Bristol Dragway is expected to play host to racers from across the country during the May 27-30 Thunder Valley Bracket Challenge, the creation of NHRA Pro Stock winner Dave Connolly and well-known sportsman racers Jeff and Don Strickland.

Top bracket racers from across the country will do battle for a guaranteed weekend purse in excess of $300,000.

"This has been a brainchild of ours for a while,” explained multi-time NHRA and big-dollar bracket winner Jeff Strickland. "We've talked about it and thought about it a lot, and we've tried to develop a race that we'd get excited about attending ourselves, as racers. Obviously, Dave, Dad and I won't be competing in our own event, but we've raced enough to know that certain formats and ideas can make the weekend more enjoyable."

Steve Kirk Jr. scored a monster payday as Champion of Carolina Dragway's [Jackson, SC] Battle of the Big Dawgs 90K presented by Speedtech Nitrous.

The day started off as an outlaw heads up grudge type event with no qualifying, just simply two shakedown runs to feel out the track. The Friday night test session for all racers proved that this was going to be one for the record books. Joe Dunne unleashed a 3.95 at 187 mph pass to become the world’s quickest converter driven nitrous car. Not to be out done, Lee Adkins proved that the name "The House of Hook" fits as he too recorded a career best 3.96 at 188mph.

Douglas Horne walked away from a high speed Top Fuel Motorcycle accident during an All Harley Drag Racing Association event Sunday in Numidia, Pa.

However, for Horne, who also races in the NHRA Full Throttle’s Drag Racing Series’ Pro Stock Bike division, he was far from uninjured.

The Aberdeen, MD resident suffered a fractured thumb on his right hand and a separated AC joint on his left shoulder. The AC joint allows the ability to raise the arm above the head.

The nickname stuck so Frankie Taylor just went with it.

Taylor, an ADRL Pro Extreme racer from Dickinson, Tex., just smiled when the name Mad Man was bestowed upon him.

In fact, as Taylor surveyed his driving style, which is a combination of kamikaze and over the edge of the envelope, he wondered if the name might have accurately pegged him.

When it comes to Top Fuel drag racing, there’s very little Tony Schumacher hasn’t accomplished.

The seven-time world champ did claim a first Sunday, however, when he won his first race at Topeka, Kan.

Schumacher captured the 22nd annual O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Summer Nationals title by scoring a hole shot win over his teammate, Cory McClenathan, in the final round at Heartland Park.

This past offseason, the Yas Marina Circuit partnered with Don Schumacher Racing, and as such Lee Beard, who is the team manager of DSR, was in charge of putting together two complete Top Fuel dragster teams for the Yas Marina Circuit.

Yas Marina is a spectacular motor racing circuit in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The new Top Fuel teams with drivers Tommy Johnson Jr. and Hot Rod Fuller are based in Abu Dhabi.

Neither Johnson Jr. or Fuller has competed on the NHRA national event circuit this year, but that is expected to change in July. Fuller likely will make his NHRA season debut at the 23rd annual Fram-Autolite Nationals in Sonoma, Calif., July 16-18.

Robert Hight has been riding a victory tidal wave in May.  

The reigning Funny Car world champ, who won at St. Louis and Commerce, GA, earlier this month, made it three in a row by capturing the title Sunday at Topeka in the .

Hight, who also qualified on the pole, beat Jeff Arend in the final round with a 4.104-second time, while Arend came in at 4.150 seconds.

Following the next NHRA national event June 3-6 at the 13th annual United Association Route 66 NHRA Nationals at Joilet, Ill., Ron Capps and Cruz Pedregon will get even more seat time.

Capps and Pedregon are competing in Tony Stewart’s 6th annual Prelude to the Dream Late Model stock car race on June 9 at Eldora Speedway’s half-mile clay oval in Rossburg, Ohio.

Don Marshall, half of the famed King & Marshall Top Fuel and Funny Car team of the late 1960s and 1970s, died May 18 in Jacksonville, Fla. With partner and driver Jimmy King, the New England-based duo fielded fuel dragsters through the early 1970s before switching to Funny Car for the remainder of the decade. They were inducted into the New England Hot Rod Hall of Fame in 2006.

Jeff Arend, driver of the DHL Funny Car, made his second final-round appearance of the 2010 Full Throttle Drag Racing Series in Sunday’s final eliminations of the O’Reilly NHRA Summer Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka in Topeka, Kan.

Arend, a 47-year old native Canadian and resident of San Dimas, Calif., battled against reigning NHRA Funny Car world champion Robert Hight in the final round. The two fan favorites put on a great side-by-side drag race for the fans all of the way down the 1,000-ft. track. At the finish-line stripe, Hight just barely nosed out Arend to get a very close win, 4.150 seconds, 300.80 mph to 4.104 sec., 303.50 mph.

Arend also raced to a runner-up finish in Houston last month. The trip to the flopper final in Topeka was the fifth chance that Arend has had to “run for the money.” He has two career victories in the NHRA Funny Car class, the most recent coming in Memphis, Tenn., last fall.