It worked so well the last time. 

For the second consecutive NHRA U.S. Nationals, two-time NHRA Funny Car champion will roll to the Indianapolis Raceway Park starting line with a Funny Car paying homage to his former team owner and admitted hero Don Prudhomme. 

In a throwback to Prudhomme’s old red, white, and blue Army cars, Capps has adjusted the livery to promote his longtime sponsor, NAPA Auto Parts. The scheme is a proven winner as Prudhomme won four consecutive  NHRA titles, starting in 1975.

If you were in the Glidden Family you had three key traits. You worked hard. You won. Then you won the NHRA U.S. Nationals... and you did that a lot. The Gliddens won Indianapolis and if they didn't win the event, they at least reached the final round. If you were going to beat the family from nearby Whiteland, Indiana, you had to do it on the money run. 

Bob Glidden won his first U.S Nationals title in 1978 with the undefeated Fairmont and added another with a Plymouth Arrow in 1979. He didn't win another until 1983, but that hardly mattered as he reached the final in every Big Go in the 1980s. Consider this: from 1977 through 1989, Glidden went to 13 straight Indy final rounds.

Sometimes, an idea hits; for Elon Werner, it has hit big time. 

Last year at the NHRA U.S. Nationals, Werner and his Werner Communications LLC brand launched Drag Race Bracket Bonanza [DRBB], the first free online drag racing bracket fantasy game. A year later, like a favorite television show, some cannot seem to live without it. 

“I have been blown away by the global response and interest to Drag Race Bracket Bonanza,” said Elon Werner, president of Werner Communications. “We offered seven brackets at the end of 2023 and in 2024 we are wrapping up the regular season and about to go into the Countdown for the second time. The number of players has increased during every national event since we launched DRBB. We continue to get positive responses on social media and our email marketing from players who love picking their drivers and winning prizes.”

Rickie Smith stood on the starting line at Bristol Dragway and looked up at the names above the hospitality suites when he concluded, "I'm the only one out of all of those names still out there racing." Well, there is one who is out on medical leave... John Force. 

Indeed, of the 22 names considered the Legends of Thunder Valley, Smith is the only one in competition. This weekend, he's racing in the PDRA's Thunder Valley Throwdown. Smith is in the Pro Nitrous field heading into Saturday's final eliminations. 

Ironically, the last time Tommy Franklin raced at Bristol Dragway, a decade ago, led to his being in Bristol for the PDRA's Thunder Valley Throwdown. 

Franklin was part of the scarce car count that participated in the failed Xtreme Drag Racing League, a spinoff of the American Drag Racing League, a series that also fell on rocky ground. 

Franklin's passion for keeping major league doorslammer alive led to a group, including him, that formed the PDRA a decade ago. The successful businessman ended up becoming the last man standing in the group. In the end, PDRA has outlasted them all. 

The qualifying leader list of PDRA’s Thunder Valley Throwdown read like an old IHRA national event lineup as a trio of racers who headlined back in the day. 

Instead of Jim Halsey running his former Castrol GTX Corvette in Pro Modified, he drove his Camaro to the Pro Nitrous pole. Likewise, Todd Tutterow was not in a nitrous-injected Corvette Stingray but, instead, a supercharged 1969 Camaro as he topped the Pro Boost field. And instead of the Charlie Hunt Ford he drove back in the day, Tommy Lee wheeled Curt Steinbach’s ’22 Camaro to the top in the mountain motor Pro Stock division. 

There's a day coming when this Junior Dragster racer sees herself running the big cars and winning championships just like the rest of her family. Ashley Franklin is perfectly content, biding her time in the Pro Junior Dragster division, where she leads the points just like her sister Amber in Pro 632. Her father, Tommy Franklin, is second in the Pro Nitrous points behind Jim Halsey. 

"I'm a little bit slower than the other two, but I still have the same drive to do what they do," Franklin said. "I grew up watching my dad race, and then I grew up watching Amber race, and they made me want to drive. Seeing all my friends racing inspired me to be a part of all that."

Annette Summer, a pioneering Pro Street racer who just happened to be female, understands she's got some work to do before she races her trademark, nitrous-injected pink Camaro again, the same one she drove to a stellar reputation in the 1990s and beyond. 

Summer, who last raced in the Pro Street arena some decades ago, returned to competition, at least in an exhibition role, at the recently completed 32-year Havlik's Fastest Street Car Reunion at Tri-State Raceway in Earlville, Iowa. And while it was more of an exhibition outing than an actual competition, the first lady of street legal drag racing had the time of her life.