T.J. Zizzo is doing a terrible job of impersonating a part-time racer. 

The Chicago native made the quickest run in each of Friday’s Top Fuel qualifying sessions to set the pace for the 24th annual Gerber Collision & Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals presented by PEAK Performance.

Austin Prock (Funny Car), Erica Enders (Pro Stock) and Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also set the high-water mark in each one of their prospective Mission Foods Drag Racing Series divisions. 

Well. that didn’t go as planned. 

Steve Torrence, the four-time NHRA Top Fuel champion who has dominated the four-wide drag racing format, fell in the first round of the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals outside of Charlotte. 

There are two four-wide races annually, the aforementioned one in Charlotte and one in Las Vegas. Torrence has advanced to the final quad four times in five appearances, winning in 2018 and 2021, and runner-up finishes in the last two years.  At ZMAX Dragway in Charlotte, N.C., he won four consecutive times from 2017 through 2021 (there was no race in 2020). This year those stats were a throwaway. 

It's a proven fact. The reaction is both dynamic and energetic when Clay Millican wins an NHRA Top Fuel drag race. 

Those who know Millican will attest that this assessment is no surprise. He's all of those characteristics and more wrapped up into one. 

Years after winning multiple IHRA championships and leaving the series as its winningest driver, Millican scored his first NHRA Top Fuel race in 2018 at Route 66 Raceway, the same place he'd made a forgettable debut two decades earlier. 

Chicago firefighter Chris King, who battles a different kind of fire once a year, understands the monumental challenges ahead of him as a part-time nitro Funny Car racer. 

King is giving it another shot at this weekend’s NHRA Route 66 Nationals. While he fell short in last season’s appearance, he was encouraged enough to bring his Cams/Competition Products Dodge Charger Funny Car back to the track outside Chicago for another shot. 

“We made some significant changes in the off-season, and I feel like we are starting the season in a much better position,” said King, who made his professional Funny Car debut in 2021. “Last year, we raced in five races, and we had our ups and downs. I have to thank everyone that has worked over the off season and beginning of this year to get us to this point. I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep in the past couple of weeks, but when you are chasing a dream, that doesn’t really matter.”

When drag racing legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits calls you “old man,” it’s an assessment intended to make you chuckle. However, when he tells you that you are doing a good job and to keep it up forever. Then the pressure is one. 

With 16 NHRA Funny Car championships and 156 national event wins to his credit, Force has learned to make pressure his long-lost friend. 

Juggling finishing high school and a professional racing career can present challenges – which Sienna Wildgust knows about firsthand.

Wildgust, a 17-year-old from Ontario, Canada, is completing her senior high school while also driving a Camaro in NHRA’s Pro Stock class for powerhouse KB Titan Racing.

“It is definitely hard trying to manage doing high school and being on a race team and doing (my) social media and all that kind of stuff, but I feel like I have found a pretty good balance,” Wildgust said. “The time I am home, it is gears toward school, and when I’m on the road, I just make time to get it done.”

Once the favorite pastime of some in the grandstands, betting on drag racing is headed mainstream.

NHRA officials announced today, in an exclusive partnership with ALT Sports Data, a prominent provider of sports data and analytics solutions, that they will serve as the sole distributor of sports betting data for NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series events. Hailing from San Diego, ALT Sports Data is known for supplying exclusive and official trading and consumer data, with plans to introduce legal and official sports betting on NHRA drag racing events.

ALT Sports Data’s expertise in providing official trading data and consumer information has led to a partnership with NHRA, setting the stage for legal sports betting on NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series events. Through this collaboration, NHRA fans can access real-time statistics, odds, and insights to enhance their engagement with the sport. The partnership with ALT Sports Data aims to provide fans a richer experience, fostering deeper connections with race teams and a better understanding of on-track activities.

Top Fuel's winningest driver, Tony Schumacher, has made a career of thriving under pressure. He'll have plenty of pressure to succeed this weekend at the NHRA Route 66 Nationals. 

Schumacher will race a dragster featuring a throwback tribute on his JCM Racing Top Fueler to his father, Hall of Famer Don Schumacher. It will be the first time he's raced in Chicago since his father's passing. 

The Don Schumacher tribute will be unveiled at 11:30 a.m. CST on Friday, May 17, during the Celebration of Life ceremony. 

Top Fuel motorcycles return to the NHRA national-event stage this weekend in Joliet, Ill., after an absence of 19 months.

But it won’t look anything like the 2022 NHRA Texas Nationals in Dallas, when Harley-Davidson riders comprised the field. In fact, from 2015 through the ’22 Dallas race, the action was limited to Harleys; hence, the name of the class then, Top Fuel Harley.

This weekend marks the NHRA debut of Top Fuel Motorcycle – open to all manufacturers, not just Harleys. 

The family moniker was in effect long before Austin Prock became a drag racer.

Prock’s father, Jimmy, having come within a round of tuning rookie Top Fuel driver Cory McClenathan to a championship, moved over to Joe Amato, where his tuning tendency of swinging for the fence earned whatever car he tuned as the “Prock Rocket.”

On occasion, even Robert Hight’s Camaro was called the Prock Rocket.