SNOHOMISH, Wash. — When the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, most drag-racing fans will bid an eager “goodbye” to 2020. It was an NHRA season to forget, for so many reasons.
But rather than dwell on the negative, it would be more productive and hopeful to find 10 positives from this pandemic-plagued campaign.
The fact that drag racers had a season at all is the most obvious one.
They anticipated a 24-event schedule and were grateful to get 11 races in the books. Kudos to NHRA President Glen Cromwell and his team for staying on top of the conflicting, confusing and capricious state and local regulations and keeping the sport relevant.
The tricky part of navigating the minefield was that the sanctioning body was insistent on performing in front of fans because it has an upside-down broadcast business model. And that’s where credit also goes to the states of Indiana, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Nevada for permitting a large-enough percentage of spectators to make racing worth the NHRA’s while.
Track operators Casey Koler (Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis and Gainesville Raceway), Chris Blair (World Wide Technology Raceway), Billy Meyer (Texas Motorplex) and Chris Powell (The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway) were key in making that happen.
Identifying the other nine highlights was a bit of a challenge, but one, for sure, was the absence of the Countdown to the Championship. Even in this abbreviated season, each pro class featured suspenseful title chases. The sanctioning body still has a chance to reverse its decision to reinstate the six-race playoff — remembering that inclusion, not exclusion, is what will boost car counts.
The NHRA got lucky in picking up a new series sponsor — Camping World — when Coca-Cola shamelessly and unilaterally terminated its agreement that was to run through 2023 in mid-season. Coke officials had told the NHRA in September 2019 that they no longer valued their association, so this wasn’t a case of “you don’t understand — the pandemic has hurt every business.” Coca-Cola’s numbers on the stock market have remained robust.
The curious aspect to this dance-partner switch was that its initial stages played out on social media. Camping World owner and TV personality Marcus Lemonis reached out to the NHRA on Twitter, NHRA flirted back, they exchanged tweets and eventually took the discussion private. The bottom line is NHRA has a series title sponsor through next season.
The remaining seven delights of the season, in no particular order, are performance-related.
Veteran T.J. Zizzo, 45, and rookie Justin Ashley, 25, generated excitement when they faced off in the first Top Fuel final for both, vying for the Lucas Oil Summernationals trophy.
Zizzo had predicted, “Everybody is going to rally around this. It’s a young buck, a 20-something-year-old and some old bald guy trying to get it done for 28 years. This is exciting! It’s going to be a huge day.” Ashley won, but Zizzo was correct. He said, “The cool thing about being at these two events is that they’ve taken me away from everything that’s going on in this world. These days people need something to root for or somebody to root for. They can do it right here.”
Thanks to the dominance of its Funny Car foursome of Jack Beckman, Ron Capps, Matt Hagan and Tommy Johnson Jr., Don Schumacher Racing cemented its position among motorsports’ elite teams in surpassing the 350-victory plateau.
Ryan Oehler and Scotty Pollacheck scored their first Pro Stock Motorcycle victories at Lucas Oil Raceway this summer. The class also saw some excitement at the Texas Motorplex when Angie Smith clocked her first 200-mph speed — moments before her husband, Matt Smith, matched that and edged her by one-thousandth of a second in elapsed time to swipe the No. 1 starting position. It is thought to be the first time a husband-wife tandem qualified 1-2 in any class.
In Funny Car, longtime racers Capps (Lucas Oil Raceway) and Beckman (Texas Motorplex) finally solved tracks that had eluded them for years.
Alexis De Joria returned to the track after a brief hiatus and persevered through a nasty engine explosion in her RokIt Phones/ABK Beer Toyota Camry and two weeks later escaped a raging fire that belched shockingly thick clouds of dark smoke and destroyed her primary car.
“Really, this whole season — what season we’ve had so far — has been about building for next year,” she said. One day she just might conquer the last frontier for women in the sport: winning a Funny Car championship.
Steve Torrence and Cameron Ferré, whose clash during Top Fuel eliminations at the 2019 season finale stirred plenty of discussion, appear to have patched up their differences.
New drivers on the tour this year were Joe Morrison and Joey Haas (Top Fuel), Alex Miladinovich (Funny Car), and Kyle Koretsky and Mason McGaha (Pro Stock).
Waiting in the wings are new licensees Krista Baldwin in Top Fuel and Bobby Bode in Funny Car. So, to paraphrase Kenny Bernstein’s line, the pipeline is getting filled.
Here’s to a 2021 NHRA season that might bring 21 bright nuggets of news.