Pro Stock driver Jason Line, Top Fuel world champion Tony Schumacher, and two-time world champion Larry Dixon were the latest drivers to clinch a spot in the Countdown to 1 playoffs, which will begin Sept. 17-20 at the second annual NHRA Carolinas Nationals at zMAX Dragway in Concord, NC, just five races away. Defending Pro Stock world champion Jeg Coughlin was the first driver to clinch a spot in the Countdown playoffs after his second round finish in Norwalk. Below is a list of drivers who have secured their spot in the Countdown playoffs.

Top Fuel pilot Antron Brown is so close he can taste it. He won in Denver. He won in Seattle.

Now the points leader and sophomore dragster driver looks to do
something that only six drivers in NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing
history have ever done—sweep the Western Swing. With a victory at this
weekend’s FRAM Autolite NHRA Nationals at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma,
Calif., Brown would join a list that includes Top Fuel greats Joe
Amato, Tony Schumacher, Cory McClenathan and Larry Dixon, along with
Funny Car legend John Force and three-time Pro Stock world champion
Greg Anderson.

Pro Stock Motorcycle racer Karen Stoffer will throw out the ceremonial
first pitch before the Oakland A’s vs. Minnesota Twins game on
Wednesday, July 22, at 12:35 p.m. at the Oakland Coliseum.

Tim Wilkerson believes he has aged quite a bit in the last few seasons.

The increased aging a result of being a throwback to the old days when
professional nitro racers used to tune and drive their race cars in
national event competition.

Wilkerson performs the demanding regimen not out of reverence for the old school but out of financial necessity.

NMRA Digital

There
are weekends where a racer struggles through adversity and then there
are those like the one NMRA Turbonetics Pro Outlaw racer Dan Millen
experienced this past weekend at the NMRA/NMCA Super Bowl.

“Extremely struggling weekend,” said, Millen who won the Pro Outlaw title.

Millen started the weekend battling issues and finished on an equally troubling crescendo.

Courtney Force, the youngest daughter of NHRA Funny Car racer John
Force, will always have soft spot in her heart for Pacific Raceways in
Kent, Wash., as it is now the site of her first NHRA national event
win.  The 21-year-old Force wheeled her Jerry Darien-tuned Top Alcohol
Dragster to the winner’s circle at the NHRA Northwest Nationals over
the weekend.  Top Alcohol Funny Car racer Doug Gordon shared the
winner’s circle with Force, notching his first national event win of
the year.

Jim Oddy, crew chief for Joshua Hernandez and his National
Guard-sponsored 1957 Chevy ADRL Pro Extreme entry, obviously wants to

Crew
chief Jim Oddy (left) celebrates with team owners Dave and Gidget Wood
after their National Guard-backed car won the National Guard ADRL Pro
Extreme race July 3, at Heartland Park Topeka, in Kansas.

win
the July 24-25, ADRL NATIONALGUARD.com U.S. Drags II for his sponsor,
his team owner and his crew. But there’s a measure of personal pride
involved, too.

That’s because Oddy, now in his 50th year as a drag racer, also was a
National Guard Soldier in the mid- through late-1960s, and to win the
National Guard race with the National Guard team would be
“unbelievable,” he says.

Last season Eddie Krawiec showed the NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle
community that he could win a Full Throttle Drag Racing Series world championship title in an unconventional manner.

This year, he’s showing the two-wheel set how to win it in more of a dominating fashion.

Krawiec, the former dragstrip manager at Old Bridge Township Raceway
Park in Englishtown, N.J. turned hotshot Pro Stock Motorcycle world
champion, emerged from deep in the top 10 last season in the Countdown
to 1 to win the Full Throttle Series season crown. He did it without
winning a race, leaving fans, drag racing historians and his motorcycle
peers scratching their collective heads. How did he do that?

It's been nearly one year since media members were given an intimate
tour of a nearly completed zMAX Dragway. On that day, they learned
first hand what many fans and competitors would learn later, that
Speedway Motorsports Chairman Bruton Smith had been true to his word
and delivered the Bellagio of drag strips.

Since the Speedway Motorsports development team put the finishing
touches on the one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art, four-lane drag strip,
the stock car capital of the world has been introduced to one big
straight-line success after another.