![\"NHRA,](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/vmp.jpg\")
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The NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series marks a return to Virginia Motorsports Park (VMP), outside Richmond, on June 8-10, 2018, enabling the series to produce the 24-race season it had expected to conduct.<\/p>\n
When Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ announced a shut-down on the eve of NHRA\u2019s 49th race at the venue, NHRA had several offers to make up the date, preferring to work with new ownership at VMP, which last hosted NHRA drag racers in 2009. New owner Tommy Franklin, together with his family recently purchased the venue and, along with general manager Allen Carpenter and his team, are prepping the track and facility to completely refurbish the track surface for the 11,000-horsepower nitro classes.<\/p>\n
Teams are prepping their lineups for this weekend\u2019s pre-season testing at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park outside Phoenix, Ariz., site of the series\u2019 second official race. The combination of testing and then continuing to Pomona to start the season gives teams good preparation – and an opportunity to escape the winter weather prevalent in team locales like Brownsburg, Ind. and Ypsilanti, Mich.<\/p>\n
Reigning Top Fuel and Funny Car champions John Force Racing (JFR), which earned its 19th and 20th overall titles in November at Pomona\u2019s Auto Club Raceway, have made some integral changes to its team lineups. While 2017 Top Fuel champion Brittany Force continues with crew chief Brian Husen, Ronnie Thompson joins this crew as assistant; Alan Johnson continues as the team\u2019s consultant.<\/p>\n
Funny Car champ Robert Hight continues with crew chief Jimmy Prock and assistant Chris Cunningham, while Brian Corradi happily returns to his Funny Car roots in joining Daniel Hood as co-crew chiefs for Courtney Force\u2019s Funny Car. The team\u2019s patriarch, 16-time Funny Car titleholder John Force will hand the tuning duties to Jon Shaffer and Jason McCulloch this year.<\/p>\n
Don Schumacher Racing (DSR), fielding three Top Fuel and four Funny Car entries again in 2018, has announced rising star Leah Pritchett to the team\u2019s US. Army lineup, joining eight-time NHRA Top Fuel champ Tony Schumacher and three-time titleholder Antron Brown. She\u2019s hoping all the success will rub off for her Mopar\/U.S. Army dragster team. Schumacher has worn Army colors since September of 2000.<\/p>\n
Pritchett start the 2017 in a big way, winning the first two races of the year and ending up with four event titles in six final-round appearances. \u201cThis is a tremendous opportunity for us, to represent the soldiers who serve and enable us to do what we love. Tony and Antron have had an insurmountable impact on my life; I am humbled and honored to join them in representing the U.S. Army,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kalitta Motorsports just announced an extension of their association with WIX Filters, as both J.R. Todd and Shawn Langdon\u2019s Funny Car entries will receive major associate branding on both cars, as the filter manufacturer continues as official filters for Team Kalitta. The company also has associate branding on Richie Crampton and Doug Kalitta\u2019s Top Fuel dragsters.<\/p>\n
With testing commencing later this week, the teams are prepping for their Lucas Oil Winternationals season-starter Feb 8-11 on Auto Club Raceway at Pomona\u2019s dragstrip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the NHRA race season draws closer, both the sanctioning body and its teams have news to share. <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":48708,"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":[3465,3470,3399],"tags":[5614,41,7,5773],"class_list":["post-48707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-virginia-motorsports-park"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/vmp-e1517426830708.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-cFB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48707","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=48707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48709,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48707\/revisions\/48709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}