NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Drag racing may well be a game of horsepower, but through eight races of the 2023 it’s also obviously a game of inches, and that doesn’t matter if you’re wheeling an 11,000-hp Top Fueler or a 10-second Super Streeter.

Already this season, 26 side-by-side races in the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series classes of Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle have been decided by just thousandths of a second and, in one case, two 10-thousandths of a second. That’s 26 out of 301 double-green-light races, or nearly 10%. And five of these razor-thin wins have come in final rounds and exactly half were decided by a holeshot.

And even though we’re used to seeing Sportsman cars, with breakouts and indexes, having close finishes, 14 Sportsman final rounds this season have also been decided by less than a hundredth of a second, including both four-wide Top Alcohol Dragster finals, where Tony Stewart won in Las Vegas, where he edged Todd Bruce by .0003-second (three ten-thousandths) and then lost the Charlotte final, finishing second behind Mike Coughlin by .004-second! Every national event this season, save for Chicago, has had at least one Sportsman final decided by thousandths of a second, including the recent NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals, where we had three, including the Super Comp final, where Jeremy Mason edged Michael Holcombe by .0006-second.

It seems incredulous that two cars, built by two different teams with different tune-ups and varying track conditions in each lane and the human starting-line variable, can finish inches apart, but it’s happening with startling regularity as the parity gets tighter and tighter.

Just ask three-time Top Fuel champ Antron Brown, who has been involved in seven of the 13 white-knucklers in the Top Fuel class this season. 

Brown opened the season with that crazy .0002-second victory at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals, defeating Shawn Langdon on a 3.706 to 3.704 holeshot after snatching a narrow .066 to .068 edge at the start. Langdon returned the favor at the next event, right down to the holeshot, edging Brown by .006-second in the opening round of the NHRA Arizona Nationals.

Incredibly, Brown was involved in another squeaker for the third straight race, losing in the semifinals of the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals to Justin Ashley by .008-second.

Brown then lost to Brittany Force by inches twice at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas, in round one by .008 and round two by .004, but because the two top finishers of each quad advance to the next round, it wasn’t as painful. HOWEVER … Brown only escaped to the second round with Force because he edged Tony Schumacher in the same first round by just .009 second!

At the most recent event in Bristol, Brown was back on the winning side of the .00 equation, eking out a win in round one by just .004-second against Force.

"When it’s a close race like that, you can hear them and feel them when they're right there because you can feel the thrust pushing on you, but you can't see them because of the way our canopies have the windshields pushed so far forward,” Brown explained. “You can't look out the side and see them. They have to be way out in front of you to see their nose.

“Inside my driver compartment, it’s kind of quiet because you're out-accelerating your noise and sound, so if I don’t feel any rumbling on the side of me, then I know I'm ahead, but when you feel rumble alongside you, [you] know it's a close race.”

When milliseconds matter, driver input can be key, especially in a Top Fuel car that’s mostly pre-programmed by the crew chief to make a maximum run.

“There’s a joke among the drivers that the only thing you can do, honestly, is lose time; all you can do is screw it up,” he noted with a laugh. “We pride ourselves at keeping it in the groove, but it's difficult sometimes. If you veer out the groove, you're losing more than thousandths; you're losing like a hundredth, You can lose time really quick and easy.

“You can also make a mistake as a driver like I did when I lost to Larry Dixon in Bristol in 2011. It was going straight and smooth, and I had my finger on the air button that we use to deploy the parachutes, but when we went over the bump at the [underground] tunnel, it pushed my finger down on the button and the parachutes came out early, and I lost by a couple of thousandths. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?’ That one still hurts."
Pro Stock’s Dallas Glenn earned the nickname “Double-oh Dallas” for his uncanny ability to cut .00 reaction times, but he’s also been in four races decided by thousandths of a second at the other end of the track, and three of them came in final rounds. He beat Matt Hartford by .003-second to win the NHRA Winternationals and two weeks later got edged on a holeshot in the semifinals of the Las Vegas four-wide event by Deric Kramer by 002-second, but, like Brown in Top Fuel, as the second-place finisher, he was able to advance to the final, where he squeaked ahead of Troy Coughlin Jr. by .009-second for a holeshot win. Two weeks later, Kramer again pipped him by inches, beating him in the Charlotte four-wide final by .004-second by driving around Glenn’s holeshot.

So, what’s it like to be in a doorhandle-to-doorhandle race?

“On the first part of the run, I'm just focused on the groove and hitting my shifts right, and then when I'm in high gear – which is usually right at or just before halftrack – is when I kind of open my focus a little bit,” Glenn explained. “I glance over and kind of get a little bit of an idea if he or she is there or not.

“My job as a driver is pretty much done for the next two and half seconds, and other than staying in the groove, there’s not much more a driver can do. You might kind of mentally lean forward a little into the belts a little harder to try to get through a little quicker, but my job is done until I get right before the mile an hour cone when I push the ‘chute button. To that point, the other car is just in your peripheral [vision]. You can kind of see the nose, and you really don't know which way it's gonna go.”

And in those races where you loses by milliseconds, how much shoulda-woulda-coulda is there?

“Oh yeah, 100% I will nitpick every little mistake that I made or anything that I could have done better to win it,” Glenn added. “It’s just kind of part of the nature of being competitive.

“There are so many variables. I've made some runs where I don't think I could have done any better as a driver if I try it 100 more times, but as far as the perfect run in the car setup, I don't think anyone thinks that. You always think that you could have leaned on it a little bit harder or whatnot because there's so many different adjustments you could make and, yeah, maybe there's a better run out there.”

Here's a quick look at the other tight finishes so far this season, ranked in order of closeness.

As mentioned previously, there also have been 14 Sportsman final rounds decided by less than a hundredth of a second over the first seven events. Over the course of any national event, there are many races decided by thousandths of a second, but 14 in final rounds? That's pretty impressive and again a nod to the parity that exists from the fastest classes to the slowest in the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series.