MESA, Ariz. — The NHRA has witnessed some astonishing events this summer, some insanely fearless and some absolutely alarming.
But all of the monumental episodes – the wondrous and the woeful alike – have raised some intriguing questions.
The wondrous truly was deserving of superlatives. Two-time Top Fuel champion Brittany Force stole the show at both Seattle and Sonoma, Calif., clocking the fastest two speeds in the sport’s history.
With her almost-unfathomable 343.16-mph pass at Sonoma, she eclipsed the national record she set the week before at Seattle (341.85 mph). She has had runs at 340 mph or better eight times this year, seven of them this summer.
Doug Kalitta, one of her competitors who’s also a champion, used a 341.34-mph blast at Seattle to keep Force from owning all of the top 10 speeds in NHRA history.
Moreover, his 3.628-second elapsed time there was second-quickest in Top Fuel history (just five-thousandths of a second slower than … yep, Brittany Force).
In the Funny Car category, reigning champion Austin Prock built on his distinction of being the first NHRA drag racer to hit the 340-mph plateau – officially. He did that in November 2024. But at Sonoma, Prock reeled off a 340.90, second-fastest in class history (only to his own 341.68 mph).
Pro Stock got in on the history-making, too. Greg Anderson recorded his 1,000th elimination round-win in June at Bristol, Tenn.
The six-time champion is only the second driver (behind Funny Car legend John Force) to reach that milestone. Seattle’s Pacific Raceways produced five of the top 10 elapsed times in Pro Stock history, three of them from winner Dallas Glenn.
But as glittery as Force’s speeds were, they do raise the question of how fast is too fast. Will this current Goodyear tire compound support speeds of 341 mph and beyond?
Will the NHRA try to slow down the cars, and if so, how soon will the cleverest of crew chiefs figure out a way to circumvent that?
And do the fans really crave faster and faster speeds, considering elapsed times, not speeds, determine winners and Force’s gaudy numbers most often haven’t resulted in victories. The idea simply is to beat the driver in the other lane.
Engine explosions in the Funny Car class have revisited the debate about whether the bodies should be tethered to the chassis.
They also bring up the unpopular topic of concussions. It’s unpopular because the sanctioning body does not have a policy about how to handle those situations (such as the NFL and NHL do) and it bristles when that’s pointed out.
Its response several years ago was to present as proof a photocopied page from the U.S. Olympic Swimming Committee handbook. It’s difficult to have serious discussions when that’s the pushback.
Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Chris Bostick showed his physical toughness at Seattle when his helmet moved up and obstructed his view, causing him to hit the wall – literally, with a jarring blow to his left side.
Bike racers have no protection other than their leathers – they don’t have roll cages or bodies or chassis to safeguard them. Bostick said he was all right and raced in the next round. He was rushed to a hospital in South Dakota 13 days later with internal bleeding that doctors blamed on the Seattle accident. He returned home to Nashville and continued treatment there.
Bostick shared that the doctors said they might not have found the injury if he had been transported to the hospital in Seattle. However, maybe they would have. No one ever will know for sure. But did the NHRA fail not only to do everything in its power to make sure Bostick got a clean bill of health but also ail to protect itself legally?
Shawn Langdon won the Virginia Nationals, near Richmond, in June. But his victory was nullified because of a technical violation, and runner-up Justin Ashley was declared the winner.
The team accepted responsibility for the mistake, but why was Langdon punished? Wouldn’t a fine have been more appropriate? Langdon was angry weeks afterward – and who could blame him?
On a happier note, eight-time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher, idled several times in the past handful of years because of insufficient funding, will return at the U.S. Nationals with Rick Ware Racing as a teammate to Clay Millican. But it does raise a couple of questions.
Why was an 88-time winner and eight-time series champion unable to find a sponsor? And why did he bring not one but two current team owners into the sport, only to see them abandon him and start their own ventures?
So although the sport is exciting and – sorry, IndyCar and FOX – the fastest motorsport on the planet, it has some tough dilemmas to address.
