NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Step into the Wayback Machine and set the dials to 1973, when nine of the 16 nitro winners were first-time winners, three new world champs were crowned, and policies and procedures from records to safety were overhauled.

Shirley Muldowney, Frank Hawley, and Lee Shepherd won world championships in a year packed with new rules, first-time winners, and outrageous performances. Just hop into our Wayback Machine for a trip back to 1982.

Over the past month, you’ve heard from Tom McEwen’s closest friends about what the fabled “Mongoose” meant to them. This week, we share some thoughts and memories from his fans, who were touched by him in myriad ways.

The celebration of life for Tom “the Mongoose” McEwen in Pomona last weekend featured a Who's Who of drag racing as the community came together to remember one of the great icons of the sport.

Thirty years ago this season, direct-drive came back to the nitro classes, supercharger burst panels were mandated, the speed trap was cut in half, Sonoma and Houston entered the schedule, Bruce Larson finally won, and much more.

One final nod to the great "Mongoose," from a National Dragster interview a few years ago where he opines on everything from his "legend" status to his rivalry with Don Prudhomme, his favorite cars, and his legacy in the sport.

Week two of “the Mongoose” watch goes on as fans and friends continue to try to reconcile that he’s really gone. This week: No race cars, just photos of “the Mongoose” smiling and doing his thing.

Some of his best racing friends remember Tom "the Mongoose" McEwen in a touching and funny retrospect to one of the most popular drivers in the sport's history.

With a nod to this weekend’s JEGS Route 66 NHRA Nationals, let’s take a look at drivers from drag racing’s past who called Chicago home.

It almost happened in Topeka last weekend, but late-night eliminations finishes are a rarity in NHRA national events. The most famous came in a post-1 a.m. Tuesday morning finish in Englishtown in 1975, where "Jungle Jim" Liberman won his first Funny Car crown.

As NHRA continues to celebrate its "Women of Power," take a trip back to 1962 when NHRA first allowed women to compete at its national events and Southern California homemaker Carol Cox made history when she became NHRA's first female class winner at the Winternationals.

Not really a dragster and certainly not a Funny Car, the Tom McEwen-driven Super Mustang was a super oddity that certainly was not one of Ford's "better ideas," but remains a car well remembered by many drag racing fans.

Ford’s announcement earlier this week of an all-new Mustang Funny Car body for the 2019 season was no doubt met with great enthusiasm by the Blue Oval fan contingent. The Ford Mustang may be the class’ hardest-working model, and certainly it’s longest running.

Some light reading for a non-racing weekend about how modern technology led the Guinness Book of World Records to remove a legendary, 35-year-old record for performance in a 1980s drag racing video game. And what could we learn from this?

Any way you slice it, Steve Plueger was a walking history book for the Funny Car class, past and present, before we lost him suddenly on March 22.

In case you forgot, Sunday is April 1, or April Fool’s Day. From the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, NHRA.com annually presented a special April Fools section, the first of which was published 20 years ago this week and featured some radical (but not-so-real) rides.

Friends and fellow racers remember former Fuel Altered and Funny Car driver and tuner Dale Emery, who passed away last week.

From the inaugural event in 1970, which featured the first all-team Funny Car final, up until modern times, final rounds at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals have had a knack for being memorable, historic, or both.

A behind-the-scenes look at the circumstances leading to the creation of Don Garlits' sidewinder Top Fueler, and other wild machines created by the brothers Sage, as well as a farewell to influential chassis builder Roy Fjastad.

In 1982, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, always the innovator, experimented with a sideways-mounted nitro engine in his Swamp Rat 27. Although the engineering marvel didn't pan out, it was still vintage Garlits to even try it.

In its more than 30 years of existence, Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park (née Firebird Int'l Raceway) has been the site of some amazing Top Fuel moments that spotlight some of the classes biggest names, including Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney.

In 1975, iconic drag racing artist Pete Millar drew a rogue’s gallery of NHRA heroes positioned on the starting line of the Winternationals that ran on the cover of the “new” CARtoons magazine. How many legends can you identify?

The drag racing world lost another legend with the passing last week of Dode Martin, who ran one of the sport's first dragsters. He is remembered in this week's Dragster Insider, where we also mourn the passing of Gary "Mr. C" Cochran and Steve Hodkinson.

Tuesday's announcement about NHRA’s exciting national event return to Virginia this June got us thinking about the region and all of the great racers that have come from “the Old Dominion” over the years.

For more than 10 years, the Dragster Insider has been sharing "the stories behind the stories" that make up the history of our sport, offering an unparalleled and in-depth look at the heroes and machines who were and are the stars of our sport.

Longtime NHRA fans lost two more greats from the past, with the passings of 1970s Top Fuel racer Paul Longenecker and 1960s gasser great Jack Merkel, both of whom are remembered in this week's Dragster Insider column.

Raymond Godman didn't let being paralyzed by sniper's bullet in service of his country get in the way of an amazing career in drag racing. We lost the legendary owner of the Tennessee Bo-Weevil New Year's Day, but remember him here.

Remembering an NHRA legend and Pro Stock icon, a racer's racer and a champion for all times.

An all-star cast that included Antron Brown, Angelle Sampey, Mark Oswald, Leonard Hughes, and more turned out in Houma, La., to celebrate Southland Dragways, at a reunion event to remember one of Louisiana's great dragstrips of the 1970s.