NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

My one bright point to the soggy ending of the 2025 season is that with the results and championships stamped into history, it allowed us to finally wrap up production of the 75th anniversary coffee-table book, NHRA 75: A Legacy of Speed, that we’ve been working on for almost two years, adding the latest championship numbers and win totals to some of the many profiles that color the book. I wanted the book to be complete and updated to the end of the season, and we’re all very thrilled with the final version of the 208-page love letter to our sport, and excited to soon share it with the drag racing world. (You can sign up here to receive updates on its progress.)

It has been an extreme labor of love to conceive, develop, and create the book, and while I’ve been part of creating other NHRA-themed books that revolved around the histories of select national events (Winternationals, U.S. Nationals, and World Finals), this one, as you can imagine, was a whole new challenge.

So deep and rich is the history of our great sport that I don’t doubt that I could have filled a 1,000-page book that would have required a forklift to transport, but quickly settled on the 208-page limit after weighing (literary) the pros and cons of book size. Once that page count was settled came the challenge of telling the story of the NHRA from its infancy to today within that space, to find a way to cover 75 years, 1,100 national events, and nearly 700 world championships while saluting the most important achievements and advancements and the pioneers and modern-day heroes who brought us to this point.

Starting with a blank sheet of paper and unfettered editorial control, we conceived a book that not only told the chronological tale of the history of the NHRA from its dry-lakes background to today’s palaces of speed, but also to salute the individuals who powered the sport and the technology that drove it there.

Some of you may remember NHRA’s 50th Anniversary book, The Fast Lane, which (for reasons I still don’t understand) was produced externally with no input from the NHRA Publications team and had some pretty “Big” omissions. Without throwing a lot of shade on that team, it fell well short of what it could have and should have been, so my first mission was to make sure that those oversights were corrected in “my” book.

We spent weeks planning the contents and flow of the book, primarily who among the hundreds of racers who have stamped their mark on the sport’s history to feature and how to present them.

The good work I’ve been able to do in this column over the last 18 years gave me a firm footing because of the unbelievably kind and generous input of the racers and history that I have profiled, and the kind and unwavering support of the loyal readers of this column. This book cannot have been created without all of you, so thank you.

While I’m not so full of myself to believe that I am uniquely qualified to hold forth the history of NHRA — many of my fellow historians, folks like Bob Frey, Bret Kepner, Todd Veney, Dave Wallace, and many others could have probably done an equally fine but certainly different job — I was able to view the sport through the lens of both a fan and member of the NHRA team and someone who has lived and breathed the sport for more than 50 years. I was able to marry my passion for the people, cars, and moments of the sport with the responsibility of portraying the NHRA in a manner and style that would have made Wally Parks proud.

I’m not going to say it’s the perfect book, though we sure endeavored to make it so. There undoubtedly will be people who feel slighted for not being mentioned — because how could you ever mention them all? — or for the omission of certain events they felt should have been included, and I apologize in advance and invite you to write your own version.

The contents, you ask? I’m glad you asked. In addition to detailed decade-by-decade recaps, here’s what you can also look forward to reading about:

Features: Wally Parks, An Appreciation, Dry lakes racing, The Drag Safari, Early experimentation, Dick Kraft’s The Bug, Wally Parks and the Suddenly project, the history of the Christmas Tree, the launch of the Funny Car class, the history of the Wally trophy, Don Garlits’ revolutionary Swamp Rat 14, modern-day drag racing aerodynamics and mechanics, the rise of stadium-style racetracks, the NHRA Jr. Drag Racing League, the history of NHRA television coverage, NHRA’s incredibly diverse competitor base, NHRA’s Sportsman-racing standouts, and the sport’s rising and future stars.

Memorable Moments: First NHRA-sanctioned event; the first National Championship Drags; Don Garlits wins and shaves at 1967 NHRA Nationals; the record-breaking 1975 NHRA World Finals; Don Garlits’ monumental 1984 Indy win; Kenny Bernstein and the first 300-mph pass; Pat Austin’s historic double win in Topeka in 1991; Tony Shcumacher and “The Run"; and John Force’s 100th career win.

Profiles: The Chrisman family, Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme and Tom McEwen, Shirley Muldowney, Bob Glidden, Lee Shepherd, Kenny Bernstein, Joe Amato, Warren Johnson, John Force and John Force Racing; the Kalitta family, Jim Dunn, Don Schumacher Racing, the Coughlin family, Erica Enders, Greg Anderson, Steve Torrence and Antron Brown, and Funny Car’s “Big 3”: Matt Hagan, Robert Hight, and Ron Capps.

Whew. I’m exhausted just typing that list and everything that went into it, but as you can imagine, writing a book is just one part of the equation. Although I personally typed all 34,500 words — between National Dragster assignments, during oildowns and rainouts and on off-race weekends — that make up the book, they needed to be loved, massaged, and curated.

Because we were working on this book while simultaneously putting out NHRA National Dragster and managing NHRA.com, I couldn’t just drag all of the already small ND production team (just nine people!) to the party, so it boiled down to the dedication of a smaller group of people.

NHRA Art Director Jeff Mellem, one of the most talented graphic artists I’ve ever known and himself a top-selling book author, worked closely with our Photo Editor, Jerry Foss, and I to select the necessary images from NHRA's voluminous photo archive and then created handsome layouts that make each page a joy. National Dragster Managing Editor Dominique Diaz was handed the unenviable task of weeding through those 34,500 words to make sure that they made sense, were spelled and punctuated correctly. Her dedication to perfection (and enforcing the all-important serial-comma rule) and inquisitive nature to question me on anything that seemed out of place gave me a lot of confidence in the storytelling.

Finally, I turned the completed text over to the aforementioned Todd Veney. If anyone knows more about the history of the sport or loves it more than me, it’s Todd. Some of you may remember he worked for National Dragster for years before becoming a national event-winning Top Alcohol Funny Car racer, but he and I grew up reading the same magazines and adoring the same heroes, so I knew he was the right man for the job, and helped prevent some possibly embarrassing factual errors from hitting print.

I expect that many of the fellow history buffs who frequent this watering hole will be eager to see and read the book, which we expect to be available in early January. We were initially hoping for a Christmas delivery to help you with your shopping lists, but ran into some unexpected scheduling and delivery issues, but we think having one will be a great way to start the New Year and the 75th anniversary season. You can sign up for email updates on the progress of the book here and then come back to that page to order in a few weeks.

The NHRA 75th Anniversary book is just one of a handful of projects we’ve been toiling away on that are all about to come to fruition.

Top 75 Moments

Earlier this week, we unveiled the voting portal to allow fans to vote on the 75 greatest moments in NHRA history. Again, using this column as a starting point, I created a list of 100 moments I thought worthy of inclusion from which the NHRA community can select their top 75. 

Like the book, the ballot is a little subjective to the moments that I thought were significant enough to make the cut. Your mileage may vary. Anyway, you can go to the poll and vote for 75 (or 10 or 50 or whatever; we’ll keep count for you) different moments that will help us determine those magical moments, which will be unveiled early next year. 

VOTE NOW

Top 75 Drivers

Back in 2001, as the NHRA marked its 50th anniversary, I created a diverse panel of experts to select the 50 greatest drivers in the organization’s early history. This original Top 50 highlighted pioneers, barrier-breakers, record-setters, and world champions whose contributions stretched from NHRA’s founding days through the turn of the millennium. The names on that list — Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, John Force, Shirley Muldowney, Bob Glidden, Kenny Bernstein, and other founding members of the sport — are synonymous with drag racing excellence and formed the foundation for the list.

In 2026, we’re expanding that list to the Top 75 drivers. Instead of trying to weigh one era against another and create a numbered list as we did in 2001, after rigorous debate and analysis, 25 drivers were chosen by our experts to join the original 50, thus creating an unranked Top 75 list. The original Top 50 remained intact, and the new additions reflect the sport’s explosive growth and the remarkable talents who have fueled the sport over the last 25 years. 

With only 25 new spots open, the decisions were tough, and when I counted up the ballots, I was pleased to see a nice mix of Pro and Sportsman drivers, and found that there are several drivers some of you might expect — including some past world champions — who did not make the cut, and, weighing them against the 25 who did, I saw the wisdom of our judging panels. This list will also be revealed early next year, along with the companion book pictured here.

NHRA 75th Anniversary website

We’re also hard at work on a 75th anniversary website that will explore the sport’s history through photos, videos, text, and interactive graphics. Fans will be able to browse season-by-season lists of the year’s greatest moments and champions, and a massive photo gallery of curated images and interactive video playlists will showcase highlights from seven decades of NHRA history. Fans can also shop for 75th anniversary merchandise and tickets as well as keep abreast of the latest 75th anniversary news as the season roars to life. 

As sprawling of a project as the website is, I again turned to people I trust and value, in this case, former NHRA.com webmaster Brent Friar, with whom I created NHRA's 50th Anniversary site many years ago, so it only made sense he'd be my go-to guy for the 75th. Brent founded BNR Branding after leaving NHRA, first focusing on helping many in the NHRA community build websites and e-commerce platforms, but now has expanded to include all manner of clients, and recently, with his sister, Nina, developed the Find A Grocery Buddy website to help families struggling to afford groceries. In addition to still being a huge NHRA fan, his coding skills, expertise, and experience helped us to create a site that's just very cool. Again, look for an early January launch.

So, as you can see, NHRA’s little editorial elves have been hard at work in anticipation of next year’s celebration of the NHRA and the sport we all love, and hope that you will enjoy the fruits of that labor to further deepen and enhance your own passion.

Thanks for following along, for your passion, and for your contributions to telling the story of this sport.

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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