At first glance, Ron Capps appears to be a well-manicured spring chicken. But in reality, the championship-winning driver that John Force calls a kid will celebrate 30 years as a nitro racer next weekend. 

Capps made his professional debut behind the wheel of Roger Primm’s Top Fuel dragster during the 1995 Phoenix event. He’s since participated in 632 starts, with 75 national event victories racing a Funny Car and one in Top Fuel. He is one of only 18 drivers in NHRA history to have claimed a win in both the Top Fuel and Funny Car categories.

Capps cannot help but wax nostalgic thinking about it all. 

One of the worst things that could have happened for the NHRA Top Fuel field transpired last June when the tour rolled into Bristol, Tenn., for the Thunder Valley Nationals. A crowded schedule of two races in one weekend enabled driver Justin Ashley to get in a zone. 

There's a good chance lightning could strike twice. 

Ashley comes into next weekend's NHRA Arizona Nationals with a chance to win the rain-delayed NHRA Winternationals from Pomona, a Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, and the actual race scheduled at Firebird Raceway. Ashley is the defending champion from Phoenix, and if he can pull off the final round win from Pomona, it will make three in a row for that event. 

Except for his present moment as a team owner and when he first started as a driver for Roger Primm, multi-time champion Ron Capps has been involved in driving for multi-car operations. He’s not ready to get out of the seat any time soon, so the NAPA Auto Parts-sponsored driver eyes a day when he could expand his empire of nitromethane. 

The No. 1 on the wing of Top Fuel world champion Doug Kalitta’s dragster ensures that it will draw a fair amount of attention at the third stop on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series. That’s what popular NHRA sponsor SealMaster is banking on as major league drag racing resumes at Firebird Raceway for the NHRA Arizona Nationals. 

SealMaster is a longtime corporate partner of Kalitta Motorsports. In addition to the primary placement in Phoenix, SealMaster is a full-season associate partner on Kalitta’s dragster and J.R. Todd’s DHL GR Supra Funny Car. 

Eric Latino knows that feeling all too well. It doesn’t matter if you are 16 hours from the track or 16 hours from home; the feeling of being stranded on the side of the road can leave one sick to the stomach. 
 
His job in the emissions industry has convinced him that it’s not a matter of if but when a diesel particulate filter [DPF] will leave a big rig or motorhome stranded. 
 
Before we go any further in this article, what is a DPF, and what does it do?

When it comes to ticketing, the PACnet Annual Star Awards believes NHRA has got it right. 

Drag racing’s largest sanctioning body was recently awarded with “Innovation of the Year” accolades at the PACnet Annual Star Awards in Los Angeles. The award comes from the development of NHRA’s new Team Ticket & Credential Ordering Portal. The PACnet Annual Star Awards honors top performers within the Paciolan community, with NHRA beating out an impressive list of competitors in the category for its new online ticketing page.

Now she knows what to expect. 

This is how it is for Top Alcohol Dragster graduate turned Top Fuel driver Jasmine Salinas as she made her big show debut on Friday at the NHRA Winternationals. 

Tony Stewart said during a break at this past weekend’s Lucas Oil Winternationals at Southern California’s In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip that it’s too early to be an expert on all the nuances of his Top Fuel dragster. And he claims he isn’t partial to one kind of race car, despite his love for dirt cars.

But he is certain that he never will become a Funny Car driver. And he’s adamant that his spin in an 11,000-horsepower, nitro-gulping Top Fuel has a limited run, at least for the immediate future. He stepped in as a substitute this season for wife Leah Pruett, who announced in December she would step from the cockpit to focus on starting a family.