The National Hot Rod Association is racing this weekend in Brainerd, Minnesota, but history was made two weeks ago at the Northwest Nationals in Seattle. We overlooked it at the time, but when Erica Enders won in Pro Stock and Courtney Force won in Funny Car, it was the first time two women have won in pro classes on the same day.
Shortly after the Army National Guard halted sponsorship of Stewart-Haas Racing, which fields teams for Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to allow the military to continue using funds to advertise in sports, including NASCAR.
Matt Hagan, the reigning NHRA Full Throttle Funny Car champ, kicked off this weekend's Four-Wide Nationals qualifying session at zMAX Dragway in North Carolina with a bang. Hagan's funny car dropped an intake valve into one of its cylinders about halfway down the track and exploded, launching bits of engine and funny car across three of the four race lanes.
A top fuel dragster makes impressive use of a 500-cubic-inch engine block machined from a solid chunk of aluminum. That 10,000-horsepower engine propels a 2,300-pound car from the starting tree to 100 mph in less than a second. And it needs a lot of fuel to do it.
Your eyes do not deceive you – what you see above is four lanes of funny car action at the zMax Dragway in Charlotte, NC, built specifically for such shenanigans. That was just an exhibition run, but the National Hot Rod Association has announced that this year it will run 4-up racing in anger at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in two months.
As the only American automaker not recently put through a government-sponsored bankruptcy, it comes as little surprise that Ford has taken over the spot long held by General Motors as the Official Sponsor of the NHRA. The first sign of dissension in the ranks came earlier this year as GM's bankruptcy filing ended the contracts the automaker had previously forged with Cagnazzi Racing, KB Racing LLC, Kurt
It comes as little surprise that General Motors has canceled its contracts with the NHRA teams it had previously been boosting with money, support vehicles and free parts. "I knew it was coming, I was forewarned," Ken Black, NHRA Full Throttle Pro Stock team owner told CompetitionPlus.com. "That's why they filed bankruptcy ... to get rid of all of this stuff."
The NHRA has acted very quickly in an effort to improve the safety of its Top Fuel and Funny Car races. Due to the tragic death recently of '94 and '95 Top Fuel champion Scott Kalitta, the drag strip for these two fastest classes will be shortened from the traditional 1,320 feet to 1,000 feet. Race officials and team managers believe that this compromise will continue to make for an entertainin
Dodge Challenger Super Stock shown from 2006 SEMA Show
Score another one for women! Less than a week after Danica Patrick recorded her first IRL win, pro drag racer Ashley Force made history this weekend by becoming the first woman to win a Funny Car national event at the Southern Nationals in Atlanta. Not only is the 25-year-old Force red hot in her second season in the Funny Car division, having been to the finals in each of her last three races and currently lea
Dodge Challenger Super Stock shown from 2006 SEMA Show
Got a need for speed? Strap on a battery pack and his the track. That's the idea behind the Current Eliminator V, which set a new electric dragster world speed record in the National Hot Rod Association's (NHRA) Super Pro class of 153.6 mph at the Speedworld Motorplex drag strip in Tuscon last Saturday. The Current Eliminator V did the quarter-mile in 8.10 seconds at the hands of Dennis "Kilowatt" Berube. The dragster was powered by Altairnano's lithium-titanate battery packs. Berube is a found
The good news: he's alive. The bad news: he's a little busted up. John Force's dragster (yeah, that John Force, the one with the Driving Force tv show about him and his hawt drag racing daughters) went out of control at the O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals in Texas on Sunday. In the process of heading for the wall, he also took out Kenny Bernstein's car before smacking the barrier. Berstein is fine, Force is also largely fine, suffering a broken
Although we've never been huge fans of racing in a straight line, it pained us to read that the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) sold its professional racing assets to HD Partners yesterday for a cool $121 million.
