Entering the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season, it would have been difficult to convince many that Austin Prock would enter the Countdown to the Championship leading the standings with the most victories in the class.
While Prock was a proven winner in NHRA’s Top Fuel category, moving over to a Funny Car in place of multi-time series champion Robert Hight was quite the undertaking this season.
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However, it proved to be a quick transition with his John Force Racing team led by his father, Jimmy Prock and brother Thomas Prock behind the 11,000-plus horsepower machine.
Five wins and a U.S. Nationals trophy at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park have Austin Prock as the No. 1 seed entering the six-race Countdown to the Championship.
The U.S. Nationals victory over two-time and defending race winner Ron Capps, provided the 29-year-old an added boost of momentum heading into the Countdown opener at Pennsylvania’s Maple Grove Raceway.
“Winning the U.S. Nationals, that was pretty special for me and my family,” Prock began. “We’re excited for the Countdown. Nothing matters that we’ve done to this point. Everything restarts.
“We gotta go into these next six races and just do the same job we’ve been doing. Our points lead got tightened up quite a bit. We just gotta go and execute and really perform better than we have all year long.”
The JFR driver amassed a whopping 348-point cushion over second-place runner Bob Tasca III prior to the points being reset to begin the Countdown.
Prock is now only 39 markers ahead of Tasca — less than a two-round lead.
With more pressure from behind him than he’s had all season, Prock heads to Maple Grove with the same mindset he’s had all year — staying hungry for more.
“I don’t think we need to race any different,” Prock explained. “I think we need to have the same mindset. I think 2022, I came in 11th or 12th, and we ended up finishing third. Just having that hunger trying to run up through the ranks, it just almost felt like seamless and easy. I think I gotta have that same mindset as, ‘You’re still buried, and just fight your way through it.’
“Honestly, the lead that we have really isn’t much, so, you’re gonna have to be on kill every single round. It’s gonna be a dog fight to the finish for sure.”