On the surface it all looks the same. A championship-caliber driver. A top of the line sponsor. A seasoned crew chief and several wins to their credit. Under the hood, so to speak, the U.S. Army dragster piloted by Tony Schumacher and tuned by Mike Green is nothing like the team, driver, tuner and car which won the 2008 NHRA Top Fuel championship.

The driver is the same. The sponsor is the same. The crew chief, Mike Green is in his second year and the new DSR chassis, fully tested by Cory McClenathan in 2009, is still a new animal to the team.

It was late 2008, the season already completed, when team owner Don Schumacher told Mike Green, at the time crew chief for Cory McClenathan, he would be the new crew for the Army dragster driven by Tony Schumacher.

After winning 16 NHRA titles – more than legends Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins, Butch Leal, or Ronnie Sox – and contending for the Pro Stock championship year after year, Bruce Allen had a horrific crash with Kenny Koretsky at the 2005 Dallas event and walked away from the sport. He hasn't raced since. He's hasn't even been to a track to watch.

"That last run's not what I want to be remembered for, but the truth is that in some people's minds, it probably will be," Allen said. "If it is, that's fine. I was going to have to quit one day – that was probably as good a time as any. It was a perfect way, actually. All it really did is make us quit a couple of weeks earlier than we were already going to because we definitely weren't planning on racing the next year anyway. As much as we kept saying, 'This is it, we're done,' we somehow kept hanging on for a few more races – until then. Maybe that was God's way of saying it was time."

That 2005 season wasn't Allen's best with the legendary Reher-Morrison team of David Reher and the late Buddy Morrison, but it had been just a little over a year since he'd last appeared in a final and just three years since he'd last won. He didn't have to quit then. He just did. It wasn't like he was afraid to drive after he crashed.

If you can think of the 2010 NHRA schedule as a series of battlefields, then it shouldn't be too hard to fathom how one engine builder is sizing up the competition looking for just the right time and place to make their assault on the Pro Stock class.

D-day is coming. The field of battle is the Pro Stock class. The army is lead by Justin Humphreys driving an all new Ford Mustang. All that is left to be done is to pick just the right beach to release the horses.

Roush Yates Performance Group is moving into the NHRA arena.

European road racing had its wake-up call last July. Formula One driver Felipe Massa suffered a serious head injury from a rear-suspension spring that popped loose from Rubens Barrichello's car and struck him in the helmet as he was traveling about 170 mph in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix. That incident happened six days after Henry Surtees died from injuries in an accident at a Formula Two race at England's Brands Hatch course. Surtees was struck on the head by a wheel that had come off another car.
 
For drag racing, the alarm sounded six years ago -- Sunday, June 27, 2004, at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis, with the death of Top Fuel racer Darrell Russell. Cut down in his prime, his life blunted by a broken piece of his dragster, Russell died so suddenly and so incongruously from the way he lived.
 
Always smiling, always unflappable, Russell was the epitome of happiness. He genuinely was joyful, and that radiated from him. No one would have guessed such an alarmingly violent, ugly act ever would be associated with the polite, handsome, clean-cut Texan. This was the same unassuming man who in 2001 capped his acceptance of the Auto Club Road to the Future Award by saying, "I love you, Julie" to his wife in a boyishly innocent touch of sweetness.

When Mike Garland was 5 years old, he began building model cars.

Little did he know, a youthful endevour would become a lifelong passion.

Now, nearly 50 years later, Garland is still active in building some of the finest model Funny Cars and other race cars out there.

“They call it the 'best appearing burnout car in Super Gas',” said Kurt Busch, a bit of pride in his smile, as he relaxed on the flight back to Talladega Superspeedway after a day of racing at zMAX Dragway in his 1970 Dodge Challenger outfitted with a 1200 horsepower 427 cubic inch hemi engine.

That's 1199 more horsepower than his wife, Eva's, Andalusian named Lauro; which, according to Busch cost more than his 1200 horsepower to purchase, and also maintain.

Seems the perfect match, they both love horsepower.

Dan Fletcher's name is way, way up the list of all-time sportsman greats, right up there with Peter Biondo, David Rampy, Scott Richardson, and Edmond Richardson. So how does he do it? How does he win national event after national event, year after year after year?

"I don't know," said Fletcher, who'd sooner whack his index a tenth than brag. "It's a lot of hard work, a lot of preparation. There's no 'Don't worry about it,' no 'Oh, that'll be okay for one more run' with me. I don't know how anyone could ever think they're going to win when they don't put everything they have into every single detail. It's hard enough to win when you do. I check everything three times. I'm anal to a fault, and I obsess over everything."

No doubt he does. So do lots of people – they just don't win nine national events a year, like Fletcher did in 2009. He has an ability to concentrate under pressure and a knack for making the right calls at the top end that few drivers will ever possess.

The NHRA, on Page VI of its 2010 Rulebook, lists in the basics of drag racing section, a definition of drag racing.

“The sport of drag racing is an acceleration contest between two vehicles racing from a standing start over a straight race course.”

It is that one simple line in the rulebook which has the Professional Racers Organization up in arms over the recent NHRA 4-Wide Nationals to the point the board issued a letter to both the NHRA’s upper management and zMax Dragway’s Bruton Smith stating their intentions of not racing another four wide event for points.

They did, however, point out a willingness to discuss participation in a non-points earning version of the event.

Carolyn Melendy wonders sometimes if her place in drag racing history is destined to be one of the best kept secrets in the sport.

Twenty years ago, Melendy, now a Super Stock racer from Bayville, NJ, was Pro Modified’s first female driver.

Credit the late Vinny Napp, owner of Raceway Park with providing the inspiration, then Robby Vandergriff for leading her in the right direction.

The guts to go racing against some extremely hard core male drivers were Melendy’s, exclusively.

You don’t need to tell Todd Bevis he’s a blessed man.

Bevis, of Mooresville, NC, lives day to day believing a blessing from above is the only thing which stands between him building race cars for Victor Cagnazzi and residing six feet under.

Bevis was diagnosed with cancer on May 13 of last year. Six months after the last chemo treatment, he was at the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals smiling more than ever. The former drag racer turned tube-bender realizes the experience of the last year has been as enlightening as it was painful.