Racers in all classes of the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series have chances to reach milestones this season, starting with the season-opening Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla., March 12-14.
Here’s some of the things worth keeping an eye on:
Erica Enders is eyeing a fifth Pro Stock title that would launch her into the class-legend stratosphere with Jeg Coughlin, Warren Johnson, and the late Bob Glidden.
She has more championships than any other woman in NHRA history, passing Shirley Muldowney in Top Fuel and Angelle Sampey in Pro Stock Motorcycle last November. Enders is coming off an 11-race season in which she won four times to complete her second set of back-to-back championships and registered a 25-6 round record. She has won three of her past six events.
Already among the top five winners in the all-time Top Fuel list, Doug Kalitta is poised to earn his 50th victory.
If the recent past is any indication, that could come soon. Kalitta Motorsports (with since-departed Richie Crampton) has won two of the past three Gatornationals, and Kalitta has won on the storied Central Florida dragstrip three times (2000, 2005, 2014).
Kalitta would become just the fifth Top Fuel racer and the 14th in all of the NHRA pro classes throughout the past 70 years to reach the 50-victory plateau.
John Force and Robert Hight are back in the Funny Car hunt after opting to park the team’s four cars (including the Top Fuel cars of Austin Prock and Brittany Force) last July, when the series resumed.
Each is looking for his first victory since the fall of 2018. Force’s most recent victory, his 151st, came at the U.S. Nationals September 2, 2018, at Indianapolis (more than 18 months ago), and Hight’s was October 2019, at Charlotte (17 months ago). High comes into this season with every right to feel like a defending champion—he won in 2019 and the opt out last year kept him from properly defending that title.
More than likely, at some point, Don Schumacher Racing’s streak of 14 Funny Car victories will end.
With two fewer entries—sponsorless Jack Beckman and Tommy Johnson Jr. were dropped from the roster—DSR will find it harder to hold off the likes of the John Force Racing tandem of Force and Robert Hight, J.R. Todd, Bob Tasca, Tim Wilkerson, Cruz Pedregon, Alexis DeJoria, and improving Paul Lee and Blake Alexander.
DSR, with champions Matt Hagan and Ron Capps, still should get its share of Wally statues. The question is whether the team’s event winning streak will extend into a third season.
Steve Torrence closed the 2020 season having made 12 consecutive runs at 3.72 seconds or quicker on the 1,000-foot course (including six in a row in the 3.60-second range).
It looks like crew chief Richard Hogan has found him something extra during the offseason. Torrence led the preseason testing numbers in Top Fuel last Friday at Palm Beach International Raceway with a 3.708-second elapsed time. But that was only fourth-best overall at the three-day session. Even though those were exhibition runs, he’s one racer who doesn’t want to come in anything but first, even if it’s a game of tiddlywinks.
So he’ll take satisfaction in knowing he can top the clockings from Brittany Force, Mike Salinas, or Leah Pruett, all of whom dipped below 3.7 in testing. Torrence will be relentless as he seeks to build on his 40 victories. (And he’ll need to fend off father Billy Torrence, who was third in the 2020 final standings and in the top five for the second straight year, despite not entering every race. Steve Torrence said of his dad, “If he raced all of them, he would be my main competition, I believe.”
Leah Pruett (Top Fuel) and Alexis DeJoria (Funny Car) don’t compete against one another on the racetrack. But that’s not to say each won’t want to outdo the other in the quest to claim a 12th NHRA pro championship by a woman.
Pruett finished fourth in 2020 for the third year in a row, and she told WFO Radio that she and her team are “ready to rip” with her brand-new race car and what she calls “a brand-new attitude” that centers on staying focused on her own Don Schumacher Racing-owned, Mopar-branded dragster and staying on her own course.
DeJoria has fared remarkably well for having sat out two seasons (2018-2019), then reappeared with her own team that Del Worsham co-owns, only to see everyone parked for four months. DeJoria reached the semifinals at three of the final four races of 2020, and she qualified among the top five at the final five races. After the U.S. Nationals (essentially, for the final half of the season in 2020), she accumulated the fourth-most points of anyone in the class.
This past weekend, her testing numbers (3.919 seconds, 316.15 mph) put her fifth overall among Funny Car racers. And that’s behind John Force, Hight, Hagan, and Capps—who have a combined 23 series championships.
Justin Ashley’s delayed and well-hyped final-round Top Fuel race against T.J. Zizzo last July at Indianapolis was guaranteed to produce a first-time winner. It was Ashley. Also in races at Indianapolis, Ryan Oehler and Scotty Pollacheck earned their first NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle trophies. Same for Pro Stock’s Aaron Stanfield at Houston.
So who will be the next first-time winner?
It could be Artie Allen, Krista Baldwin, Mike Bucher, Doug Foley, Josh Hart, Joe Morrison, Scott Palmer, or Todd Paton in Top Fuel. Bobby Bode, Jim Campbell, Chad Green, Terry Haddock, and Dave Richards—along with Mike McIntire, Alex Miladinovich, and Dan Wilkerson—are candidates in Funny Car. So is Pro Stock’s Kyle Koretsky (pictured), who came close as runner-up at the Finals at Las Vegas last November.
Koretsky will have competition from Troy Coughlin Jr., Cuadra brothers Fernando Jr. and Cristian, John Gaydosh, Dallas Glenn, Mason McGaha, Alan Prusiensky, and Val Smeland. The bike class has about a dozen yet to experience the winners circle. The law of averages surely will reward one hard-working and lucky racer.
And finally, the NHRA is turning 70 years old in 2021.
Wally Parks (bottom right in image), who passed away in 2007 at age 94, founded the organization in 1951, although it didn’t host its first sanctioned race until April 11-12, 1953, at Pomona, Calif.
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