MESA, Ariz. — Christmas decorations: up. Cookies: baked. Gifts: wrapped. Time to put a bow on the 2024 Mission Foods Drag Racing Series and start thinking a little bit ahead about what’ll be happening in the NHRA in 2025.
Of course, who can predict what wild and significant things will happen? We witnessed at least a half-dozen things we didn’t see coming as we rang in 2024.
For starters, we were alarmed when perennial Top Fuel title contender Mike Salinas dropped out of competition following the season-opening Gatornationals to undergo heart surgery. But he has regained his health and is ready to drive his Scrappers Racing Dragster. He’ll join daughter Jasmine Salinas in the Top Fuel class, starting with the non-NHRA-sanctioned SCAG Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout next Feb. 6-8 at Bradenton, Fla. She took over the seat of the family-owned car and competed for 19 races, accelerating her learning curve.
It appeared Top Fuel driver Austin Prock would be on one of the John Force Racing crews again, sidelined without sponsorship. But in January, three-time champion Robert Hight abruptly declared he was taking a “medical leave of absence.” That put Prock in the Funny Car class for the first time – although he looked like he had manhandled the floppers for a decade or two. He won the championship, claimed eight event victories, qualified No. 1 a class-record 15 times, and recorded the fastest speed in the history of the sport (341.68 mph). The Prock Rocket, tuned by the driver’s dad Jimmy Prock and brother Thomas Prock, launched immediately into the exosphere and landed atop the championship podium with a triumphant flash at the season finale. Meanwhile, who knows where Hight went?
We’ve seen cars hit the guard wall, seen them run into another, seen them catch fire, seen them ricochet off both walls, seen them blow the bodies off the chassis even high into the air, and seen them spit shrapnel and fluid all over the racing surface. And we’ve seen those things happen with John Force. But his June 23 crash at Virginia Motorsports Park and its aftermath were something no one predicted. Force was No. 2 in the points, poised for a showdown with protégé Austin Prock, on his way to what might have been his 17th championship. Instead, he was left with a traumatic brain injury diagnosis that kept him under wraps for more than four months and clearly still recovering when he showed up at the track Las Vegas and Pomona races at the end of the season. This is the sport’s biggest name ever, the man who has won 157 races and earned 16 championships. This is a blow to Force and to the sport.
On a happier, but somewhat bittersweet, note, popular Funny Car driver and 2012 champion
Jack Beckman returned to the track in August. Fans were happy to see him again, watch him win two Countdown races and runner-up at another. But they knew his eight-race stint was as a fill-in for Force. He lived up to the task and brought the Force organization a second-place finish for a team 1-2 punch to the class.
Oh, yeah, and Prock smashed the 340-mph barrier – by nearly three miles an hour faster than what any Top Fuel dragster has done. Brittany Force, his teammate, set that category’s record at 338.94 mph two years ago, also at the NHRA Finals at Pomona.
Few would have predicted that three-time Funny Car champion Ron Capps would be winless in 2024. The man who has won 76 races and is second only to Force in Funny Car victories uncharacteristically blanked. So did veteran and two-time champ Cruz Pedregon. Straightline predicts that won’t happen in 2025for either team owner/racer.
Things we did see coming are multiple documentaries (one about NHRA founder Wally Parks), according to VP Brad Gerber; a return to Georgia after Atlanta Dragway was flattened for an industrial operation with the Peach State NHRA Showcase of Speed at South Georgia Motorsports Park; and a 75th birthday party in 2026. Guess it’s not judicious to jump up and yell “Surprise!” at a75-year-old’s celebration, so the NHRA shared some plans for that.
Then we have some things we’re wondering about. For example, what’s the NHRA going to do when Toyota says sayonara to drag racing after next season? Is Chevrolet pulling back, as well, as rumored? For has a limited presence, and Bob Tasca III certainly wouldn’t be pleased to see any Ford financial support cut his piece of the pie to a sliver. And Stellantis doesn’t seem to be in any position to toss around more money. So What OEM will step up?
Like every year since 2007, when it began, the Countdown continues to be unpopular, but drivers simply shrug. are resigned to facing more and more of them. If the purpose was to whip fans into a froth and editors scrambling to request credentials before the media center gets overcrowded, the Countdown has failed. At the least, the NHRA, which stubbornly clings to the fantasy that the system is working, ought to tweak the qualifying rules for the six races that determine the champions. Disdain for the “participation trophies” – letting drivers into the Countdown if they’re not in the top 10 but have attended every race – got louder in 2024.
Rules that allow a sidelined driver to fill in for a maximum of eight races and hand any points accrued to the absent racer raised eyebrows this season. It was possible that John Force could have “earned” a championship when he missed 11 of the 20 races on the calendar?
It was. Force naturally was a sentimental favorite, and Beckman certainly is admired and well-liked. But would that have been fair? The NHRA in September adopted rules that cover issues related to pregnancy for a woman driver. So it sounds like the NHRA is doubling down on the concept.
An observer brought up the notion that Austin Prock should have been eligible for Rookie of the Year consideration because he was a rookie this year in the Funny Car class. He isn’t a rookie, though, so the current rules make sense. But it was something to ponder for about five minutes.