{"id":101395,"date":"2025-06-24T09:27:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T16:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=101395"},"modified":"2025-06-24T09:36:47","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T16:36:47","slug":"j-r-gray-brings-his-heat-to-win-virginia-congruity-pro-mod-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/j-r-gray-brings-his-heat-to-win-virginia-congruity-pro-mod-race\/","title":{"rendered":"J.R. Gray brings his heat to win Virginia Congruity Pro Mod race"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
J.R. Gray\u2019s third win in the last four races cemented his lead going into Pro Mod\u2019s Road to the Championship – NHRA photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With half the number of races on their 2025 schedule compared to NHRA\u2019s Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, the Congruity Pro Mod Drag Racing Series marched towards its regular season close this weekend with the fifth annual American Rebel Light Virginia NHRA Nationals. Through its first five contests of the 2025 season, Pro Mod has had two dominating drivers out of the gate: J.R. Gray and Mike Stavrinos. This duo combined to secure four victories in five races.<\/p>\n

It was Gray who outlasted his 21-car competition in the sixth of ten contests on the Pro Mod docket, earning his third win in the past four races. Driving his Al-Anabi Performance Camaro, Gray defeated Dmitry Samorukov in the final, as the latter driver lost control just after the hit and smacked the left wall, then crossed the centerline and hit the right wall before coming to a stop.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Samorukov\u2019s adventure didn\u2019t dim Gray\u2019s pleasure in claiming the win and the top seed in this class\u2019 final four races as they commence their Road to the Championship. Competing in his fourth consecutive final round, Gray is having a true signature season in Pro Mod. After qualifying second, Gray defeated Doug Winters, Derek Menholt and Sidnei Frigo to reach the final round.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Gray\u2019s Camaro has performed at all six races – NHRA photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI just believe everybody has to catch up. We\u2019re putting time in day in and day out,\u201d he explained, \u201cand there\u2019s always somebody working on these cars. This is four finals in a row for me and we\u2019ve been in every final round as a team this year. We\u2019re really ready,\u201d Gray said after claiming his Wally trophy.<\/p>\n

Before his disastrous final round, Samorukov, who exited his Corvette on his own and was quickly released by NHRA\u2019s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Surface after being examined, was having a landmark weekend at Virginia Motorsports Park. He qualified with the No. 1 seed (5.765\/249.39). Samorukov beat former world champions Mike Castellana and Mike Janis, along with defeating Stan Shelton to reach the final round for the second time in his career.<\/p>\n

The Pro Mod season began at Gainesville, followed by Phoenix, the first Charlotte Four-Wide race, Chicago, Bristol and ended the \u201cregular\u201d season at Richmond. The Road to the Championship for this class includes the final four races of the season, the U.S. Nationals at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, the second Charlotte Four-Wide race, World Wide Technology Raceway and closes, as is customary, on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

Accenting his superior regular season, JR Gray takes the lead into the four-race sprint, followed by Mike Stavrinos (Camaro), Rickie Smith\u2019s Ford Mustang, Billy Banaka in a Camaro, Mason Wright\u2019s Camaro, Sidnei Frigo (Camaro), with a tie for seventh place between Alex Laughlin and Samorukov, with Stan Shelton (Mustang) and Mike Janis\u2019 Mustang rounding out the top ten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With half the number of races on their 2025 schedule compared to NHRA\u2019s Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, the Congruity Pro Mod Drag Racing Series marched towards its regular season close this weekend with the fifth annual American Rebel Light Virginia NHRA Nationals.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":101396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029],"tags":[12145,10397,12146,7,12144],"class_list":["post-101395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","tag-chevolet-camaro","tag-congruity-pro-mod-drag-racing-series","tag-j-r-gray","tag-nhra","tag-virginia-motosports-park"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/J.R.-Gray-Virginia-action-min-e1750782446204.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-qnp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101400,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101395\/revisions\/101400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}