; his tribute car went to the Winners Circle on Monday but failed to double-up in Sunday’s Pep Boys Funny Car All-Star Shootout. That was likely the sole disappointment Capps – and Prudhomme – had on the week. This year’s Indy Capps entry again salutes Prudhomme, this time with a U.S. Army wrap that memorializes Snake’s 1970s Monza.
In the nitro classes, one thing should ring through for the competitors; it’s likely a driver who is affiliated with event sponsor Toyota will likely end up in the Winner’s Circle. There are nine drivers that are part of the current Toyota family and nearly all of them have had success this season, as the marque’s dragster teammates have claimed 13 of 14 Wally winner’s trophies dating back to Pomona’s final round.
Toyota Top Fuel racers Doug Kalitta, Shawn Langdon, Justin Ashley, Steve Torrence and Antron Brown hold first through fifth places coming into The Big Go, while Billy Torrence is ninth in class. In Funny Car,Toyota’s GR Supra has proven to be a very successful flopper, as J.R. Todd (fourth) and Ron Capps (fifth) lead the Toyota camp and Alexis DeJoria tries to work her Toyota GR Supra back into the game. DeJoria is a former Big Go champ, having won this race in 2014.
Quite often in drag racing, the successful “regular season” driver doesn’t always take those wins through to Pomona’s season finale, as we witnessed with Justin Ashley’s Top Fuel swan dive in 2023. He led through Indy and then failed to convert, allowing Doug Kalitta to earn his first Top Fuel championship. Will Dallas Glenn, who’s been the cream of the crop in Pro Stock throughout the regular season, be able to continue his success through The Big Go and the Countdown?
The KB Titan Racer had an excellent rookie season but last year’s campaign saw him lacking the success needed to gain a title. With a successful operation backing his play and many teammates to rely on, including five-time champ – and the most successful Pro Stock racer in the class’ history – Greg Anderson by his side, Glenn has someone with massive experience who should be able to help keep him steady. That is, unless Anderson’s car is better than his. Then it’s anyone’s guess.
While Elite Motorsports’ Erica Enders, the six-time and reigning champion has had a good 2024 season, she hasn’t been able to convert to as many wins as she’d like and is third behind the KB Titan duo. Fortunes change rapidly in racing, and Enders knows how to use any advantage she can get to make it to the Winner’s Circle.
Fully six drivers have qualified for the Countdown already, starting with the KB Titan Racing duo, Glenn and Anderson, and followed by four Elite Motorsports racers: Enders, Aaron Stanfield, Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Troy Coughlin Jr. Pro Stock is always a crapshoot, and especially at The Big Go, where there’s so much on the line. Everyone’s been testing since Brainerd and no one really no one has an advantage. Even the big shoes have to qualify in a crowded field and get it done.
Same theory applies to Pro Stock Motorcycle, which hasn’t been seen since Sonoma. The class has 15, rather than the 20 races assigned to the two nitro classes and Pro Stock cars. Still, there have been some unusual results for the two-wheel set, which is dealing with added weight for nearly all competitors. Yes, Gaige Herrera and his Vance & Hines Motorsports’ Suzuki Hayabusa3 are leading the standings, but it hasn’t been the runaway Herrera experienced in his first full year of PSM competition. He’s actually lost a race or two, allowing second-place Matt Smith the opportunity to catch up a bit on his Buell, lagging by 226 points.
With points-and-a-half available, and with six riders already in the Countdown – Herrera, Smith, John Hall (Matt Smith Racing Buell), Richard Gadson (V&H Suzuki Hayabusa3), Chase Van Sant, a first-time winner on his WAR Suzuki, and Angie Smith’s Buell already in the Countdown, things could swing mightily from this race to the six contests in the Countdown that starts in mid-September at Maple Grove Raceway outside Reading, PA. Seventh through tenth places are held by Jianna Evaristo (MSR Buell), Hector Arana Jr.’s Buell, Steve Johnson’s Suzuki and the Suzuki of Chris Bostick, whose improvement this year is monumental in scope.
As racers settle into the 267-acre Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, weather is a prime concern, just as competition is, starting for the professional ranks late Friday afternoon. There’s been forecasts of showers and scattered thunderstorms, but locals know any form of moisture is predicated on what’s happening in Terre Haute, directly west. If it’s raining there, most likely it’s headed directly east. Many years working the Indianapolis 500 teaches folks what to expect, weather-wise!
So get ready for motoring mayhem in the midwest, with enough scenarios to make this yet another blockbuster weekend of racing. For the 70th time, the Toyota U.S. Nationals take over in Indianapolis and all is right with the world.
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