{"id":92065,"date":"2023-08-14T15:47:27","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T22:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=92065"},"modified":"2023-08-15T10:36:36","modified_gmt":"2023-08-15T17:36:36","slug":"ashley-tasca-iii-enders-earn-final-topeka-nhra-victories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/ashley-tasca-iii-enders-earn-final-topeka-nhra-victories\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashley, Tasca III, Enders Earn Final Topeka NHRA victories"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Enders, Tasca III, Ashley celebrate their late-night Topeka NHRA wins – NHRA photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took a long day to finally close the door on Heartland Motorsports Park, where the NHRA\u2019s Camping World Drag Racing Series was making its 34th and final appearance at the Topeka, Kansas facility that\u2019s dealing with excessive taxation, according to its management. It wasn\u2019t a massive oil down that caused the final day of eliminations for the Menards NHRA Nationals presented by PetArmor to seem endless; rather, it was a pack of storm cells in the middle of the country that chose to hang out where NHRA intended to race.<\/p>\n

NHRA\u2019s Safety Safari would have none of that, and while the 11AM CT start to final eliminations was pushed back to 1:30PM, all four rounds of eliminations were held and winners were crowned in Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock, as well as a multitude of Lucas Oil Sportsman classes. Justin Ashley picked up his sixth Top Fuel Wally, Bob Tasca III, driving a Ford Mustang collected his first Funny Car win of the season and Erica Enders beat fellow five-time Pro Stock champion Greg Anderson in the nighttime final rounds for her second win of the year.<\/p>\n

Teams and drivers had an easier time on Saturday, when qualifying went pretty much as scheduled and NHRA crowned its latest Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge winners. Four-time consecutive Top Fuel champion Steve Torrence won the bonus race for the third straight time, handing Justin Ashley his first final round defeat after besting Antron Brown. The Funny Car bonus race went to Tony Stewart Racing\u2019s Matt Hagan, driving his Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat to victories over J.R. Todd\u2019s Kalitta Motorsports Toyota GR Supra in the semifinal round and Chad Green\u2019s Ford Mustang in the finals. Judd Glenn took his KB Titan Racing Chevrolet Camaro to its first win in the Mission bonus race, knocking out both teammate Camrie Caruso and five-time champ Enders.<\/p>\n

Top Saturday qualifiers for the Topeka event were Torrence in Top Fuel, Robert Hight\u2019s John Force Racing Chevrolet Camaro SS and Dallas Glenn\u2019s KB Titan Racing Camaro. Hight\u2019s No. 1 was his 80th top qualifying achievement, with a lap on Friday night at 3.948 seconds at 321.19 mph. In earning his 80th No. 1 Hight quipped, \u201cIt just shows I\u2019ve been doing it a long time!\u201d<\/p>\n

Torrence, winner of the same day\u2019s Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, earned his first No. 1 of the season in the 13th of 21 total races for the year. Torrence\u2019s Friday run of 3.764-sec at 326.24mph gave the Texan his 35th career top spot. When the conditions on Saturday became cloudy and cool, \u201cConsistency wins races and championships and that, along with being quick is what we pride ourselves in. We\u2019re going to do the best we can to keep this up,\u201d Torrence said.<\/p>\n

Glenn\u2019s two strong Saturday runs gave him his second No. 1 of the season, beating teammate Greg Anderson to the top spot. \u201cAs a driver, you cannot make any mistakes,\u201d Glenn emphasized. \u201cIf you miss one shift, you can fall back four or five spots\u2026 it\u2019s just that easy.\u201d Ever the prognosticator, Glenn noted on Saturday night that the field could expect \u201ca lot of different weather rolling in for tomorrow, so that\u2019s going to throw an extra variable into the mix.\u201d<\/p>\n

As often occurs, none of the No. 1 qualifiers traded their yellow hats for blue winner\u2019s chapeaux. Rather, it was Ashley, Tasca III and Enders who were the cream of the crop after the longest day of this race meeting ended in darkness.<\/p>\n

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Justin Ashley now has six Top Fuel wins on the season – NHRA photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The win for Ashley was extra special, as team ambassador Jim Epler was the first Funny Car driver to make a 300mph run in the class, doing so in October 1993 at Heartland Motorsports Park. Ashley’s father Mike earned the Flopper winner\u2019s trophy in Topeka during the 2007 race and, as Ashley noted, \u201cThis is the first race that he and I have won professionally at the same venue.\u201d Ashley beat Josh Hart, Leah Pruett and Antron Brown to reach the final, where he squeaked past reigning champ Brittany Force, making her first final round of the 2023 campaign, in one of the tightest rounds of competition: 3.702\/323.58 to 3.707\/323.58.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tough to stay focused today,\u201d Ashley acknowledged. \u201cWe really didn\u2019t know what today was going to bring but every driver and team were under the same circumstances. We didn\u2019t know if we were going to get a race in, let alone four rounds today, was probably the biggest challenge of all.\u201d With this victory, Ashley increased his lead over Torrence to 83 points, with Force in third, semifinalist Antron Brown fourth and Pruett fifth. Austin Prock, Doug Kalitta, Mike Salinas, Josh Hart and Clay Millican round out the top 10.<\/p>\n

Tasca III was the sole repeat winner in the three Camping World classes, after earning the victory in 2022. In taking down the Mustang of Blake Alexander, putting Alexis DeJoria\u2019s Toyota GR Supra back in the trailer and defeating Hight in the semifinals, the Rhode Island native had to contend with Hagan, one of the fiercest competitors on the planet, but he was both quicker and faster than the Virginian with his lap of 3.885\/332.26 to Hagan\u2019s 3.965\/329.16. Hagan and Tasca III had identical semifinal runs to set up their final round battle.<\/p>\n

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Bob Tasca III’s Ford Mustang was tops of the field in Kansas -NHRA photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was a hard-fought day and I give all the credit to the guys,\u201d led by Hawaiian crew chief Todd Okuhara and Aaron Brooks. \u201cEvery time we warmed up the car, there was something wrong and they just fought through it. It\u2019s a different attitude than any I\u2019ve been around. We\u2019re one of the quicker qualifying cars year-to-date, hot tracks, cold tracks, anything in between we can go up there and run low E.T.,\u201d Tasca stated. \u201cIt was a big-time run, a statement run for this team. Going into Brainerd and Indy, we\u2019re in the top five. If you have that leaving Indy, you have a really good chance to win the championship,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n

While reigning five-time Pro Stock champ Erica Enders\u2019 early season was more of a nightmare, she and her Elite Motorsports squad have been running better and better as the year progresses. Taking her second win of the season after the long rain delay, she credited the entirety of Elite Motorsports for her victory as the sole member of the nine-car team to journey to the finals. Facing her early- and mid-season difficulties, \u201cThis is twenty years strong,\u201d Enders revealed. \u201cMy mom, my dad and my sister are always in my corner, making me mentally tough. They believe in me when I don\u2019t believe in myself.\u201d Speaking of her team, \u201cWhen the rest of Elite Motorsports was eliminated today, they were all over helping on my car. Everybody rallied.\u201d<\/p>\n

In running to her 45th career Pro Stock national event title, Enders ran better with every single pass. She finished the weekend with a run of 6.617\/206.13 to Greg Anderson\u2019s 6.636\/198.41. To get to that point, she beat Chris McGaha, teammate Greg Stanfield on a hole shot, did the same with Dallas Glenn to meet her nemesis for the 10th time, Anderson, making his 173rd final round appearance, in the last Pro Stock contest at this track. \u201cToday was just a great day,\u201d Enders said. \u201cComing in, we felt like we struggled,\u201d to be No. 4 qualifier. \u201cWe knew we had our work cut out for us today, and it was pretty cool that I had to battle everybody from a different team this time, except for Aaron.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Erica Enders is peaking in Pro Stock when it matters – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glenn continues to lead the point standings over KB Titan partner Matt Hartford, with Elite\u2019s Troy Coughlin Jr. third, KB\u2019s Deric Kramer fourth and Enders up to fifth. Anderson is sixth, Aaron Stanfield seventh, while KB\u2019s Camrie Caruso is eighth, Elite\u2019s Cristian Cuadra ninth and Kyle Koretsky of KB Titan Racing holds tenth-place points. There\u2019s a huge gap of 456 points from first to tenth in this class.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no rest for the Camping World Drag Racing Series as all three classes return to action next weekend, August 17-20 with the 41st annual Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals at Brainerd International Raceway in Brainerd, Minnesota.<\/p>\n

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Storms and high emotions characterized the last runs at Topeka as the track owners prepare to shutter it.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":92073,"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":[3470,5029,3399],"tags":[9267,38,9834,8567,9740,7,4801,73],"class_list":["post-92065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-camping-world-drag-racing-series","tag-funny-car","tag-heartland-motorsports-park","tag-menards-nhra-nationals-presented-by-petarmor","tag-mission-2fast2tasty-challenge","tag-nhra","tag-pro-stock","tag-top-fuel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Topeka-winners-circle-min-e1692120991358.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-nWV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92065","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=92065"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92077,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92065\/revisions\/92077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}