NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

As part of NHRA’s 75th Anniversary celebration, an elite panel of Sportsman racing legends — Dan Fletcher, David Rampy, Peter Biondo, Luke Bogacki, Justin Lamb, Gary Stinnett, Jeff Taylor, and Austin Williams, who have combined for 411 NHRA national event victories and 35 world championships — has collaborated to select the Top 50 Sportsman Racers from NHRA’s first 75 years.

Each racer named to the Top 50 Sportsman Racers list will receive a large commemorative NHRA medallion recognizing their place among the most accomplished Sportsman competitors in NHRA history.

The Top 50 Sportsman Racers list will be unveiled in groups of 10 over five consecutive Tuesdays. Here's the fourth group, selected randomly from the list and presented here in alphabetical order.

Anthony Bertozzi

Anthony Bertozzi’s statistics as a driver are staggering, with a pair of championships to go with 34 national event wins in 56 finals, but what sets Bertozzi apart from his peers is his generosity and his desire to help others succeed.

Bertozzi’s personal win totals compare favorably with almost anyone else in the sport, but what the statistics don’t show are the number of other racers whom he has helped during his long and successful career. Need to borrow a part, an engine, or perhaps even a turn-key race car, Bertozzi is the go-to guy, and the list of drivers who have reached the winner’s circle with his help includes fellow Top 50 drivers John Labbous Jr. and Joe Santangelo, as well as the late Jim Harrington and many, many others.

Bertozzi’s own success includes a Super Stock title in 2002 and the Top Dragster championship in 2020, as well as a pair of doubles in Epping (2013) and Pomona (2023).

Sal Biondo

His father, Sam, held a dominant presence in Northeast bracket racing in the 1970s and '80s, and through absorption and adaptability, Sal Biondo rose to the top. Between 1986 and 1998, the younger Biondo (older brother to another racing great, Peter) was a terror in his own right, collecting a trio of Street Eliminator track championships with approximately 60 wins in 15 different cars. 

Biondo's talent and versatility were rightfully recognized; he was named the 1992 Division 1 Bracket Driver of the Year, 1995 Car Craft Magazine Comp Eliminator Driver of the Year, and 1995 Division 1 Driver of the Year. A three-time All-Stars winner (1995 in Super Stock and back-to-back in Comp in 2007-08), Biondo stacked division championships along with the 1995 Comp world title he won driving for Vinny Barone. 

To date, his scorecard is etched with 18 national and 28 division victories covering Comp, Super Stock, and Stock.

Jimmy DeFrank

Super Stock and Stock racer Jimmy DeFrank has long been driven by the desire to do well on the dragstrip and, even more so, to make his parents proud. With dad Jim Sr. and mom Loraine always behind him, DeFrank has achieved both. 

He has won the prestigious NHRA U.S. Nationals in both Super Stock (2010) and Stock (2025), doubled at a national event twice — at the 2013 NHRA Winternationals and the spring race in Las Vegas in 2015 — and earned five world championships, twice recording a monster score of more than 700 points. 

His career in the Sportsman ranks began in 1995, and that same year, he won his first national event. Two years later, at the age of 19, he became one of the youngest drivers to win a series title. With more than 75 combined national and divisional wins, DeFrank stands as one of the most accomplished drivers in history. 

Mike Ferderer

Mike Ferderer was one of NHRA Sportsman racing's first Super-class superstars, winning the 1985 Super Gas world championship in his familiar Pontiac J2000 and then going on to dominate 9.90 racing for years.

“The Ferd” also won 13 divisional championships; his first came in an econo dragster in Comp eliminator in 1980 before he switched to doorslammers, initially with the J2000 and then for more than 20 years and counting in his iconic orange and black K&N Filters Pontiac Grand Am. Federer won both the Super Comp and Super Gas Division 6 championships in 1996 and has collected 41 divisional wins, the first six in Comp in the late 1970s and early 1980s before Super Gas became an official class.

On the big stage, Ferderer scored 25 national event wins — 14 in Super Gas, seven in Super Comp, and the last and most recent four in Top Sportsman — at 12 different venues and also collected 21 national event runner-ups.

Justin Lamb

He isn't yet 40, but Justin Lamb is one of the most accomplished racers in NHRA history. Now a six-time NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series world champion (with notable bracket racing triumphs as well), Lamb and his father, Chris, ventured into Jr. drag racing completely new to the sport. 

They learned as they went, never shying away from the evolution of the classes nor the technology. Lamb earned his first national event Wally in 2006 in Top Comp at the age of 19, and he applied a growing bank of knowledge and resources to additional national victories in Comp, Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, and Super Gas. 

The driver who has doubled in division titles, national event wins, and world championships is known for possessing a strong work ethic and acute attention to detail. Lamb has taken pride in his race cars as much as his abilities behind the wheel, and both have remained a factor in his success.

Jody Lang

He started bracket racing in a '69 Chevelle and went on to pilot two of the most recognizable and threatening Chevrolets in the Pacific Northwest. 

Jody Lang has earned a bucket of Division 6 season titles and came up against the national title in multiple seasons, but luck was not on his side until 2020, when he drove his '81 Malibu station wagon to the Stock eliminator world championship. His scorecard stretches to 96 wins across national and divisional events, with his 63 division wins beginning in 1993 at Woodburn Dragstrip. 

Lang's national win-record started with a 1996 Phoenix final-round defeat of Martha Thompson, who would later become his wife. Lang is one of just 11 drivers to have doubled at the national level more than once; he won Super Stock and Stock at the spring race in Las Vegas in 2009, and he did it again in Seattle in 2011. 

Ed Richardson

When Sportsman racing fans hear the surname Richardson, they’re likely to think of super siblings Edmond and Scotty, but there was a third and unrelated Richardson, Ed, who also left a significant mark on the world of NHRA Sportsman competition.

Hailing from Florida, Ed Richardson won a pair of Super Comp world championships — in 1997 and 2000 — and collected six national event wins — three each in Super Comp and Super Gas — in a comparatively sporadic 26-year career, from his breakthrough win in Super Comp at the Phoenix event in 1992 to his most recent victory, in Super Gas at the 2019 NHRA Gatornationals. After sitting out most of the 2000s, he returned in 2010 and picked up right where he left off.

Richardson also claimed 12 NHRA Lucas Oil Series wins and a trio of Division 2 Super Comp championships, his first in 1992 and then two more, in 1997 and 2000, that boosted his world championship campaigns, and a 2001 victory in the NHRA Sportsman All-Stars competition.

Gary Stinnett

For some racers, statistics are just too overpowering to ignore, and in the case of Gary Stinnett, those figures include 26 national event wins, 35 divisional titles, and four world titles in what is arguably the most competitive class in drag racing.

Stinnett’s numbers compare favorably to any other driver in our Top 50 celebration, but they don’t tell the whole story. As an engine builder, carburetor specialist, innovator, and tuner, Stinnett also has few peers.

On the track, Stinnett won his first national event in dramatic fashion as he won the sport’s biggest event, the 1994 NHRA U.S. Nationals, and did so by beating one of the toughest competitors in the class, the late Scotty Richardson.

Stinnett went on to win world titles in 1998, 2005, 2010-11, all of them in Super Comp. His 26 national event titles also include victories in Super Stock, Stock, and Super Gas.

Bobby Warren

For the better part of four decades, Bobby Warren provided the quintessential prototype for what an NHRA class racer should be. Equal parts driver, mechanic, and engine builder, Warren put together an amazing career that includes three world championships, 14 national event titles, 15 divisional wins, and a family legacy that continues to this day.

Warren’s first taste of NHRA success came in 1969 when he claimed a pair of divisional wins in his native Division 2. Warren claimed three divisional wins in 1970 in Stock and went to the NHRA World Finals in Dallas, where he scored his first title. After a move to Super Stock, additional championships were earned in 1974 and 1978.

Warren continued to race into his 80s, and there was never a time when he was not competitive. Warren’s sons, Jeff and Joey, and grandkids, Joel and Brooke, continue to carry on the family legacy.

Austin Williams

World championships in two categories highlight the racing career of Austin Williams, a Texas native who got it done in 2014 in Stock and 2017 in Super Comp. 

Williams is a statistician and is analytic by nature, and the thoughtful approach has thus far netted 19 national and 25 division victories. Among his accomplishments stands a treasured 2019 NHRA U.S. Nationals win in a heads-up Stock final — a triumph that extended a streak of winning at least one national event each season to seven. Now a two-time Indy winner, Williams is one of a select few to have finished in the Top 10 nationally for a decade or more, and he has been Top 10 in two classes multiple seasons. 

Twice, he has brought home a pair of Division 4 championships at season's end. Williams has division titles and event wins at both the national and divisional levels in Stock, Super Comp, and Super Gas. 

Top 50 Sportsman Racers to date (40 of 50 announced)

Group 1 bios

Group 2 bios

Group 3 bios

Group 4