NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

As we prepare to dive into the first day of qualifying for the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series classes, here's a collection of pre-race notes we've assembled to prep you for the event.

All four Pro titles still up for grabs

New year, same story for the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals, as the four NHRA Mission Foods champs are still to be determined.

Top Fuel is a two-horse race between Kalitta Motorsports teammates Shawn Langdon and Doug Kalitta, while six drivers in Funny Car — Matt Hagan, Jordan Vandergriff, J.R. Todd, Austin Prock, Jack Beckman, and Ron Capps — are all still mathematically in the fight, but it’s really down to Hagan, Vandergriff, and Todd.

The Pro Stock war is still being waged among five drivers — Dallas Glenn, Matt Hartford, Greg Stanfield, Greg Anderson, and Troy Coughlin Jr. — while the shootout in Pro Stock Motorcycle is down to Richard Gadson, Gaige Herrera, and Matt Smith.

Read our full explainer here.

Sportsman championships also on the line

A trio of NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Sportsman world championships was also still on the line entering the event: Comp, Top Sportsman, and Top Dragster.

The Comp battle is down to Joe Carnasciale and reigning world champ Jeff Taylor, who must win three rounds to overtake Carnasciale and clinch his second straight and sixth overall world championship.

Top Sportsman is down to four drivers. Lance Abbott is currently leading, but Chanse Bullock will tie Abbot by qualifying for the event. Jeff Gillette and Ed Olpin are also both in the hunt. Gillette must win the event, and Abbott and Bullock go out in the first or second round.  Olpin must make final and both Bullock and Abbott go out round one and Gillette not win.

Top Dragster title was decided this morning when JB Strassweg went out early, making Brad Plourd the world champ and capping an incredible late-season surge by Plourd.

Driver substitutions

Well-respected shoe Bobby Bode will saddle up in the Head Inc. Funny Car as its regular pilot, Spencer Hyde, is home with his wife, Courtney, who delivered their first child, Ellie, Nov. 7.

Dave Connolly will move from wrenches to shifters as he subs for KB Titan teammate Eric Latino in the GESi Camaro Pro Stocker.

Due to an injury sustained by driver Eily Stafford at the recent Mopar NHRA Las Vegas Nationals powered by Dodge, eight-time NHRA Hot Rod Heritage Racing Series Funny Car champion Bobby Cottrell will step into the driver's seat of the Don Nelson Racing California Hustler and compete in the Legacy Series finale this weekend.

Hagan seeks Funny Car history

With a second-round loss to championship rival J.R. Todd in Las Vegas, Matt Hagan lost a chance to put some distance between himself and his foes as he strives for a fifth Funny Car world championship, which would break the tie he holds with Don Prudhomme and Kenny Bernstein and give him sole possession of second place in all-time class championships behind only John Force. Hagan, who won the historic 1,000th NHRA Funny Car victory in Pomona earlier this year, holds a 39-point lead over Jordan Vandergriff.

"With how the ladder was, we really could have set ourselves up to put our foot on their throats, but it just wasn’t in the cards, but we’ll head into the Pomona Finals with the points lead,” he said. “There are going to be some tight, close races. I think the biggest thing is though, we still need to have fun. You can't lose sight of enjoying what we’re doing, because when you do, and you start getting knotted up about it, that's when you start making mistakes. We’re blessed to just even be here and have the opportunity to race for a championship and make some history."

Vandergriff’s dream continues

Jordan Vandergriff and the Cornwell Tools team are 39 points out of first place headed into the NHRA Finals, a remarkable achievement in his first year in the class, following in the footsteps of former John Force Racing driver Austin Prock, who won the championship in his rookie season in Funny Car in 2024.

“This is what you dream of, right?” he said. “I think any racer will tell you when they dream of getting a shot or the opportunity, they dream of winning championships. This is exactly what I thought of during all those years out of the seat. Now that I'm here, it's like ’Wow, I guess this is what it actually feels like.’ So, to be here is truly a dream come true. The Cornwell Quality Tools team did exactly what we needed to do at Las Vegas. We got as close as we could to Hagan by winning the race, and he went out in the second round. But the job is not finished. We have to close that gap and gain 10 or more points in qualifying to be within one round when eliminations start. That would make things much easier.”

Todd hanging tough

2018 world champ J.R. Todd enters the event in third place, trailing second-place Jordan Vandergriff by 65 points and leads fourth-place Austin Prock by 37 points. Todd trails points leader Matt Hagan by 104 points with one race remaining in the season. Todd is still mathematically in contention for the championship, but he must be fewer than 90 points behind Hagan entering eliminations on Sunday. If Hagan’s lead is more than 90 points after qualifying, Todd will be eliminated from championship contention.

“I said before Vegas that we were still in the conversation and that we won’t quit fighting until somebody tells us we’re done, and that’s still what we’re thinking," he said. "We knocked off the points leader [Matt Hagan] in the second round there in Vegas, but we needed to go on and win the race to close the gap more. We took a step — it just wasn’t as big as we hoped. 

“Dickie and Todd [crew chiefs Dickie Venables and Todd Smith] have this team back in the championship hunt for the first time since we won it in 2018. They’re two aggressive-minded guys bouncing ideas off each other, and they have us at the last race of the year with a shot at a championship — that’s all anyone can ask. No matter how this thing plays out, this DHL team made a move this season. We need a perfect weekend, and we need some help from the guys in front of us. With points and a half, almost anything is possible. If we can cut into that lead and go into eliminations trailing Hagan by less than 90 points, we’ll be in position to make a run at it.”

Herrera, Glenn hope "Quality Starts" trend leads to titles

One of the keys to winning championships is consistency; even if you don't win the race, you still rack up a few round-wins and points. A new metric in drag racing that we've developed is a stat called "Quality Starts," an idea lifted from baseball, where even if a pitcher does not win a game, he made a significant impact on the game (six innings pitched, no more than two runs allowed).

Two-time Pro Stock Motorcycle champion Gaige Herrera is the sport-wide leader in this stat, having reached the semi's or better in 44 of 63 starts (69.8%) and having made the final round 37 times (58.7%) of those starts. Teammate Richard Gadson is at a healthy 64.4% with semi's or better in 29 of 45 starts.

Pro Stock points leader Dallas Glenn is next best, having reached the semifinals or better in 68 of his 110 career starts (61.8%). Of those 110 starts, he's made it to the final round in almost half of them, 48 times (43.6%). Matching that level of consistency at this event will reward him with his second world championship. Greg Anderson is second in the class with a 52.2% quality-start ratio.

Antron Brown has a healthy 46.8% quality-start ratio over an amazing 562-race career (263 semi's or better in 562 races) and has reached 148 final rounds (26.3%). Reaching a final round every fourth race in a nitro car is a tip of the helmet visor to him and his teams. Justin Ashley is next best at 43.3% with 58 quality starts in 134 races.

Austin Prock tops the Funny Car class with 59 quality starts in 128 races (46.7%) and a final-round percentage of 27.5. Matt Hagan is second with 44.6% semifinals or better and a 26.4% final-round rate, which is especially impressive considering he's run three times as many races (394) as Prock.

"Fast Jack” looks to continue Pomona streak

Jack Beckman has won in Pomona in each of the past four years in which he has competed. He won the NHRA Finals in 2019 and the NHRA Winternationals in 2020. His racing career was sidelined until midway through the 2024 season, when he took over for the injured John Force and then won the 2024 Finals and the 2025 Winternationals. The 2025 Finals in Pomona were rained out.

“I had a pretty good consecutive event streak going, but then the Finals got cancelled, and I lost at the 2026 Winternationals,” he said. “At the Finals last year, we all towed out there but never even unloaded our car because of the rain. Having been born and raised in Southern California and knowing the number of dry days we have, only to watch the race get completely rained out, it was a very bitter end to the 2025 season. So, hopefully, we can close out 2026 by keeping that Pomona streak alive.”

The fix is in for Dunn team

Driver Jeff Arend and the Jim Dunn Racing team enter the event breathing a sigh of relief after finally uncovering the mechanical gremlin that haunted them and cost them a spot in the field two weeks ago in Las Vegas. Moon Beer, an American light lager created as a collaboration between Mooneyes and Frogtown Brewery, is the team’s primary partner this weekend, and they hope to have a lot of things to toast about.

“We were consistent, but consistently about five-hundredths off the pace we knew we were capable of," said Arend. "The frustrating part was that nothing we were changing seemed to make sense, but the car would actually slow down. We just couldn’t put our finger on it. Thankfully, after a tremendous team effort and a lot of help from people working to figure out the issue, we finally found the problem. In Q3, we shut off the program we had identified as the issue, and suddenly the clutch system started responding the way it was supposed to. The car smoked the tires about 100 feet out, but for the first time in a while, we saw the clutch system doing exactly what we had been trying to accomplish all season.

“Now we’re looking forward to Pomona with a much better understanding of what the car wants. We know what’s too fast, what’s a little too slow, and now it’s a matter of fine-tuning everything to put it all together.”

Stanfield staying steady

After a runner-up finish in St. Louis that boosted his chances of a first Pro Stock world championship to go with five Super Stock crowns and a Factory X title, Greg Stanfield has had two uncharacteristic first-round losses at the hands of teammates Jeg Coughlin Jr. and Troy Coughlin Jr. in Dallas and Las Vegas that cost him his points lead. Stanfield is now sitting third in points, 99 points back from the lead with 191 points up for grabs, but the veteran frets not.

"I’m not someone who is going to obsess over points. Not saying I don’t look at them, but it’s not my focus," said Stanfield. "My focus is to do what we’ve been doing all season long: come out here and be the best we can, work hard, and keep at it. We’ll try to qualify well, maybe earn some bonus points each session, and then come out on race day ready to win rounds. Our goal is to win the race; if we win the race, then we’ve given ourselves the best chance at the championship.”

Johnson wraps up 40th season

Veteran Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Steve Johnson will be looking to complete his historic 40th anniversary season of NHRA Drag Racing with a strong performance as he closes in on the 25th Top 10 points finish of his extraordinary career. In Dallas, he guided his Suzuki to a career-best 6.673-second elapsed time at 201 mph during eliminations and followed it up two weeks later with a solid effort and a quarterfinal result in Las Vegas.

“It’s always been my goal just to be part of the NHRA fraternity,” Johnson added. “We have been so close to a championship, and we’ve also struggled big time. Finishing in the Top 10 after a long season of racing shows fans, friends, and sponsors our relentless brand of never giving up. It also stirs thoughts of how to be better next year.”