NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Since April, Chris and Mason McGaha and the Harlow Sammons Pro Stock team have been conspicuously absent from the NHRA Mission Foods tour but their time away was hardly a vacation.

Chris, who has eight wins in 20 national event finals, and Mason, one of the category’s most promising young talents, struggled out of the gate, and simply decided to take some time off, regroup, and address some of the performance issues that have affected the team’s performance for the last few seasons.

Chris did manage to score a round win earlier this season but suffered a pair of DNQ’s in Pomona and Charlotte. For Mason, the news was even worse as he failed to qualify for the team’s four events. At that point, the team realized that drastic measures were needed.

“I was just tired of seeing us getting our teeth kicked in. It’s that simple,” said Chris McGaha. “For the last three years we’ve known we can run better than we have run. We left Charlotte, and decided we weren’t going to Georgia and we decided to test at the Division 4 points meet [in Dallas] and that was absolutely horrendous. At that point, we decided not to go to Epping or Maryland, and spend the time in our ship. The more I worked on things, the more unhappy I was, so that’s when we decided not to go to Bristol or Norwalk.

“From my shop in Texas, the difference between Norwalk and Sonoma is just 40 miles so this seemed like a better option. We didn’t expect to miss six races, but here we are.”

During the time off the Harlow Sammons crew worked to improve just about every aspect of the team’s performance, but multiple dyno sessions addressed what they hoped as a horsepower issue.

“We ran a motor on the dyno the other day and it didn’t make the power we wanted to, but when we pulled up the data from two years ago, the same engine made the same power and we ran 6.52 in Seattle, so maybe we’re better off than we think we are.

“Sometimes, you work on things and it sends you down a rabbit hole and after a while, you go down one hole after another and you can’t find your way back,” McGaha said. “We had some issues with head gaskets and broken pistons and we started to back things down, but that’s not the way to race Pro Stock.”

In Sonoma, McGaha is back, but the team has pared back to just one car, the Silver Bullet Camaro that Chris normally drives. This week, it will be driven by Mason.

“The kid is gonna drive and the thought was we’ll bring the best car, the best engine, and the best driver and run just one car,” Chris said. “We had a lot of success when we ran just one car so maybe we just need to go back to basics for a bit. We’ll definitely bring the second out at some point, but for now I think this is the way to go.”

The other dilemma, however slight, that the team faces is the recently announced 2027 rules package that allows for the return of hood scoops in addition to a new fuel injection and intake package that should allow for more innovation.  The McGaha’s have already gotten a head start on their 2027 program.

“We’ve been working on that for quite a while now,” Chris said. “We’ve made some progress and I can tell you these cars will be fast next year. I won’t say they’ll pick up a tenth, but it’s going to be noticeable. In great air, you’re almost sure to see the record broken. I always hated the whole thing with the front mounted air scoops and now we don’t have to deal with that. There’s some inherent issues with that and you can’t get past them. Next year will be better.”

While the McGaha’s plan to run one car this weekend, and their plans for Seattle and Brainerd are up in the air, they are likely to come to Indy with two cars, although they may run one of them in Comp. As it turned out, a current Pro Stock car makes for a very competitive B/Altered and the chance to win a diamond 75th NHRA anniversary Wally at NHRA’s biggest event is almost to much to pass up.

“We’ve run Comp before and learned a lot with it,” McGaha said. “Mason wants to bring the Comp car to Indy and we know we can be very competitive. We should have already won a race but but we had a little trouble at the Dallas divisional. We left Jeff Taylor get back around us. We should have had that one.

“Unless we’re ridiculously fast, we will probably not be in Michigan or Rockingham but I think we’ll got to the double divisional in Tulsa. And run Comp.

Mason made his debut in 2020 as a teenager and has never looked out of place in the 6-second Pro Stock car. He tends to make wise decisions behind the wheel, and he is rarely late off the starting line. He just needs the right horse in order to showcase his talents. Right now, Chris believes he’s on the right track to make that happen.

“If nothing else, we’re stubborn. We don’t give up, and we’re going to keep working until we get this figured out,” said Chris. “We might be closer than we think and we might be further off. Personally, I think we’re closer but we’ll see this weekend.”