{"id":60028,"date":"2019-02-25T09:13:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T17:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=60028"},"modified":"2019-02-25T09:13:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T17:13:19","slug":"torrence-hagan-and-coughlin-show-legendary-speed-at-arizona-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/torrence-hagan-and-coughlin-show-legendary-speed-at-arizona-nationals\/","title":{"rendered":"Torrence, Hagan and Coughlin Show Legendary Speed at Arizona Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Torrence,
Image courtesy NHRA Media<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second race of the NHRA season ignited a new spark in three legendary drivers that heated up a cool weekend in the desert outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Despite his son taking the victory in last year\u2019s Magic Dry Organic Absorbent NHRA Arizona Nationals, Top Fuel legend Billy Torrence collected his second career NHRA Top Fuel trophy after defeating Leah Pritchett in Sunday\u2019s final round. Don Schumacher Racing driver Matt Hagan also scored his third Funny Car victory at this event in the last five years after taking down 2018 NHRA Funny Car world champion J.R. Todd in the final round. Racing in his 1,000th round of Pro Stock competition, six-time NHRA world champion Jeg Coughlin, Jr. also collected his fourth Magic Dry Organic Absorbent NHRA Arizona Nationals win after taking down Matt Hartford in Sunday\u2019s Pro Stock final round.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Top Fuel<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Torrence,<\/p>\n

Despite struggling in this weekend\u2019s qualifying races, Torrence Racing power rained down on the patriarch of the family on Sunday when he defeated Terry Totten, Mike Salinas, and Jordan Vandergriff before going head to head with former Girl on Fire<\/a> Leah Pritchett in Sunday\u2019s final round. Despite Pritchett putting up one heck of a fight throughout the weekend at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, smoking her tires in the final round ended this streak and gave Billy Torrence a chance to wear the latest Top Fuel crown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis victory was wonderful for both me and my team,\u201d said Torrence. \u201cAlthough I would have loved to race against my son in Sunday\u2019s final round, I am grateful to have this opportunity and can\u2019t thank he and his Torrence Racing team enough for stepping up to help us obtain this unforgettable victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks to this victory, Torrence now sits on top of the Top Fuel point standings going into the upcoming Gatornationals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Funny Car<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Torrence,<\/p>\n

Currently on pace to continue his every-other-year dominance of the Funny Car Series, 2015 and 2017 event champ Matt Hagan raced into Sunday\u2019s final round following victories over Phil Burkhart Jr., Shawn Langdon and Bob Tasca III. Hagan, whose Dickie Venables-tuned Sandvik Coromant Dodge Charger Hellcat was the only Funny Car to make it down a cool track during Friday night\u2019s qualifying session, followed off his hot streak by finally overcoming a winless streak against his nemesis when J.R. Todd\u2019s DHL Toyota backfired just off the line, triggering the safety system, during Sunday\u2019s final round.<\/p>\n

This misfire gave Hagan the chance to race to his first Funny Car victory of the 2019 season with an astounding 3.890-second pass in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n

\u201cHats off to Dickie Venables; the guy won the race for us, that\u2019s for sure. He had a racecar underneath me that was going down the racetrack every lap, and that gave me a lot of confidence,\u201d said Hagan. \u201cThis is our first win with the new Hellcat body, and it is nice to get it into the winner\u2019s circle and show a serious return for this investment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite this impressive win, Hagan will have to keep up the pace to take down current Funny Car points leader Robert Hight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pro Stock<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Torrence,<\/p>\n

Despite it being 10 years since Jeg Coughlin Jr. won the Magic Dry Organic Absorbent NHRA Arizona Nationals, the Pro Stock legend found a way to bounce back at this event after winning for the 45th time in 100 career matchups with rival Greg Anderson in Sunday\u2019s first round and taking this to wins over Alex Laughlin and Erica Enders to reach Sunday\u2019s final, the 108th of his Pro Stock career, against Matt Hartford.<\/p>\n

Following Hartford\u2019s leaving the start line 024-second too soon, which triggered a foul start and gave Coughlin Jr. a chance to collect his 62nd Pro Stock Wally and his 81st victory in his long NHRA career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is so good to win here again,\u201d said Coughlin. \u201cI have had a lot of great memories here, but none since 2009. We are looking forward to debuting our new Rick Jones car in Gainesville and it was good to send this one off with another win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite this win, Coughlin has a long road ahead to take over the Pro Stock points title.<\/p>\n

The 2019 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season continues with the 50th Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals (March 14-17) at Gainsville Raceway. Stay tuned to RacingJunk.com<\/a> for all your NHRA coverage!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second race of the NHRA season ignited a new spark in three legendary drivers that heated up a cool weekend in the desert outside of Phoenix, Arizona.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":60029,"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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5819,3476,2,1619,877,128,41,7],"class_list":["post-60028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-arizona-nationals","tag-billy-torrence","tag-drag-racing","tag-ellen-richardson","tag-jeg-coughlin-jr","tag-matt-hagan","tag-news","tag-nhra"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/ArizonaWinnersCircle.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-fCc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60028","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\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60033,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60028\/revisions\/60033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}